• inner theater's Lee Engler brought Broadway to Salent By Lois Firestone First of two parts S OON, THE THEATER- goers, gussied up in their floor-length gowns and dark business suits, will be dining at one or another of the eight round candlelit tables scattered around the second floor Red Room. Now, though, only the hostess, Susan Zeigler is there, making a final check. Downstairs, producer and director Lee Engler - founder of this Memorial Building Din- ner Theatre the year before, in 1972 - is satisfied that every- thing is done that has to be done for the night's opening of Leonard Gershe's "Butterflies are Free," the sixth production of the fledgling drama group. The auditorium, converted at other times into a basketball court for the town kids, glis- tened with fresh coats of yel- low paint on walls interspersed with newly-installed wooden panels. In the upstairs kitch- en, city parks and recreation manager Harvey Woods, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, is carving a ponderous slab of roast beef, the main offering of the three-course dinner to come. Nearby are rows of pink and green parfaits lined on trays for the evening's desserts. Dave Macry has perused the professionally-designed prog- rams and inspected the uni- forms of the waitresses and usherettes. The backstage fly gallery, lighting and sound sys- tems are in running order and Carl Scott is preparing to go in to the box office. Artist Michael Milligan has put the finishing touches on the paintings for the sets which are being shifted by the stage crew, Daniel Zeigler, Judith Turner, Scott Theil, Judith Stoffer and Jean Tharp. In a corner of a dressing room, Ruth Law is applying makeup to the cast, mother and son duo Dolores and John Vol- io, Jessica iv1archbanks and vet- eran actor and favorite of the local crowd Roger Gonda. That night, Feb. 11, 1973, was a turning point for Engler - he had reached his goal of bring- ing the Memorial Building back to the theater it once was when it was a thriving town center. From a nucleus of four or five · players, he had developed try- outs and casting which attracted newcomers from throughout the area. His now- realized hope had been to offer a springboard to acting hope- fuls who needed training and wanted to develop skills to enter the professional theater: he'd done this by casting ama- teurs with professionals in the- ater classics and Broadway hits. Audiences liked the intimate small theater; ushers noticed that first-timers often slipped away to the box office before the curtain rose on the second act to make :reservations for the next show. A town theater had been Harvey Woods' idea. High school plays had been sus- pended and there was no outlet for dramatics in the area. In June 1971, Harvey asked Lee to organize a drama program hosted by the Memorial Build- ing and managed by a board of directors. From the beginning, though, squabbling within the board dashed hopes for suc- cess. Harvey, irritated that his curtain rose in 1 Pausing for the camera after the dinner theater's 1972 production of 'Dracula' are cast members (from left) Sandy B':rg, Dan Lissman, Lee Campanelli and Loretta Scott. dream had been torpedoed so quickly, disbanded the board and turned everything over to Lee. "I have the building, you have the know-how, and that's all we need," Harvey told him. Lee came from a show business family. His mother was actress- comedienne Marie Call, his ear- lv coach and mentor, and his grandfather was theatrical impresario James H. Call. Lee's first professional appearance was a role in "Under Papa's Picture" when he was 14. His credentials included member- ship in Actors Equity, the American Guild of Variety Artists and the Directors Guild of America. Today, Lee remembers the first tryout for eight cast mem- hers: not one person showed up. Within months, though, casting calls were being answered by over 60 aspiring actors from surrounding towns and villages, extending to Youngstown, Alliance, Wells- ville and Pennsylvania. "Dracula, the Vampire Play," the horror masterpiece Bela Lugosi made famous in 1927 when it opened in Manhattan's Fulton Theater (now the Helen Hayes), was Lee's choice for his first opening. "When no l\>ne came to the tryouts I got on the phone to find a cast." Lee says. "Kay Keslar was in charge of the drama department at Lis- bon High School, and she sent me two young people. I got Mark Arthur of Warren to, reluctantly, agree to take the title role, but he never showed up for rehearsals - or opening night - and I was forced to take over the part myself." "We had three different sets, all cardboard, and Harvey found some footlights at the last minute," he recalls. "Some- one had taken the gels for the spotlight, and Kent State wouldn't let us borrow theirs, so someone covered it with blue paint - the spot burst from the heat in the middle of the most dramatic scene." The gymnasium hadn't been reno- vated yet, either, and the prog- rams were makeshift sheets of typing paper, hastily put together that afternoon. Dis- tressed cast members, more apprehensive-by-the-minute, were asking, "Where is Mark Arthur?" Tum to ENGLER on page 7
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• inner theater's Lee Engler brought Broadway to Salent
By Lois Firestone First of two parts
SOON, THE THEATERgoers, gussied up in their
floor-length gowns and dark business suits, will be dining at one or another of the eight round candlelit tables scattered around the second floor Red Room. Now, though, only the hostess, Susan Zeigler is there, making a final check.
