The courage to write from the heart
Local woman publishes book of essays.
‘In high school, I had a creative writing teacher who encouraged me constantly. And I just kept writing.’ Teri Rizvi Author
On this Thanksgiving Day, people will gather to share food, friendship and fun. Most will take time off from work and take moments to celebrate their connections with those they love.
For Teri Rizvi of Butler Township, these connections have always felt magical. A graduate of Ohio University and a trained journalist, Rizvi’s life has given her the gift of many personal connections from across the globe.
“Every year, the OU dean would select a half dozen students to go overseas for an internship,” Rizvi said. “I ended up going to work for McGraw Hill in London.”
And it was there that Rizvi would meet her future husband, Zafar, a native of Pakistan. Rizvi said he was intrigued that she was a journalist, and they grew closer as they got to know one another.
“He had no plans to stay in London,” Rizvi said of her husband. “He always thought he’d go home to Pakistan.”
But after Rizvi returned home to Ohio, Zafar kept calling and writing to her, and, she admits, her parents thought she was a bit crazy. After graduation, Rizvi returned to London for an additional nine months, working for ABC News as a general assignment editor during the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
“We decided to get married,” Rizvi said. “But I didn’t think I was going to be moving to Pakistan.”
Eventually, the couple decided to live in
the U.S., they settled in Ohio and raised two sons together. And though the couple has always lived with two cultures and two religions, they have managed well.
Rizvi eventually did go to Pakistan, where she saw firsthand the major cultural differences. Throughout it all, she wrote — about her experiences, about her family and friends and about everyday life.
“In high school, I had a creative writing teacher who encouraged me constantly,” Rizvi said. “And I just kept writing.”
She wrote as a stringer for the Dayton Daily News and eventually snagged a job with the University of Dayton as the director of media relations. Over the years, she worked for three different UD presidents and founded the annual Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in 2000, which was created to encourage writers to stop procrastinating and just write.
“Bill Bombeck (Erma’s husband) was going to be donating Erma’s papers to UD after she passed away,” Rizvi said. “We decided to have the first workshop as a way to publicize this gift.”
The first workshop did get national press coverage, and it’s been wildly popular ever since, with people attending from across the nation. The event sells out within hours every year.
Then the whole world changed when the COVID-19 pandemic became a worldwide health crisis the likes most people alive today had never experienced.
Rizvi’s husband contracted the virus and fought off a mild case while she worried about their futures. What would happen to their work lives, and what would all the political and racial unrest do to this country?
“As the months of pandemic life stretched toward a year, I began to think about
ghost of Egon materializes to help his grandchildren and his original fellow Ghostbusters — played by Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times before the film’s release, Reitman was hesitant to say too much about Egon’s appearance in the film’s climactic moments. “People have held on to that secret, and it’s a real gift to us that people feel protective of it in the same way that we do,” he said.
For Aykroyd, shooting the film’s final sequence, knowing the character of Egon would be standing beside him once again via CGI, was very emotional.
“There would be no ‘Ghostbusters’ without Harold, without his brilliant writing and his frame of reference,” Aykroyd said. “It was deeply moving to play the scene because I loved him and I miss him. He was just so funny and intelligent. Harold was a genius from Second City (the comedy troupe) all the way through his career. “
Speaking about the future of the “Ghostbusters” franchise, Reitman said there are already ideas cooking for a potential afterlife to “Afterlife.”
“I love these characters, and I love this world,” he said. “I want to see other filmmakers I love making ‘Ghostbusters’ movies. Every culture in the world has a unique relationship with the supernatural, and there’s opportunity for all those stories. ‘Ghostbusters’ has for many years sat dormant at Columbia, and we wanted to make a movie that set a foundation for all kinds of films. And I’d love to be involved in that.”