They fed me this line of bull about how it was all done in good taste and that’s the way the fashion industry works and the pictures were beautiful and I bought the whole package like the fool I am. The pictures from that shoot are on Ali’s first comp card and the rest of them went in her book. The next day Ali was back in school.

She booked some commercial jobs in March and went up for a casting for an Armani runway show in April. She booked that job and we went up for the show in May. Ali always loved the runway part of the business and she was hooked on the idea of modeling after that show. They did a big write up in the local paper and it was on the front page. None of her classmates had really believed all her talk about signing with the Ford agency till they saw the article. Then she was everybody’s instant friend.

We spent two weeks in Chicago after school was out that summer going on castings, and doing some commercial work. I was always in the neighborhood or close by while she did her castings and jobs. I had learned my lesson the first time.  We spent several more weeks in Chicago in August and she shot a editorial for Spanish Marie Claire. When the photographer sent some pictures from the shoot to the agency, they called us in to talk about Ali going to Paris. They talked to Ali and I a long time about how important it was for her to go and that she would be able to have what she wanted by the time we returned to the States.