In a previous post, I wrote about my father-in-law’s high profile retirement after 42 years of service to the city of Los Angeles. His name is Ron Deaton. Next week, there will be a special session with the city council to honor Ron and bid him farewell as he launches into retirement.
I thought it might be fun to create a public blog to celebrate Ron’s illustrious career. The site contains Ron’s official bio and links to several press articles. It pulls in photos from a Flickr Group dedicated to him. People can share photos of Ron from their Flickr account with the group, and the blog will auto-magically publish the photos inside the blog’s template (doesn’t seem to work on the antiquated IE6 browser though). The best feature is the message page that allows visitors to use a simple form to share a favorite memory or story from their years with Ron or to simply wish him well in his retirement. The form submits these public entries to a que where I may approve them for publication to the site. Thus, the site is designed to dynamically display the most recent messages posted by Ron’s friends. I hope the word gets out about the site and people actually use it. If not, it will still be a good place to chronicle Ron’s career as I gather more content.
Creating the graphic for the masthead with Ron standing between LA’s City Hall and Department of Water and Power was a challenge. To my critical eye, it is still not quite right. I started with painting below as inspiration. Dara (my wife and Ron’s daughter) painted LA’s City Hall for Ron several years ago. Ron was instrumental in the conservation effort to restore LA’s most recognizable building. Inspired by the various press on her Dad, Dara incorporated some of his accomplishments, pet projects, and villainous names into her art. I decided to take her city hall and try to match it with a photograph of the DWP building lit up at night. Although I tried to make the DWP building look more painted rather than a photo, the two never quite come together in the background the way I wanted. But it was fun to collaborate with Dara in this odd manner.
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