To be aired March 8, 2008 on WTSU-FM, 3 p.m.
Have you ever noticed that most models of DNA consist of intertwined strands of what look like strips of celluloid film? Think about it.
For many years, I've pictured my cells' DNA that way. Moreover, I've conceptualized individual sequences of that DNA as pictures of my earliest days as a fetus in my mother's womb. You see, she and my father met at Montgomery's Empire Theatre in the late '30s, where they both worked. That's the theatre across Montgomery Street from the then-named Paramount, in front of which Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955, by which time my parents had moved on to other jobs. The Empire was torn down many years later to make way for the Rosa Parks Library & Museum of Troy University across from the now-named Davis Theatre. When Mrs. Parks was arrested, a Western movie was playing at the Empire, directed by and starring an Academy Award-winning actor. Tell me his name and the title of his film and I'll send you a prize from my movie library (deadline March 15). You can see both on the marquee in photos taken at the time.
But back to my personal story... After my parents married, I found myself a viable fetus in October of 1941 while my mother was still working at the Empire. That why in lectures about motion pictures I always tell audiences I first went to the movies in utero! That's also why I've long thought that at least a few of my DNA sequences fore-ordained my life-long love affair with the movies, which I've been seeing on the silver screen and now also on video devices for more than six decades. That's probably also why the Empire Theatre is still my favorite of the seven walk-in and three drive-in theatres I frequented growing up in the Capital City. Besides, it was the only one whose screen was wider than the theatre was deep, lending the appearance of wide-screen viewing even before the first CinemaScope feature film unspooled at the Paramount in 1953: the five-times Oscar-nominated religious epic, "The Robe." It was in April 1963 at the Empire that I saw the motion picture that I recently told Al Benn of The Montgomery Advertiser for a pre-Oscar article he was writing was my all-time favorite feature film. The film? "To Kill A Mockingbird," nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three, including one for my favorite actor, Gregory Peck, with whom I corresponded the last 20 years or so of his life. All of this came back to me yesterday morning at 11 a.m. as my wife Lenore, my sister Glenda Yelverton, Joanne Jacobs, who produces my radio commentary for WTSU-FM, and I stood in front of the Parks Library and Museum for the formal installation of two engraved bricks in its sidewalk entrance, honoring Glenda's and my father and mother, the day before Glenda's birthday. The two bricks read together as follows: "Millie and Jake Vickrey ... met at the Empire Theatre." There wasn't enough room on the bricks even to add the words "here" or "At this place." As long as Mrs. Parks' arrest is memorialized on a nearby historic marker, the Empire connection will be made clear, I hope. Regardless, I know and making it is something I've wanted to do since our mother died 1100 days ago.
Perhaps, you, too, would like to have a brick engraved and embedded in the sidewalk in front of the Parks Library and Museum, say, to honor Mrs. Parks' dear friend, the late Mrs. Johnnie Carr, one of my heroines. If so, call Mrs. Julia Wilson, Troy University Montgomery, at 334-241-9502. A brick near the front door costs $100; one on the corner, $50. Whether your DNA has movie-related sequences ... or whether you have a personal connection with the old Empire Theatre or Mrs. Rosa Parks, I hope you'll visit her Library and Museum, an exhibit in which just won a national award. When you do, look at the bricks you'll have to walk on to get in. Some of them have stories to tell, if you know how to "read" them.