Downstairs, producer and director Lee Engler - founder of this Memorial Building Dinner Theatre the year before, in 1972 - is satisfied that everything is done that has to be done for the night's opening of Leonard Gershe's "Butterflies are Free," the sixth production of the fledgling drama group.
The auditorium, converted at other times into a basketball court for the town kids, glistened with fresh coats of yellow paint on walls interspersed with newly-installed wooden panels. In the upstairs kitchen, city parks and recreation manager Harvey Woods, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, is carving a ponderous slab of roast beef, the main offering of the three-course dinner to come. Nearby are rows of pink and green parfaits lined on trays for the evening's desserts.
Dave Macry has perused the professionally-designed programs and inspected the uniforms of the waitresses and usherettes. The backstage fly gallery, lighting and sound systems are in running order and Carl Scott is preparing to go in to the box office.
Artist Michael Milligan has put the finishing touches on the paintings for the sets which are
being shifted by the stage crew, Daniel Zeigler, Judith Turner, Scott Theil, Judith Stoffer and Jean Tharp.
In a corner of a dressing room, Ruth Law is applying makeup to the cast, mother and son duo Dolores and John Volio, Jessica iv1archbanks and veteran actor and favorite of the local crowd Roger Gonda.
That night, Feb. 11, 1973, was a turning point for Engler - he had reached his goal of bringing the Memorial Building back to the theater it once was when it was a thriving town center. From a nucleus of four or five
· players, he had developed tryouts and casting which attracted newcomers from throughout the area. His nowrealized hope had been to offer a springboard to acting hopefuls who needed training and wanted to develop skills to enter the professional theater: he'd done this by casting amateurs with professionals in theater classics and Broadway hits.
Audiences liked the intimate small theater; ushers noticed that first-timers often slipped away to the box office before the curtain rose on the second act to make :reservations for the next show.
A town theater had been Harvey Woods' idea. High school plays had been suspended and there was no outlet for dramatics in the area. In June 1971, Harvey asked Lee to organize a drama program hosted by the Memorial Building and managed by a board of directors. From the beginning, though, squabbling within the board dashed hopes for success. Harvey, irritated that his
curtain rose ~
in 1
Pausing for the camera after the dinner theater's 1972 production of 'Dracula' are cast members (from left) Sandy B':rg, Dan Lissman, Lee Campanelli and Loretta Scott.
dream had been torpedoed so quickly, disbanded the board and turned everything over to Lee.
"I have the building, you have the know-how, and that's all we need," Harvey told him. Lee came from a show business family. His mother was actresscomedienne Marie Call, his earlv coach and mentor, and his grandfather was theatrical impresario James H. Call. Lee's first professional appearance was a role in "Under Papa's Picture" when he was 14. His credentials included membership in Actors Equity, the American Guild of Variety Artists and the Directors Guild of America.
Today, Lee remembers the first tryout for eight cast memhers: not one person showed
up. Within months, though, casting calls were being answered by over 60 aspiring actors from surrounding towns and villages, extending to Youngstown, Alliance, Wellsville and Pennsylvania.
"Dracula, the Vampire Play," the horror masterpiece Bela Lugosi made famous in 1927 when it opened in Manhattan's Fulton Theater (now the Helen Hayes), was Lee's choice for his first opening. "When no l\>ne came to the tryouts I got on the phone to find a cast." Lee says. "Kay Keslar was in charge of the drama department at Lisbon High School, and she sent me two young people. I got Mark Arthur of Warren to, reluctantly, agree to take the title role, but he never showed up for rehearsals - or opening
night - and I was forced to take over the part myself."
