I’d like to say it was out of my sense of social duty that I began donating blood stem cells some years ago, and later became part of the bone marrow registry. But instead my life had to be personally touched by a problem before I would take any action to help solve it. Perhaps that’s human nature.
Thankfully, my wife is now a cancer survivor. It’s been nearly seven years since she had a life-saving autologous bone marrow transplant. I’ve never discussed it publicly before, but the passing of Wieden+Kennedy (W+K) creative director Steve Sandoz has prompted me to finally do so (see separate story, p. 7).
I think of what my wife has done these past seven years—how she has positively affected the lives of our family, the community and her patients. (She is a therapist who works with people who have suffered strokes and spinal cord injuries.) Similarly, Sandoz, who underwent a bone marrow transplant 10 years ago to treat leukemia, profoundly and positively impacted all those around him.
"There are two levels of contributions," related Dan Wieden, W+K president/chief creative officer. "One pertains to the actual process of producing advertising, and he [Sandoz] was enormously important there."
But what Sandoz meant to his colleagues went far beyond work. "He’s been battling this damn illness for over 10 years," said Wieden of Sandoz. "He’s one of the longest survivors of this form of cancer in the U.S. Just having him around, as a presence, was powerful. He was so ready and willing to talk to anybody—at the deepest level you wanted to go—about the issues he was dealing with."
I wasn’t aware of Sandoz’s illness and special form of inspiration until after his death. Ironically, I had talked to him over the phone last October to discuss influences on his career. Part of that entailed discussing his industry mentor for our Nov. 3 special 40th anniversary edition. That mentor was director Joe Sedelmaier of Sedelmaier Film Productions, Chicago (SHOOT Anniversary Supplement, 11/3/00, p. 34). While a creative at Livingston & Company, Seattle, in the mid-1980s, Sandoz worked with helmer Sedelmaier on now-classic comedy spots for Alaska Airlines.
Sandoz also directed, via his own Portland, Ore.-based boutique: Artsy Fartsy Productions. Since ’91, he had annually written and directed the Portland International Film Festival’s promotional trailers. Another recent side project, a TV spot for Portland AM radio station 860 KPAM, made "The Best Work You May Never See" gallery (SHOOT, 10/20/00, p. 13). Sandoz wrote, directed and edited the clever campaign promoting KPAM as an intelligent alternative to standard mindless radio fare. He worked in conjunction with Food Chain Films, Portland, on the commercials. Earlier Sandoz and Food Chain collaborated on a short film called God’s Clowns, a mockumentary which was screened at the ’99 Northwest Film Festival, Telluride’s IndieFest and the Florida Film Festival.
Donations in the name of Sandoz can be made to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. And in the name of all of us, the gift of life can be made in the form of stem cell donations and registering to become a possible bone marrow donor.
