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[CCBC-Net] Jane Ellen Clark, the curator of the Monroe County Heritage Museum
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From: Kerry Madden <kiffnkerry>
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 13:10:01 -0700 (PDT)
One of the best interviews was with, Jane Ellen Clark, the curator of the Monroe County Heritage Museum. http://www.tokillamockingbird.com/
My sister, Keely, who was with me that whole first week, helped me make copies of articles and do follow-up calls to schedule interviews. Here are pictures from the week in Alabama published on my blog two years ago. I've also included Keely's notes in this post, too, as I just love them.
Pictures of Monroeville, Alabama and the Monroe County Heritage Museum http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/75248.html
On our second day in Monroeville, the librarian at Alabama Southern, Angela Roberts, took us to meet Jane Ellen Clark, who looked at us and said, "Lord, I don't have time today," and then she invited us to sit down and talked to us for three hours. Jane Ellen is the daughter of Jane Hybart Rosborough, the first baseman that Nelle knocked flat all those years ago. (Six months later, I was able to interview Jane Hybart at her home near Tuscaloosa.)
These are some my notes from the afternoon with Jane Ellen Clark. She has the most beautiful lilting southern accent, and the way she says "Mama," it sounds like pure honey. The following section is written in Jane Ellen's voice. As a writer, it helps me to get closer to the story to rewrite my notes in the speaker's voice, and Jane Ellen is a born storyteller.
JANE ELLEN CLARK'S STORY
Mama was a country kid who was bussed into Monroeville for school. I moved back here to the family land and built a log cabin in the 1980s. My girls took the same the bus route that Mama did the first year we moved back. Mama was in Nelle?s class. Nelle was a town girl, Mama was country. Mama said, ?I remember when she knocked me down that time ? in the dirt. She knew I couldn?t go home and change my clothes.? But then Mama would say, in her southern way, 'Wasn?t it nice that Truman and Nelle had each other? They were so above the rest of us.'
Hybart was our town. Mama rode in a truck with seats in the back ? that was the school bus. 90 minutes on a dirt road each way. The black kids walked. The white kids? bus would go right by them?Pulpmill was the business?
When the museum here opened, I was begging a job. It was half the pay, but I didn?t care. My great grandfather built the building. We used to be huddled in the Truman room. The roof leaked and it was freezing in the winter, hot in the summer. We found documents from 1817. The architect was Andrew Bryan. The Harper Lee room was complete in ?04 and the Capote room was completed in ?06.
Claiborne was a river town. It was still the same groups against the same groups?
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/travel/escapes/18alabama.html (link to story of Claiborne, Alabama located 14 miles from Monroeville.)
I take the kids to the courtroom here on school tours. I show them the history. It's the only oval courtroom in the country today. They wanted to tear it down in the 1970s to build a parking lot because of so much traffic, but the historical society intervened.
Every year we do the play TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Christopher Sergel is the playwright.
www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsS/SergelChristopher.htm
Nelle is very protective of her work, and when he was writing his script, it was a very long process to get her approval. It?s a long, slow, and quiet piece of drama. Sergel's wife had a few comments at how long it took her husband to write.
Charles Ray Skinner and Edwin Lee, Nelle's brother, were very good friends. In my opinion, Jem is both Jennings Carter and Edwin Lee. If you can get Jennings to talk to you, you'll see his arm hangs at a ninety-degree angle to his body just like Jem's. He broke his arm when he was twelve falling off a roof. It gives me chills. But if you talk to Jennings, you have to tell him you're writing about Truman, because if you tell him you're writing about Nelle, he won't talk to you. That's just the way it is. You'll still get your story, because the three of them were always together. And who knows, you may very well write about Truman too.
Here in Monroeville, the river culture is very much a part of the family. The steamboat era was 1820-1920. Finchburg has a landing. The steamboats shipped cotton to Mobile. Winter was a time to relax. Mr. Lee was from North Florida before he moved here.
? In 1948, Truman had his hit book, so I imagine he said to Nelle, ?If you ever wanted to come, you should come now.? So she could go?that was when Nelle left law school.
This might be the outline of your book: Childhood, college years, first years in New York, Kansas and IN COLD BLOOD, then TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD comes out and she does the press thing for four years. She quit talking in 1964. Get Pickett's History of Alabama. Read her speech about WHY CHILDREN SHOULD LIKE HISTORY. (Louise, her sister, convinced her to give that talk in Eufaula in 1983.) And then she wrote that thing for Oprah in 2006.
? Truman and Nelle loved word games. Anne Farish, the mayor, and my mother used to see them playing word games at the movies. Truman made her go to the movies. There was a first grade graduation, and they stood side-by-side. They were isolated because they were outsiders. It drove them into their own imaginations. The bond between Truman and Nelle was tremendous. She gave him her notes from Kansas. She was also the master of the perfect sentence.
Readers pull things together and make assumptions because both Nelle and Truman wrote about the same place. There were so many threads and all the layers of a real place. Truman and Nelle were best friends. They loved each other. They still loved each other much later.?
My sister Keely?s notes on Jane Ellen Clark? Then we went to the courthouse just to see it and ended up spending three hours with Jane Ellen Clark the museum curator.? Jane Ellen is in her fifties with bright brown eyes behind glasses.? She has gray hair and wears more casual clothes than most of the other women in town.? The museum is made up of small intimate rooms dedicated to Harper Lee and Truman Capote.?
