I don't normally like to get involved in these sort of things, but I know how it feels to have falsehoods spread about yourself and hate to see it done to others. Often I know the story behind things and for that reason would like to set the record straight.
Many of you know Wayne Fowlkes who operates out of Virginia Beach, VA. In a long ago issue of RodMaker (volume 9 #1) I published a photo that Wayne submitted of some rods he had wrapped. The photo was taken by David Lagrange of Gudebrod at Rainbow Studios near Wayne's shop. The photo contained 6 rods. Two of them had completed wraps but had not been finished with epoxy (4th and 6th from left).
A rod builder (banned here previously for repeated use of very obscene language - which somehow makes me a bad guy) has recently publicly claimed that the 4th rod is his, and that Wayne copied and pasted it into and amongst his other rods in the photo. Not to be disrespectful to Wayne, but I doubt he'd know how to use Photoshop even if he had that program or similar on his computer. Wayne is, let's say, "old school" and not exactly up to speed with computer photo editing programs. The crux of the matter is that Wayne's integrity was called into question, unfairly.
The magazine did not credit Wayne with the patterns in those wraps - the Photo Gallery only credits who did the work, not where or who originated it. Wayne did not take credit for any of the patterns, although I'm sure some in the photo are indeed his. Wayne once copied an intricate guide wrap I came up with, but didn't take credit for the design. He doesn't need to - Wayne goes back a long, long way and has many original wrap patterns to his credit. Wayne isn't the kind of guy that would need to take credit for somebody else's pattern. His body of work speaks for itself and many others have wrapped his patterns, also without taking credit for the patterns themselves. In short, it was the work and the rods in the photo that were credited to Wayne. Nothing else.
Not a single one of the guys who jumped on this false bandwagon bothered to call Wayne and talk to him. They all owe him an apology. I've never understood why people can't pick up the phone and ask the guy on the other end what his side of the story is. Any time you form an opinion based on just one side of a story you're apt to make a fool of yourself.
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