"We had three different sets, all cardboard, and Harvey found some footlights at the last minute," he recalls. "Someone had taken the gels for the spotlight, and Kent State wouldn't let us borrow theirs, so someone covered it with blue paint - the spot burst from the heat in the middle of the most dramatic scene." The gymnasium hadn't been renovated yet, either, and the programs were makeshift sheets of typing paper, hastily put together that afternoon. Distressed cast members, more apprehensive-by-the-minute, were asking, "Where is Mark Arthur?"
Tum to ENGLER on page 7
By Lois Firestone Elma McGrew Starr was 15
when she started selling seeds for the Templin seed company at Calla. Ella's daughter, Huldah Stanley of Barnesville writes us that her mother wrote about those days in her memoirs: "For three years I was agent .. .In 1905 my pay was a 30-piece set of pretty red flowered dishes which was a pleasure to put in an empty cupboard."
Her mother, who was born and raised near Harrisville, Ohio, also kept a letter from the firm written in 1907: "It is our pleasure to ad vise you that through your efforts, which we heartily appreciate, you were successful in securing one of 30 prizes of $6 each in our department. Thank you for the work you have done. We solicit your cooperation and influence in the future."
Huldah and her husband Ray lived in the county for several years; Ray worked at the Deming Co. plant for over 30 years. About the dishes her mother received as pay Huldah says that "most of that set of dishes we are now using every day and they are still pretty."
For six years the Stanleys managed the Walton Retirement Home near Barnesville and stay in contact with people residing there, including Wilson Morlan, a longtime Deming employee; and Jesse and Clara Starbuck, former Salem residents.
Are you living in a Sears home? There are dozens scattered around the area. We'd like to publish the picture of your house as it looks today, taken. by our photographer, and, if J:OU have it, a photo or drawmg of the original. Interested readers can call Lois at 332-4601, extension 37.
;1~~\9/;C'!i,'!1,
t-.Y esteiyears_'.;~ ~!- A historical jQUma/ : I: ;~f Published 2nd & 4th Tuesday ~~
i(· by the Salem News ,'.)' {~ Founded ~une 8, 1991 ~.V -:. · 161 N. Lmcoln Ave. 'f
~','.· Salem, Ohio 44460 1·;
I.;/ Phone (216) 332-4601 }~
-.::: Thomas E. Spargur {t: , ~;publisher/general manager '~s
f s::~ i editor ~ ;i.{~; ~-
-~.,. Linda Huffer iff;
~;;.,~~?&
Women crowd the counters of one of the first Sears, Roebuck and Co. retail stores in 1925. Previously they had been able to buy only from their "wish book," as the Sears catalog was called.
Sears catalog homes scattered everywhere
By Christopher Wills Associated Press writer
M ILLIONS OF Amerian households are filled
with items ordered from the Sears catalog. The town of Carlinville, Illinois, for instance, boasts an entire neighborhood where the houses themselves came from the Big Book.
As far as anyone knows, the 152 houses on nine blocks that constitute the enclave known as Standard Addition are the world's largest cluster of homes ordered straight out of the Sears catalog.
So the· announcement by Sears, Roebuck and Co. last month that the spring catalog would be its last stirred a particular wistfulness in Carlinville.
"Everybody feels sad this institution and part of America is going to be gone," said Linda McGill, who is acting direc-
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tor of the Economic Development Corp. in this town of 5,400 and lives in a Sears home.
Sears sold about 100,000 mail-order houses from 1908 to 1940, primarily in the Midwest and East. For a few thousand dollars, buyers got floor plans, pre-cut lumber, nails, paint, doors, light fixtures - everything they needed, all delivered to the nearest railroad station. Sears even provided the mortgage services.
"It provided us an outlet for everything we offered," said Greg Rossiter, a Sears spokesman. "If we could sell them a home, we could probably sell them everything that goes in it."
When Standard Oil Co. opened two coal mines near Carlinville 75 years ago, it sud-
Tum to next page ~
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This is the front cover of the 1908 edition of Modern Homes, the first catalog of mail order homes sold by Sears, Roebuck and co. The most expensive model "the Magnolia," featuring ten rooms, sold for $5,140. Sears is discontinuing its "big book" catalogs which people in this country have perused and ordered from for decades.
This home which could be bought by mail appeared in the 1926 Sears Roebuck catalog.
