Ansley Haman - Summer 2005

“War, according to Ansley Haman” should have been the title for my first set of stories, which I wrote in second grade with pencil on wide-ruled paper.

I stapled together my accounts of the Gulf War, the Revolutionary War and World War II and gave them to my parents. I based my stories on information I collected from children’s encyclopedias and excerpts my dad had read to me from the Chattanooga Times.

A decade later, I found myself at the University of Tennessee pursuing degrees in journalism and history. My studies took me to Great Britain in fall 2002 to examine subjects from globalization to British media ethics. I later participated in UT’s Normandy Scholars Program, which took me to France for the 60th Anniversary of D-Day.

My real journalism education came outside the classroom. I worked my way from staff writer to government editor, news editor and managing editor of UT’s student newspaper, The Daily Beacon. Those experiences led to six months at the Knoxville News Sentinel, where I reported for Metro, Features, Business and Travel.

A passion for history and journalism that began in my early years led me to Washington and will carry me in 2006 to Cape Town, South Africa, to study visual history as part of a Rotary Scholarship.

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