The pair, from vastly different backgrounds with an age difference of 71 years, soon became friends.

The project, assigned by photography program coordinator Rochelle Green, was simple. Document a resident with a photograph or two showing them when they were young, conduct a short interview, then write a short biography.

The first time they met, Price and Whitcome mostly sat and talked for several hours. Only about 15 minutes were devoted to photography.

They enjoy an easy banter.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Friends Evan Price, at left, and Dick Whitcome pose for a portrait in front of a wall covered with Whitcome’s photographs. The two were introduced during an Iowa Central Community College photography program project and hit it off.

Price calls him “Whitty.”

Whitcome took note of Price’s pants, a pair of fashionably torn tight jeans.

“I think I ought to put on your pants,” Whitcome joked.

“They come like that,” Price said.

“They come like that?” Whitcome replied, “Jeans are strange these days.”

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Dave Whitcome, at left, works on holding his camera in a chill manner as his friend Evan Price coaches him as they get ready to pose for a photo.

Whitcome is 96. He’s been retired from Celotex for 30 years.

“That’s my whole life,” said Price, who’s 25. “You started your retirement five years before I was born. Did you ever think you’d live this long?”

“No,” Whitcome replied. “Be active; you gotta have something to do.”

Whitcome served in the Navy Air Corps. He was a fighter pilot on an aircraft carrier. He went to college on the GI Bill and became an engineer.

He was born and raised in Fort Dodge.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Photography student Evan Price tries his best to be serious for a photo with his friend Dick Whitcome, at left.

Price was raised in Rockford, Illinois.

His parents moved there from Milwaukee.

“They moved there to get away from violence,” he said. “It was a crazy place.”

Price was a straight-A student. He was enrolled in the talented and gifted programs in elementary, middle and high school.

“I was the only kid from my neighborhood that got to do that,” he said. “They put the program in the most dangerous part of town.”

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Dick Whitcome, at left, and his friend Evan Price relax for a few minutes before posing for a portrait.

He walked a fine and dangerous line between two worlds.

“I sold a lot of drugs; it was a lifestyle,” he said. “It was something my older ups did. I was along. If I broke the rules, I did it in a smart way.”

For Price, it came down to calculation.

“I did the math,” he said. “If you’re working 40 hours a week at $28 an hour, you would never see a million in 40 years.”

Price left school in 11th grade.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Iowa Central Community College photography student Evan Price listens to his friend Dick Whitcome during a recent afternoon.

“I was 15 and about to have my first kid,” he said. “I’m going to figure out how I can graduate early from trade school.”

At 16, he went to trade school. The students lived in dorms.

“I was the youngest person in my dorm of 26 men,” Price said. “I became the youngest dorm leader. There I was at 16 telling people how to make their beds properly. I finished my high school diploma in one month.”

He discovered photography when he was working with a music group. He spent his $1,500 savings on a Nikon digital camera.

His first time wasn’t a charm.

“I figured out real quick I was not a pro,” he said.

Whitcome has been an avid photographer since his youth. His apartment walls are covered with his photographs, including several award-winning pictures.

“When I was in high school, I built my own enlarger out of a coffee can,” Whitcome said. “I liked photography.”

It might have violated regulations, but he had a camera in the Navy.

“You were not supposed to have a camera,” he said. “I snuck one aboard. It was a folding Kodak. I took pictures the whole time I was in the service.”

Whitcome has shown Price the album of his Navy pictures.

“He’s got some incredible pictures,” Price said.

A pair of photos in the album gets Whitcome in the mood to tell a story. The pictures in question show a topless woman in a Hawaiian skirt.

“Those were friendly natives,” Whitcome laughed. “We would send a boat to get fresh fruit. There were two women — only they didn’t have any tops. I came back and told everyone you ought to see what we saw.”

After that, there was no shortage of volunteers to make the boat trip. One enterprising sailor took a camera along and made some extra cash selling prints.

Then the captain got wind of the whole thing.

“He made us take them some T-shirts to wear,” Whitcome said. “The next time we came back, they had cut two holes out of the shirts.”

Their conversations frequently go like that.

“We try to find out everything about each other,” Whitcome said.

Price found himself heading to Fort Dodge after his brother had been living here for almost a decade.

“I was curious about why he never came back to visit,” Price said.

He stayed at a friend’s house.

“I lived in a city of sirens,” he said. “Every day you have to worry about losing a friend. Here, I literally woke up to chickens clucking. I thought I’d give the quiet life a chance.”

Price initially enrolled in the Human Services program at Iowa Central.

“I wanted to run my own boys home,” he said. “Teach troubled young men to be solid. My higher ups didn’t tell us how to make legal extra money. I wanted them to heal on the inside too.”

A photography course was sort of an add-on to fill out his schedule.

Turns out, he’s got a talent for it.

“When I was doing my first project, Rochelle pulled me aside and said, ‘Dude, you’ve never done this before?”

“I told her I hadn’t,” he said.

Her response: “You’re made for this.”

It took him a couple of projects to get the hint.

She meant it.

“She pulled me aside and said … ‘I can teach people, but I can’t teach them how to have the eye … you have that eye.”

Price helped work on the photographs that would later be painted on the silo mural.

That’s actually where he met Whitcome who was one of the models for the project.

Besides his studies, Price has also worked with a number of local organizations, including Athletics for Education and Success, the Fort Dodge Fine Arts Association, Friendship Haven, Hawkeye Community Theatre and the Lizard Creek Blues Society. He also has his own photography business, Evan Price Artistry.

At the end of a visit, the two friends were getting ready to say goodbye, but before they left, there was a little more conversation.

“He’s got an interesting background,” Whitcome said.

“Oh man,” Price replied, “I’ve got so many friends dead or in jail that will never get out.”

“It’s strange how things happen when you get caught up in something,” Whitcome said.

Sometimes, that’s a friendship where you would last expect to find one and, somewhere down the road, Price running his own group home.