Local author forges winding path through life
Shirley Weyrauch of Orrville has written a new book, “Following the Bread Crumbs,” a combination of her photos and devotionals.
Lifelong Orrville resident Shirley Weyrauch grew up on Kohler Road just outside Orrville’s city limits, a road named for her family, the Kohlers.
It was a road that started her on a path to discover the unexpected and follow the bread crumbs along the trail. In her book titled “Following the Bread Crumbs,” Weyrauch, through photos and devotionals, talks about the circuitous road life often takes while also musing about how the unexpected is often what people need in life. Her life mirrors the theme of the book.
Weyrauch married her husband John after the two met in pharmacy school at Ohio Northern University. The couple eventually moved to Ohio and started a family. Weyrauch began her professional life as a pharmacist, but the first detour in life was when she was offered a job in a very different field.
“I had been working as a pharmacist and had little kids and was trying to balance all of those things, and as it happened, there was an opening at my church, Christ United Church of Christ in Orrville, for the director of Christian education position,” she said. “I went ahead and interviewed and got the position and ended up spending the next almost 23 years there.”
Like her position as director of Christian education, Weyrauch came upon her interest in photography and writing by following a series of bread crumbs in her path. Her passion for photography began when she was in college and took a photography class as an elective. But that interest was sparked again when she came upon a bread crumb from an unexpected source many years later.
“Working at my church, I came across training videos that we used at the church made by National Geographic photographer DeWitt Jones. Jones also had a weekly email he sent out that I signed up for called Celebrate What’s Right With the World, and each contained a picture and a quote,” she said. “One email had an advertisement about a workshop he was doing in Hawaii. I dismissed it but then got the email a second and third time. By the third time, I talked to my husband John and expressed that I really wanted to go.
“John said, ‘Go,’ so I went. It was a wonderful collegial atmosphere that led to several trips back to the same workshop in Hawaii and which rekindled my interest in photography.”
In 2017 Weyrauch’s interests came together as she ended up publishing a book of devotionals paired with photography. For years Weyrauch, in her role as DCE at her church, had written weekly devotionals. She started small, but interest in her devotionals began to grow as more and more congregants at the church began reading them.
In 2017 she had attended another workshop in photography, this time in Italy, and after she had retired from her role as DCE, the other women at the workshop encouraged her to publish a book and even provided the idea for the title: “Following the Bread Crumbs.” The book is an interweaving of scripture, reflection and photography.
Weyrauch, who is continuing to follow the bread crumbs, is currently contemplating another book, perhaps this time based on her travels that have taken her as far as Antarctica and most recently to a cruise on the Panama Canal.
“Following the Bread Crumbs” can be purchased on Amazon.com.