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Back to "First Cliff Hickman Residence"
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One day as my house was nearing completion a man appeared at my door and introduced himself as Ken Bates, a student at the nearby Brooks Institute of Photography. He asked to photograph my house for his class projects, and this view is my favorite of many fine shots taken during the following months. Upon graduation from Brooks he submitted his photographs to the LA Times HOME Magazine for publication, and this view was enlarged to fill two full pages in the article. Ken eventually went on to photograph for Gourmet Magazine where his wife Caroline authors a column reviewing California restaurants. They have since collaborated on many articles for Gourmet .
For years after the publication of this article I would meet people who remembered seeing it. One man in Michigan said he had the picture enlarged as a mural on his wall. Another man, now a friend of many years, dug the magazine out of his attic to prove to me he had saved it, saying he never quite believed one person had built the entire house alone.
My father financed the construction of this home and loved to visit me there. He was a professor at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where he had written a successful Zoology textbook; he didn't complain about the building costs, saying, "California has been good to me." My Mom wrote the equally successful lab manual for the text, and my brother, also a zoologist, continued the revisions after Dad's death. Incredibly, the book is now in its thirteenth edition with McGraw-Hill (Integrated Principles of Zoology).