Wayne Riley.
A tribute to the underappreciated.
On my 25th birthday, I got the book Working from my mom. It’s a big thick paperback with small font. Intimidating. There’s no story, no thesis and very little context from Studs Terkel, the author. It’s simply a book where one can listen to people talk about their jobs. Within the first few pages, I was fully absorbed. It was precisely because there was no input from the author that I loved it. Here are stone masons, newspaper delivery boys, professional athletes, flight attendants and night security watchmen sharing their innermost thoughts. Farmers, architects, and assembly line workers talking shop. CEOs, ad executives, and police officers sharing their existential fears. The book is pure access to the real feelings of American workers. To the human experience of work and life.
About twenty years later, we decided to make a documentary- Farming- as an homage to Working. I re-read the book to understand better how it had been crafted. Then we got to work filming and editing together documentary interviews, stitched together with verité footage.
Wayne Riley is the kind of person a community is built around. Hurricane Helene had hit the region a few days before I arrived, and throughout our time together, he coordinated the delivery of food and supplies to farmers hit hardest by the storm. My friend Mike, who introduced us, told me Wayne’s the kind of guy who will stop whatever he is doing to help a friend. Often to the point where he has a hard time getting his own work done.
Wayne grew up in London, Kentucky and moved back to save the church he grew up attending, converting it into a museum: the Laurel County African American Heritage Center. When he realized the museum was not profitable, he started a non-profit farm to feed his community and win grants and donations to keep the memory and history of his beloved church going.
A part of the way into our interview, I asked Wayne about who his heroes are. His answer gave me chills because he was articulating the core reason why we are making the film Farming. He talked about the importance of lifting up the people who are the most underappreciated, who do the work the rest of us depend on. He talked about finding inspiration in the people who live in our town, the people we interact with each day.
Enjoy getting to know Wayne.
best thoughts,
Graham
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p.p.s. A special thanks to Wayne for opening up his life to me for a couple days. Thanks also to Mike, Nomi and Andy from NCAT, for connecting us with Wayne and commissioning this portrait.
p.p.p.s. Thanks mom for an awesome 25th birthday present and to Studs Terkel for writing a wonderful book.
Thank you for another intimate profile Graham as Studs Terkel did you listen and each Farmer shares their story, wisdom, laughter and sometimes pain. But always uplifting and down to earth!
i remember when community was made up of a myriad of souls contributing to every member around them. young people the shut in working class etc. no one was ever forgotten. and the efforts people made IN community to reach out and support others during difficult times was simply a feature of living among one another. community wasn’t a high rise over a coffee shop or yoga studio. thank you as always for these deeply real profiles if deeply real humans.