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Yest:eryears 'Tueslfay, Jebruary 9 1993
• IS arren Har prese ed as once was
By Jennifer Brooks Thomson News Service
I F THE HARDING HOME in Marion doses due to lack of
funds, Marion will lose a perfectly preserved slice of turnof-the-century America.
President Warren G. Harding's 102-year-old home has been preserved almost intact from the time he and his wife and stepson occupied it.
Visitors can catch a glimpse of Harding quite beyond the paragraph devoted to him -or, more likely, to the Teapot Dome scandal - in history textbooks.
Here is a man who collected toy elephants and liked speeches so much he built a podium into his front porch. Here is a newspaper publisher who made sure every Marion resident had his or her name in The Marion Daily Star at least once a year. Here is a U.S. president who let his dog sit in on cabinet meetings. ·
Warren G. Harding built the home, for the thenastronomical sum of $3,700, while he was courting Florence Kling DeWolfe in 1891. They were married in its front hall, at the foot of the stairs, on July 8, 1891.
Florence was a divorced mother, five years older than her suitor. Her first husband, Peter DeWolfe, had abandoned her and their son, Marshall. She was the daughter of Marion's richest resident, Amos Kling, who held a very low opinion of the 26-year-old Harding.
As publisher of the Daily Star, Harding butted heads constantly with Kling. Amos Kling was so disgusted with
his daughter's choice of husband, he refused to speak with her for the next 14 years. Not until Harding was elected a U.S. senator did Kling admit that the young man- might amount to something after afl.
This anecdote is just one of thousands tour guide Dick Brown is eager to share with visitors to the Home. There are a thousand stories in the Harding Home - one for every teacup, toy elephant and top hat in the building.
Take Harding's front porch, site of the famous Front Porch speeches that helped win him the presidency.
"Harding was a very fine speaker. It was one of his greatest gifts," Brown said. "Even if people didn't agree with what he said, they'd come to hear him. In those days there was no radio, no TV - they came for entertainment."
So fine were Harding's speeches, Brown said, that they were the downfall of the first Front Porch - a much smaller version than the grand white porch that stands today. During his campaign for lieutenant governor, Harding gave a particularly good speech from the old porch.
"Well, he must have pumped them up more than usual," Brown said. "Because people started crowding and crowding up on that porch, more and more, and nobody was leaving. And that old porch collapsed right under their feet."
Harding, recognizing that this sort of speech could take him even further than the governor's mansion, rebuilt the porch in grand style, with a built-in podium, convenient for
American Indians celebrate Little Big Horn monument
By the Associated Press
AMERICAN INDIANS ARE celebrating the new name
of a monument on the banks of the Little Bighorn River where Indians wiped out Custer's troops.
Congress last year approved changing the name from the Custer National Battlefield to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Indian leaders demanded the name reflect the Indian victory rather than Custer's legendary last stand.
"Two victories have 'been won here 116 years apart," Lionel Bordeaux, president of Sinte Gleska College in South Dakota, said.
Indians from Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Colorado gathered at the site recently where they formed
color guards and performed songs of victory and ho~?r. During a victory song, partiopants danced and fired rifles into the air.
Warriors killed Lt. Col. George Custer and 265 soldiers on June 25, 1876 as the party retreated after attacking a Sioux and Cheyenne village. About 100 Indians died in the battle.
Bordeaux said the warriors fought the Battle of Little Bighorn "to protect their homelan~, their way of life and their honor."
The name of the battlefield, 60 miles southeast of Billings, officially changed on Dec. 10, when President Bush signed the bill.
speechmaking. So while his speeches continued to bring down the house, the porcn remained intact.
It is difficult for people today to imagine the effect of Harding's presidential campaign on tranquil 1920s Marion. The town's service industries were
completely swamped by the thousands who flocked to curry favor with the candidate.
"There wasn't room for them in the hotels, the restaurants couldn't feed them. (Visitors) slept on people's lawns, in their cars, they brought their lunches in brown bags ... 25,000 people came to one speech - same as the town population," Brown said.
Harding gave more than 40 campaign speeches from his grand front porch, and an estimated 600,000 people came to hear.
Inside the house, the greatest men of the era came to call -Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Andrew Mellon, Harvey Firestone, Al Jolson.
