A day in the life of the Warriors

Collins Publishers of San Francisco, best known for their pictorial series “A Day in the Life of (fill in the blank),’’ sent free-lance photographer Doug Menuez and his assistant Jeff Braverman to Lewiston Saturday.

The camera-clicking duo was in search of “ordinary people doing extraordinary things,’’ according to Collins Publishers’ assignment editor Gene Sunnen.

“We are shooting for a (pictorial) book we’re going to call Baseball in America,’’ Sunnen said by phone from his San Francisco office. “We plan to publish the book sometime in the spring of 1991, and it will contain at least 150 pictures.’’

Menuez, who owns his own photography shop at Sausalito just north of San Francisco, managed to work Lewiston into a hectic schedule that has seen him and Braverman fly to Los Angeles Thursday and to Chicago Friday before heading for northern Idaho.

Today, Menuez, 32, is back home in the Bay Area, but he’s already making plans to shoot “ordinary people doing extraordinary things’’ in the country of Italy in April.

Menuez, who is also on call for Time, Newsweek and U.S. Today, once shot pictures in 17 countries in 17 days, and he and his three cameras have taken him around the world three times.

Sunnen said one of the Lewis-Clark State baseball team’s fund-raising ventures caught his eye the chopping of firewood by the players and their selling it to people in the Lewiston-Clarkston valley.

“Not only has (LCSC coach) Ed Cheff’s program been successful with all those national championships, but raising money by chopping and selling firewood just sweetens the picture,’’ Sunnen said by phone. “I can see some very unusual photographic images coming out of this.’’

So could Menuez, who spent most of Saturday taking pictures of LCSC players chopping wood at the Clarkston-based Bennett Lumber Company.

“This was totally different watching these ball players chop wood, and it was refreshing to see the kind of community involvement going on here,’’ Menuez said. “I think the book has a chance to be successful. It’s going to be off-beat and something that’s not covered by the general media.’’

Braverman, who is kept busy in assisting Menuez, said the two had shot 14 reels of film (with 36 frames each) and that by day’s end they could use as many as 25 rolls.

Menuez didn’t just concentrate on Cheff or LCSC’s wood-chopping abilities. He shot just about anything that moved, and that included Dwight Church, who just stepped down this year after coaching Lewiston High baseball teams for the past 30 years. He remains, however, as coach of the Lewis-Clark Twins’ American Legion team.

Church was on hand at LCSC’s indoor batting and pitching cages to watch Lewiston High’s new coach Bill Clauser direct the Bengal players. Menuez used at least two rolls just focusing on those two and some of the LHS players.

Although it’s the first spring in three decades that Church won’t be directing the Bengals, he says he’s been as busy as ever.

“But I’ll still have a lot of time to watch a lot of baseball at Lewiston, LC and WSU,’’ said Church, aware that he was being photographed from several different angles.

Menuez said he fell in love with the valley even before his plane landed early Saturday morning.

“This is one of the best assignments in a long time,’’ he said. “This is so down to earth.’’

This story was published in the Feb. 25, 1990, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.