For the past three months I've been working on one of the best stories of my career. It appears in Sports Illustrated today and is called "Straight Outta Compton." It's about a boy, his parents, and their quest to make it out of one of the most gang-infested areas in America.

To report this story, I worked with an amazing team — Armen Keteyian, chief of the investigative unit at CBS Evening News; Pulitzer Prize-winning, freelance photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice; and my exceptional editor B.J. Schecter.

Compton is the birthplace of the Bloods, the Crips and gangsta rap. I spent a lot of time there on this project. Along with Keteyian, I got a crash course on gangs and the streets they occupy, courtesy of Sgt. Brandon Dean, the head of the gang unit for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept. Dean, 34, drove us all over town, showing us where gangs reside, how they mark territory, and the wreckage they leave behind.

Deseret News
Published: November 27, 2011
By: Jeff Benedict

If I could be someone else for five minutes, I'd be Van Morrison so I could sing "Someone Like You" to my wife.

I've been all around the world

Marching to the beat of a different drum

But just lately I have realized

The best is yet to come

Someone like you makes it all worthwhile

Someone like you keeps me satisfied

Someone exactly like you.

Remember Ray Brown?

He's the 86-year-old bookkeeper I wrote about back in July after he was diagnosed with cancer and ended up in a nursing home. Ray's story generated more reader mail than any column I've written.

"Even though I never met the man," a farmer from Preston, Conn., wrote, "people like Ray Brown make life worth living by the way they handle their own life."

It was easy to love a man like Ray. I say "was" because at 11 a.m. on Oct. 11, Ray was buried near his mother and stepfather at the Colonel Ledyard Cemetery in southeastern Connecticut. He died Oct. 5.

On a cold, gray day in early 1962, 41-year-old artist Ed Vebell put down his paintbrush and stepped back from the easel in his seaside studio in Westport, Conn.

His half-finished illustration for the upcoming issue of Reader's Digest would have to wait. Vebell had been summoned to a meeting with two representatives from the LDS Church.

With the New York World's Fair due to open in 1964, the church was actively courting top artists to produce paintings, murals and sculptures for its Mormon Pavilion exhibit. Westport was the go-to place. Home to the Famous Artists School, the town attracted some of the best commercial artists in America. Vebell's friends — artists Harry Anderson and Alex Ross — lived nearby and were also being pursued to work on the Mormon Pavilion project.