Every time one of these dignitaries arrived at the Marion train station, the city threw a parade. The city leaders dressed in their best, the local marching band struck up and everyone marched from the train yards to the Harding Home. Along the way, all the lampposts were lighted and decked with bunting.
Almost every object in the home has been preserved from
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denly needed homes for its workers. The company ordered what it needed from the 1918 Sears catalog.
Standard Oil erected the houses in Carlinville, in central Illinois, then rented the houses to its workers.
"It's just a real neighbor-
hood, still. It has that old feeling," said Danley Vlasich, who recently sold her Sears house after 13 years. "There are young couples with children, and then there are older couples."
The neighborhood has a mass-produced uniformity to it, right down to the standardissue two trees in the front yards.
The boxy houses have changed over time - an extra room here, an enclosed porch there, some aluminum siding, a red, yellow or blue paint job -but most still have "character that will long retain popular favor," as the catalog put it.
Rooms are small, basements sometimes leak, and most second floors are unheated, owners say. But the houses, which go for $20,000 to $40,000 today, are sturdy and require few
the original Harding estate. The Hardings put all their possessions into storage when they left for Washington, and in storage they remained while
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repairs. "They're good starter homes.
A lot of people buy them when they're starting a family," said Jean Goodman. She and her husband, Ron, moved into their three-bedroom house 12 years ago with an infant; they now have a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old.
"It would be nice if the house was a little bigger," she said.
Disdained by architects as vulgar jumbles of style, mailorder houses filled the need of thousands who could not afford an architect or builder, according to author Alan Gow~ ans, who examined the suburban housing boom from 1890 to 1930 in his book "The Comfortable House."
Sears had ,competitors in the mail-order house business. The Aladdin Co. of Bay City, Mich., became one of the biggest suppliers of homes by mail, selling 3,600 in its best year, 1926. Montgomery Ward & Co. also sold mail-order houses. The Ladies Home Journal became the best-known suptlier of housing plans by mai .
various nieces and nephews fought over the estate for decades after their death.
The home was converted into a museum in 1965.
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an made • In
Philipp German
Wirsching immigrant
A WIRSCHING ORGAN in Queen of All Saints
Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn is one of three exceptional and historic American pipe organs featured on a new CD recording of organ works by the 19th century composer Josef Rheinberger.
Philipp Wirsching built t~e organ in his Salem factory m 1913 expressly for the church which is located along 300 Vanderbilt A venue in the Clinton Hill section of the city. The instrument, which has been in regular use since it was installed by Wirsching, was refurbished in 1988 by experienced, professional organ builders, members of the Organ Historical Society.
Church organist Bruce Stevens chose the Salem organ for use in the recording because of its stylistic link to instruments
for which composer Josef Rheinberger wrote his organ sonatas. "Wirsching, its builder learned his craft in Germany during the end of Rheinberger's life, and worked with several great masters of Romantic organ building, including Friedrich Ladegast of W eissenfels whose organs were known by Rheinberger," Stevens said in an article published on Jan. 11 in Brooklyn's Park Slope Courier.
Stevens said that few if any unaltered and truly romantic organs remain in Germany and in the tiny duchy of Liechtenstein where Rheinberger was born and served in his teens as organist of a parish church.
The 19th century American organs retained many characteristics of classical organs, with brilliant and cohesive tonal choruses as well as beautiful
• @
al em In use ID r solo stops - most organs built during half of the 20th century aspired to an orchestral nature.
Also, the 19th century organs were better in many ways when compared to earlier classical precursors because the materials and construction of their interior mechanisms were much improved, Stevens says. He adds that they bring to ultimate refinement the completely mechanical "tracker"actions
introduced centuries before. Stevens' two previous CDs of
Rheinberger organ sonatas have been praised for their musical authenticity in that the variety of 19th century American organs upon which he plays are in complete sympathy with the music - he plays from manuscript or first editions rather than from a popular and later edition prepared and altered from the original by an Englishman.
Volume III of Sonatas for Organ by Josef Rheinberger is on the Raven label and the Organ Historical Society which
is distributed by Albany Records to record stores throughout the country. The CDs are available bv mail for $16.85 postpaid from' the Organ Historical Society at PO Box 26811, Richmond, VA 23261.
