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My dad and I at the Apple store circa 2007, about to buy my first MacBook (this is a Photo Booth Photo).

(Author's note: This was originally posted on my Drake University-sponsored blog on Oct. 5, 2011).
His name was Frank Valentini, and 60 years before he’d flown planes across China and back at the height of World War II.

Now he was in a little house in Chisholm, Minnesota, sitting across from a wide-eyed 17-year-old journalist conducting the first interview of his life.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I couldn’t screw it up. I recorded the interview, popping open my computer and firing up a popular little program called Garageband.

I took pages of notes during the two-hour interview, most of which made no sense afterwards. But that was okay, because I had it all there on the computer, ready to be taken and transcribed. I used that software six more times that summer, and I wrote about them.

I spent most of the summer after my freshman year of college coated in blood and screaming my head off. My close friends and I had decided to film a full-length horror movie involving trucks, kayaks and a bloody set of pruning shears. We wrote the script (the story involved a dysfunctional film crew who went into the Northern Minnesota woods to film a horror movie, only to begin dying themselves), acted the parts and edited the entire thing in a little program called iMovie. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life — I even wrote a column in the local newspaper about it.

Another summer, I decided to run a marathon along the North Shore of Duluth. I charged up my iPod — a white little beauty that featured full video-playback capabilities — and ran for 5 hours. It was so great — I wrote about it.

And tonight, it occurs to me that for the last 10 years or so, whenever I’ve experienced something that was so important to me that I had to write about it — I had some sort of device named after a piece of fruit with me. I couldn’t not write tonight, not when the caretaker of that strange little company passed away.

I never met Steve Jobs, but I did email him once, because my roommate convinced me to. His email was easy to find on his website. I told him about an idea I had about an iPad that slipped in and out of a console-type device, so that it dual functioned as a tablet and personal laptop. That was earlier this year, so I have yet to see if my idea becomes reality.

I don’t think I’m going to be very coherent tonight. There’s a lot of memories bouncing around. Tapping out papers about Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade on an iMac. Bono singing ‘Vertigo’ against colored silhouettes with white buds lacing up along their necks. Eagerly downloading season 2 episodes of LOST and watching them on a 2-inch screen. Winning an iPod shuffle and having it be one of the most exciting moments of my life. Falling through an icy pond and using my iPhone for a year afterwards. My mom discontinuing expensive wireless internet because the data plan on my dad’s iPad was $70 cheaper.

My parents began texting me. Best one: “Your father and I got netflix. So and so go to White Castle. Awful.”

And I couldn’t even begin to say what Steve Jobs did for my future. Journalism hasn’t quite figured that one out yet. But I’m starting to believe that the opportunities made existent by the technology ushered in by Apple will become the basis of my future career. And that’s intense, no matter how you look at it.

In a way, he kind of reminds me of Charles Schultz, the Peanuts cartoonist who worked tirelessly for 50 years and ran the last comic strip the day before he died. I don’t know where it is these strange pioneers who cause so much job come from.

I find myself thinking of those interviews again, the ones with the veterans. Their smiles. Their stories. And I think about the stories I’ve recorded with these keys, all the words I’ve saved with these programs.

What’s funny about Apple is that I won’t remember the broad, sweeping changes they made to the world while I was growing up. I’m going to remember staying up all night editing video with friends. It’s those little things I’ll remember. RIP, Mr. Jobs.

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