In the gym

J.J. Wimmer took a set of photos and wrote an essay about Epperly's Elite Gymnastics. Here is a snippet; to read more and see more photos, visit The Notebook on sosalem.com:

"I spent May 4 through 12 at Epperly's Elite Gymnastics taking pictures of the kids. Epperly Elite is located at 638 Chapman Street, behind Little Caesar's on the truck route in Salem.

"I went into this project thinking that it would be a lot of fun to take pictures of the kids but what I didn't know was how much more I was going to take away from this besides the pictures. First I would like to start at the top, the owner Christie Epperly-Lawless. Christie is a very upbeat and caring woman and kids of all ages love her. Then we have the coaches. They are young, upbeat, and a very fun group to be around. Next would be the parents. I was received well by them and it is amazing to watch them watching their kids out on the floor trying new things.

"Finally, the kids. I watched all ages and different classes in a week. In all of these classes there was this one thing that I would see over and over again that let me know why these coaches and Christie love what they do. It was so simple but so pure of a feeling."