Local photographer being honored by former school

The names still leave him in awe.

Walter Mondale. Clarence Page. LouAnne Johnson. John Camp. Steve Doig. Les Payne.

All except Mondale, the former vice president, are acclaimed authors and journalists.

Add Port Orchard’s Jim Bryant to the list. Bryant will join those — and others — to be inducted at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 14, into the Defense Information School Alumni Hall of Fame.

“When I first thought out about it, I thought it was a joke,” Bryant said. “It’s just crazy.”

Bryant, a former photo editor at the Independent who has been published in myriad national newspapers, including the New York Times and Washington Post, served from 1973 to 1983 in the Navy. He became an advanced information specialist in April 1980 and was an associate editor for “Campus,” which was the Navy’s magazine.

“I traveled throughout training commands in the United States and wrote stories about training,” Bryant said. “I even did a story on the Blue Angels training. Anything that involved Naval training throughout the stories the United States, I did.”

He said that work was beneficial to recruiters because they were able to show new enlistees career possibilities.

“You have a lot of people who get into the Navy who don’t know what they’re going to do,” Bryant said.

But he was not only selected based on his work in the service.

“Our entire Public Affairs and Visual Information Community takes pride in the fact that you and your fellow alumni have built on your military training to serve our country in a myriad of ways,” U.S. Army Colonel Jeremy M. Martin stated in a letter to Bryant.

Bryant, 60, who now works as a freelance photographer, planned to leave Monday for a week in Fort Meade, Md. While there, Bryant will work to mentor aspiring journalists, editing work and taking photos to benefit a non-profit.

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