The society, a non-profit educational society of 3,500 organ historians, was founded in 1956 to research America's contributions to the art of pipe organ building. The society publishes magazines and books and produces recordings which explore America's pipe organ heritage.
Wirsching was born in Bensheim, Germany on Feb. 7, 1858, son of Jacob and Katherine Krick Wirsching. After studying for seven years at the gymnasium at Wuerzburg he became an apprentice in an organ building business. During his four years there, he continued his studies in mathematics and drawing, cultivating a natural mechanical talent which he later utilized in his instrument making.
Leaving his native Germany, he came to Salem in 1886 and
0 lyn opened his organ company two years later. Later, he left the city and worked in Detroit and Chicago for four years.
Returning to Salem, he organized The Wirsching Organ Co. in 1905 with $30,000 in capital stock. William Deming became president; W. W. Mulford, secretary and treasurer; Wirsching, superintendent and vice president; and Delmar Davis, C. C. Snyder, Charles T. Brooks and Walter Deming served on the board of directors.
The business quickly grew and the plant was expanded. Four buildings comprised the complex, including a metal pipe department, voicing section, erecting room anmd machine shop. Wirsching's building methods, unique from other organ makers, were patented.
Wirsching married a Salem girl, Anna A. White in 1887. The couple had five children, Arthur, Clarence Eddy, Elizabeth H., Mary and Charles Philipp.
m m er the Hatfield-McCoy feud? By Martha Bryson Hodel Associated Press Writer
FOR DECADES THE OLD timers in this gritty coal
town knew things about its old timers in this gritty coal town knew things about its dark and bloody past they felt were better left unsaid. Now they're hoping to tum a skeletons' closet into a tourist payoff.
Helen Dawson, for example. Now 83, she was a 12-year-old girl when she witnessed the assassination of Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield and told her father what she saw.
"He told me never to tell," she said. "He said it would put the whole family in danger." All those/ears, she never told.
Hatfiel was a hero to striking coal miners. Coal company agents shot him dead in broad daylight on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse. That was Aug. 1, 1921.
From that killing erupted the largest of the little-known coal field battles of 1920-21. It ended only after President Warren G. Harding sent federal troops to disperse the miners, about 20,000 of them, who meant to organize a union. By whatever means.
Mrs. Dawson, who now serves as city recorder in nearby Kimball, was but one of many who kept their counsel. What finally loosened their tongues was the 1987 movie "Matewan."
"There was enough violence on both sides that for about the first 20 years after it happened people kept their mouths shut
just because they were afraid of getting shot," said John Sayles, who made the film. "Once you dam up that long, it's tough to get out of the habit."
So silence became a way of life in Matewan, a hard-times town backed up against the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River on southern West Virginia's Kentucky border.
"I was 28 before I even heard about any of this stuff," said Margaret Casey, a Matewan businesswoman who was born here well after the coal war.
"Somebody said something about the 'Matewan Massacre' and I said, 'Matewan what?' I knew some of the folks who were tried, but as long as a grandparent or Uncle So-andSo lived, nobody talked."
And not because there wasn't plenty to talk about.
The shooting began on May 19, 1920, after 12 coal company detectives came to town to evict striking miners from their company-owned homes. Hatfield sided with the miners.
As the detectives waited for a train, miners and townspeople led by Hatfield and Mayor Cabell Testerman opened fire from rooftops and second-story windows. The mayor, two miners and seven detectives were killed.
The miners and townspeople were found innocent of murder in a sensational trial, but Hatfield and Testerman's successor, Ed Chambers, were ambushed a year later.
So much drama for such a little place.
Today, Matewan is another struggling mountain town of about 620 people. The coal industry, about the only industry, is undergoing major technological changes that frequently mean layoffs.
But Mayor Johnny Fullen has big dreams. He and others see a future Matewan as a national historic park where visitors can trace the Appalachian past from the Indian inhabitants of about 2,300 years ago through the mountains' industrial rise and fall in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Fullen is convinced visitors will find their way to Matewan even though it's about 100 miles from the nearest Interstate. In fact, you have to drive 13 miles along a narrow, twisting road from the nearest fourlane highway. Still, some are curious enough even now to wander through.
But before the new Matewan can live, Mayor Fullen believes, the old Matewan must die.
