Meet Gerry & Janet Souter of Avril 1 Group in Arlington Heights

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gerry & Janet Souter.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Gerry & Janet. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Janet and I met as students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she in advertising and I in photography. We became engaged in our senior year and on graduation, I left Chicago for Phoenix, Arizona to work for an AD agency. It was circling the drain when I arrived so I went to work for the Arizona State Guard and Detective Agency (based on six years as an expert marksman in competition shooting). That night job allowed me to take a day job as an elementary school art teacher. I went back to Chicago, married Janet and brought her out west. Not long after, a job opened up in Yuma, Arizona for a photographer-editor in a weekly newspaper.

Yuma was near two military bases and I was able to shoot center spread stories: flying with the Blue Angels and the Golden Knights parachute team as well as agriculture-themed stunts such as strapped to the wing of a bi-plane crop duster. Soon, I also had a weekly radio gig. I sent a collection of my spreads to Associated Press, UPI and the Chicago Tribune. The Trib hired me back to Chicago where I worked for two years as a news shooter.

We took the plunge into free-lance photography and ad agency work for Janet while we put our two daughters in pre-kindergarten care. I documented the Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity (poverty program) and then began getting travel assignments in the U.S. Those assignments led to work for Motorola in the Arctic, Africa, Germany and England. I covered two Olympic Games, the Pan Am Games and an Indy 500 race.

All that work landed me assignments with the Society for Visual Education, a film strip production house and a five month gig documenting the British Isles and the Irish conflict in bloody Belfast. Motorola hired me full time shooting for their marketing services. and shifting to video production. My film, “Emergency! Emergency!” won an International Gold Camera Award. After 8 years, my sample reels and word-of-mouth earned me a job at Motivation Media in Glenview, IL as a video producer, director and writer. I stayed there 11 years winning 14 awards for my work with corporate clients traveling to Taiwan, Las Vegas, and working with Hollywood crews in Los Angeles. Janet became an exhibiting sculptor, worked in the travel industry and held our family together.

By 1995, I left Motivation Media to set up our own shop, Avril1 Group, Inc. and we began our writing careers, which involved more research travel for the 56 books for 23 different publishers listed in our Web site.

Our three kids all have successful careers in the arts and communications fields and we’ve lived in the same house for 44 years. During those years, Janet and I traveled extensively to Europe, Paris, Egypt, Mexico, Sweden, and the Dominican Republic.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
No road this long is all success. Our timing was just lucky in some cases. When I gave Janet the engagement ring, she was so startled, she dropped it and it rolled into Lake Michigan. Fortunately, it landed on a wood piling and I reached down and retrieved it. My teacher’s salary in Phoenix was $5,000 a year. I took a cut to $4500 moving to Yuma. When the Chicago Tribune hired me back home, I learned the weekly paper was going to cut me loose, because the weekly paper was no longer a loss-leader tax dodge for the Yuma daily

I was ready to go to Viet Nam for the Trib when the military cut the press quota.

I got canned from the Tribune on Dec. 11, 1965 because I insisted on shooting with 35mm Leica cameras (and winning weekly awards) while everyone else shot with 4×5 and 2 1/4 film cameras.

We were living pretty much hand to mouth in Chicago’s Old Town when I overheard a conversation that the Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity was looking for a new photographer. I pulled a portfolio together that day and got the job.

My writing started with freelance jobs for the Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Magazine where I had two great editors who let me see my blue-penciled copy before it went to press–a crash course in feature writing.

In the Arctic oil fields in winter, the temp dropped to -40 degrees (plus wind chill). Shooting in West Africa, the temp rose to 120 degrees with 80% humidity.

Working in Belfast, Ireland during the “Troubles,” the downtown was a war zone with snipers and buildings turned to rubble by package bombs. When I left Belfast, I was arrested in the south of Ireland by the paratroopers as a suspected terrorist. They wanted to confiscate the film I’d shot that afternoon. What they got was a blank roll and my pix went into my sock. I got the hell out of Ireland ASAP.

Janet worked 8 years in the travel industry, enabling our travels, but for her it was a grind.

I missed a lot of the kids’ growing up, but tried to make up for it like taking the family to Hawaii before I left for the five month British Isles gig. I used them often as models when they were little. Jan kept a map to show them where Daddy was that month.

Motivation Media decided to discontinue their video production at the same time we decided to start our own business. Like I said, our timing often saved us.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Avril1 Group, Inc. is our S-corp business and we write books both as either work-for-hire, or on an advance/royalty basis. We also give lectures based on our history and fine arts books.

We also promote a set of lectures to organizations based on a few of our books.

I teach 12 classes each year at South Middle School in Arlington Heights based on our book, “The Vietnam War Experience” which is used as supplementary reading in the history class.

We appear at book signings, book fairs and have promoted our work on national television, local television, local radio, National Public Radio, streaming blogs, writers’ panels, smoke signals and Aldis Lamp

We review books on request

What sets us apart from other writing teams? Our 56 traditionally published non-fiction titles for 23 main stream publishers from Random House and Sterling to Sirocco (France) and Carlton Publishing Group (London) We have about 25 pages of Google covering our bibliography.

What were you like growing up?
I was an overweight child with glasses and few skills with Lake Michigan just outside my back door on Chicago’s South Side. I hung with a small gang of similar misfits and we lived in our heads, replaying movies we saw every weekend. In our lakeside neighborhood, we were the wildebeests and the tough steel mill gangs were the lions.

My salvation was the Boy Scouts at age 11. They offered a Marksmanship Merit Badge. I found I could hit the bullseye virtually every time and moved up with the help of ROTC (where I rose to the rank of Captain and commanded a company of 60 cadets) and the American Legion Rifle team to become a competitive team marksman with rifle, pistol, or shotgun.

I found the skills needed for precise target shooting transferred to fine art photography.

To earn money for school, I joined the U.S. Merchant Marine, sailing on the ore boats up and down the Great Lakes. Mostly, I learned how to cuss, drink and chew tobacco while chipping paint and greasing shafts.

Contact Info:

• Address: Gerry & Janet Souter
  Avril 1 Group, Inc.
  905 E. Frederick St.,
  Arlington Heights, IL 60004
• Website: http://www.avril1.com
• Phone: 847-398-1087
• Email: avril1grp2@comcast.net

Image Credit:
Janet Souter

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