Terry Coleman lived in Gopalpur-on-Sea, on the Bay of Bengal in India. A member of the Peace Corps, Coleman did everything in this tiny village, from raising chickens to digging fishponds
Bonnie Henry: See India from man who lived it
Jun 30, 2004
Arizona Daily Star
by Bonnie Henry
It haunted his dreams. It haunted his life. When he was a young man, Terry Coleman lived in Gopalpur-on-Sea, on the Bay of Bengal in India.
A member of the Peace Corps, Coleman did everything in this tiny village, from raising chickens to digging fishponds.
Along the way, he fell in love with the sea and its people.
"Their sustenance came from the sea," he says. "They fished in the same kind of boats they had used for centuries."
Half a lifetime later, Coleman returned to Gopalpur-on-Sea to find almost nothing had changed and everything had changed.
Old friends were dead. Electricity and ice had arrived.
But the people still went down to the sea each day, setting out in boats made from local woods and coconut fibers.
This time, Coleman took hundreds of photos of the villagers - old, young, half-naked, fully garbed - people who were pleased to pose.
"I felt happy to be back with the people, to sweat in the heat, to see their vitality, to feel this juice of life," says Coleman, whose photographs go on display Thursday at the Tucson Jewish Community Center.
"I wanted to make a story, to capture these people in some way and bring them back to share with this community," says Coleman, 64.
It was 1966 when he came to Gopalpur-on-Sea - just another college grad with no idea of what he wanted to do with life.
Two months later, his fellow Peace Corps partner left. "I was totally alone. There was not another Westerner around."
His initial job was to bring modern poultry-raising methods to town. Never mind that he knew nothing about chickens.
He and a helper set out for Calcutta, where they picked up and transported back by train, and then rickshaw, 500 chicks.
Awaiting them were two newly built chicken houses.
"The chickens were very hardy," says Coleman. So were the thieves.
"It was a disaster," he concedes. Better were the freshwater ponds he dug for tilapia farming. "They're still there," says Coleman, who returned last October.
But first came a lifetime of experiences - some exotic, some prosaic.
After returning to the States in 1968, Coleman taught at an inner- city school in New Jersey.
Then he returned to Southeast Asia, this time to Vietnam, where he worked for two years with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
There, he helped to build crude shelters for refugees and assisted in flying food to the mountain tribes.
By 1971, he was back in the States. He taught reading to inmates at California's Soledad Prison. He taught history to high schoolers in Hilo, Hawaii.
He fell in love. He divorced. Twice. By the mid-'80s, he had a master's degree in counseling from the University of Arizona.
Next came counseling kids in the Tucson Unified School District - a job he retired from two years ago.
He married again and became a father. Twice.
Today, the Midtown home he shares with his wife, Ellen, and their two children is filled with his watercolors - many that began with a photograph.
"The camera frames things for light, color, composition," says Coleman, who studied at the New York Institute of Photography in the late '50s.
The camera also cannot deny what its owner loves to frame most. Says Coleman: "Gopalpur-on-Sea keeps calling me back."
Photo exhibit
* What: "Fulfilling a Dream, Photographs From India."
* When: Thursday through July 22.
* Where: Tucson Jewish Community Center, 3800 E. River Road.
* Reception: 1 to 4 p.m., July 11.
* Cost: Free.
* Bonnie Henry's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach her at 434-4074 or at bhenry@azstarnet.com, or write to 3295 W. Ina Road, Suite 125, Tucson, AZ 85741.