"I got a card in the mail that just said, 'Please let the past die.' That's all. No signature," the mayor says.
"But there's a story here to tell and if you get some distance from it, it has a different appearance. The things that happened here were important. This is where people stood up to the coal operators, where things began to change.
'1t's not just our history. It's the history of the industrial age."
Filmmaker Sayles was among the first to tell the tale.
"The media of the time," Sayles says, "painted the Matewan Massacre and the mine wars that followed as the workings of an out-of-control mob rather than anything like the push-and-shove situation that it was.
"That image has lingered in the memories of peopfe down there."
By 1920, Matewan had already had its share of publicity. At the tum of the century, nearly a generation before the mine war, big city reporters descended on the area to write about the famous feud between the Hatfields of West Virginia on one side of Tug Fork and the McCoys of Kentucky on the other.
The feud gave Appalachia a reputation that still lingers.
Tradition has it that the Hatfield-McCoy feud began as a dispute over ownership of a pig and escalated into outright war through some misguided sense of family loyalty by inherently violent people.
Historians say there was more to it than that. They see the feud as a larger dispute over land and its timber and mineral wealth, perhaps the first rumblings of a conflict between an agrarian, selfsufficien t society and the industrial era.
"The Hatfields and McCoys thing has never helped," Sayles says. "It has always been portrayed as some sort of backwoods feud, when really the causes were as much political and economic as anything."
The Hatfields and the McCoys were not illiterate people, Sayles says. "Those families were some of the most important people in the area."
The 1987 release of "Matewan" was a turning point for many residents, who for the first time saw their history portrayed in a sympathetic, even heroic, light.
Referring to the coal company "detectives," Sayles says, "There were things that the Baldwin-Felts agents had done, things so Simon Legree-ish that if I had put them into the screenplay for 'Matewan' no one would have believed it."
For example, he said, company agents intercepted a Red Cross shipment of milk intended for the children of striking miners and added kerosene.
"Other people told us about growing up in a coal camp where owners and supervisors would just shoot through the coal camps to show them who was boss," Sayles says. "That kind of fear is hard to grow out of."
Company-owned coal camps, as they were called, surrounded Matewan, which was an independent community. In the coal camps, company control was total.
Owners told their employees where to live and where to spend their money, often paying wages in company scrip that could only }:)e spent at the company store. The companies
Turn to FEUD pg 8
Ron Riegler (left) and Roger Gonda perform in the 1970s production of 'The Sunshine Boys.'
Lee Engler presents ~uth Law wi~h the. Director's Special Award for her work m the theater, mcludmg make up duties.
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·:~~µ· Lee Eng_ler and John Kenley pause during a Kenley Players production. Engler was associated with Kenley for W years.
The first production was dedicated to Carmen McNicol, a major patron of the theater, and David Macry had been eager to act as master of ceremonies to introduce her. Suddenly he panicked, forgetting the tribute he'd carefully prepared lauding the "lady of the theater and patroness of the arts." Later, his memory restored, he pulled it off with elegance and wit, according to Lee.
Because he inundated newspapers and town bulletin boards with publicity about the opening, Lee was concerned that people might expect more than they were going to get. Bu_t the audience responded to the story about the Transylvanian count. They liked the "diabolical" touches: the registered nurses standing by to revive watchers who might be frightened to death, and the casket in the lobby, transported backstage later for the final scene. The eveni~g wasn't costly; $3 bought a ticket for the dinner and play. Later, when the diners were moved downstairs to the stage area, prices went up to $6.
In 1976, restauranteer Harold Jones hired Lee to produce and direct a year-round profession-
al dinner theater in his nightclub, Heaven, along Youngstown's Fifth A venue. It was the first of its kind in the city. The first production was a Neil Simon comedy, "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas" which opened on March 30, 1976. Lee took along four of his resident players from the Salem theater: Roger Gonda, Toni Manzetti, Barb Hoyt and Penny Lane.
That same year he opened another year-round dinner theater at Rgbert Lolli's Supper Club alortg State Street in Alliance. Later, he signed contracts with Holiday Inn and Ramada Inn - six hotels in Ohio and three in Pennsylvania - and set out the initial shows and assigned detail directors for the productions.
For a time, he directed summer stock productions for David Fulford at Canal Fulton. "The theater was in an· old barn," he says, "and the roof leaked so bad that people had to put newspapers on their heads. Skunks were everywhere. We had a theater in the round, and I worked with Dorothy Gish, Fay Bainter, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Eve Arden- was a favorite of mine."
When Fulford heard that Loblaw's markets were moving
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out of a building in Ravenna, his backers, the Timken daughters from Canton, bought it and opened the Carousel Dinner Theater there. Lee went along to direct Fulford's stars, among them Allen Jones, Jo Anne Worley, Robert Cummings, Joseph Cotten and Patricia Medina. Often, Lee would take local actors to meet the performers: one of the dozens of news clippings he's kept shows a photo of Jo Anne Wor-
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Judith Waugh production.
ley with Lee and Salem actors when she appeared in "Goodbye, Charlie" at the Carousel.
He was elated when Fulford signed Josephine Hull and Jean Adair to pfa.y their original roles of the sisters and Bela Lugosi the Boris Karloff part of the brother in "Arsenic and Old Lace." It never happened, though, because Lugosi died of morphine poisoning a few weeks before the opening. Then Lon Chaney of "Wolfman" fame took over the role. Chaney was another old film great, and Lee was excited about directing him. However, Cha-
built the schools and hired the teachers.
David Corbin, a West Virginia historian who has written two books about the mine wars, said he grew up ignorant of his state's history, including the shootings at Matewan.
"Our real history was buried/' he says. "First shame, then ignorance, kept it buried."
John Alexander Williams, a historian at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., who is working with Mayor Fullen, says his plan for Matewan' s historical redevelopment includes a theater for regular screenings of "Matewan."
The film, he says, depicts the events leading to the shootout "with a seriousness and dignity too rarely seen in film and television treatments of Appalachian people."
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ney died of Parkinson's Disease a few weeks before the play date. They finally chose Peter Lupus of "Mission Impossible" fame who stayed healthy throughout the run.
Lee's association with John Kenley and his Kenley Players summer stock continued for 20 years, starting out at the 3,000-seat War Memorial building in Columbus, and then in the 2,000-seat · Packard Music Hall in Warren. Later, a hall in Dayton was added to production sites.
The 1972 season with Kenley was typical. Ann Miller starred
"Cinematic treatments of the Hatfields and McCoys in particular and mountain people i.n general tend to run to comicstrip stereotypes."
Williams' plan calls for a park much like the one at Harpers Ferry, near Washington, D.C., where people and businesses mingle with the historic.
The Army may help. The Corps of Engineers plans to build a floodwall around Matewan, protecting the town from the ravages of the Tug Fork.
The Tug is mostly a stream where kids can wade on an August afternoon. But 36 times in the last 43 years, the Tug Fork has crippled Matewan. -
Williams' plan would take visitors from pre-history to the first exploration from Virginia by Robert Fallam, who turned
:Yest:eryears 1uuiay, 'February 9 1993
in "Can Can," Joel Grey in "1776," Jane Powell in "Meet Me in Saint Louis," Gordon McRae, Kaye Ballard and Patricia Morrison in "Milk and Hon- Twirling a parasol in the dinner theater production of 'Charey," John Davidson in "Oklaho- ley's Aunt' is Dolores Volio while Eloise Miller stands in the ma," and Bobby Vinton and background. Ruth Buzzi in "Good News." Comedy shows featured Karen Valentine, Ben Murphy, Lyle Waggoner, Bill Bixby, Gary Collins, Mary Ann Mobley and Phyllis Diller.
Meanwhile, the Memorial Building's Engler Productions flourished, until it was the largest semi-professional theater in the tri-state area.
To be continued
back at present-day Matewan in 1671 when he found "mountains and hills rising like waves one piled upon the other."
Wflliams also proposed a portrayal of the HatfieldMcCoy feud "emphasizing the events and personalities of this famous series of :ncidents, but also the social and environmental history of the pre-industrial inhabitants of the valley."
Fullen and Matewan Development Center Director Paul McAllister Jr. believe Matewan and its residents will benefit most, however.
"People have been so beaten down by the constant, countless negative images of this area that they're almost embarrassed to admit they're from down here," McAllister said.
This photo of Lee Engler was taken when he waS' director and producer of the Memorial Building Dinner Theatre.