Downstairs there is a gift shop and replicas of attorney?s offices.? Then there is the centerpiece, the courtroom.? It was the first moment I understood that I was standing in history. Jane Ellen is passionate about her job.? She is very respectful of Harper Lee.? Jane Ellen?s mother went to school with Harper Lee and when Nelle pushed her down she got her dress dirty.? Jane Ellen?s mom was doubly upset because she was a ?country kid? and could not go home and change and Nelle knew that.?
Jane Ellen is the divorced mother of twin girls.? She moved back to the area when her girls were nine. Jane Ellen gave us facts about the museum.? It is the only oval courthouse in the United States.? Most are round. She told us about the Gee's Bend Ferry and the gristmill. She talked about Finchburg, steamboats and Scratch Ankle, Alabama.?
She told us about Franklin County, which has a lot of Scots descendants.? It was settled in 1819 before statehood.? The Creek Indians were there in 1814 and if you were a trader you could stay. The people in Franklin County now are wild hog hunters. It was once a river and a farming culture.? You relaxed in the winter, which was the off-season.??
?
* * *
Okay, that's it for this week...Next week, I'd love to hear some stories from Elizabeth Partridge and Tanya Lee Stone. I turned to both of them for advice when writing my Harper Lee biography. I would love to hear about their primary research too. I also had the pleasure of meeting Carole Boston Weatherford at the Alabama Book Festival this year in Montgomery and hear her talk about her new book, BECOMING BILLIE HOLIDAY. She has some wonderful stories to tell.
LINKS
http://www.caroleweatherford.com/ http://www.elizabethpartridge.com/ http://www.tanyastone.com/
Thanks again to Tessa and all the CCBC librarians. I'm happy to answer any questions, and I'll be posting some stories next week too. Thank you!!
All best Kerry Madden
UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE
?"My needs are simple: pen, paper, and privacy." Harper Lee, 1961 www.kerrymadden.com
?
Received on Fri 22 May 2009 03:10:01 PM CDT
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 13:10:01 -0700 (PDT)
One of the best interviews was with, Jane Ellen Clark, the curator of the Monroe County Heritage Museum. http://www.tokillamockingbird.com/
My sister, Keely, who was with me that whole first week, helped me make copies of articles and do follow-up calls to schedule interviews. Here are pictures from the week in Alabama published on my blog two years ago. I've also included Keely's notes in this post, too, as I just love them.
Pictures of Monroeville, Alabama and the Monroe County Heritage Museum http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/75248.html
On our second day in Monroeville, the librarian at Alabama Southern, Angela Roberts, took us to meet Jane Ellen Clark, who looked at us and said, "Lord, I don't have time today," and then she invited us to sit down and talked to us for three hours. Jane Ellen is the daughter of Jane Hybart Rosborough, the first baseman that Nelle knocked flat all those years ago. (Six months later, I was able to interview Jane Hybart at her home near Tuscaloosa.)
These are some my notes from the afternoon with Jane Ellen Clark. She has the most beautiful lilting southern accent, and the way she says "Mama," it sounds like pure honey. The following section is written in Jane Ellen's voice. As a writer, it helps me to get closer to the story to rewrite my notes in the speaker's voice, and Jane Ellen is a born storyteller.
JANE ELLEN CLARK'S STORY
Mama was a country kid who was bussed into Monroeville for school. I moved back here to the family land and built a log cabin in the 1980s. My girls took the same the bus route that Mama did the first year we moved back. Mama was in Nelle?s class. Nelle was a town girl, Mama was country. Mama said, ?I remember when she knocked me down that time ? in the dirt. She knew I couldn?t go home and change my clothes.? But then Mama would say, in her southern way, 'Wasn?t it nice that Truman and Nelle had each other? They were so above the rest of us.'
Hybart was our town. Mama rode in a truck with seats in the back ? that was the school bus. 90 minutes on a dirt road each way. The black kids walked. The white kids? bus would go right by them?Pulpmill was the business?
When the museum here opened, I was begging a job. It was half the pay, but I didn?t care. My great grandfather built the building. We used to be huddled in the Truman room. The roof leaked and it was freezing in the winter, hot in the summer. We found documents from 1817. The architect was Andrew Bryan. The Harper Lee room was complete in ?04 and the Capote room was completed in ?06.
Claiborne was a river town. It was still the same groups against the same groups?
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/travel/escapes/18alabama.html (link to story of Claiborne, Alabama located 14 miles from Monroeville.)
I take the kids to the courtroom here on school tours. I show them the history. It's the only oval courtroom in the country today. They wanted to tear it down in the 1970s to build a parking lot because of so much traffic, but the historical society intervened.
Every year we do the play TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Christopher Sergel is the playwright.
www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsS/SergelChristopher.htm
Nelle is very protective of her work, and when he was writing his script, it was a very long process to get her approval. It?s a long, slow, and quiet piece of drama. Sergel's wife had a few comments at how long it took her husband to write.
Charles Ray Skinner and Edwin Lee, Nelle's brother, were very good friends. In my opinion, Jem is both Jennings Carter and Edwin Lee. If you can get Jennings to talk to you, you'll see his arm hangs at a ninety-degree angle to his body just like Jem's. He broke his arm when he was twelve falling off a roof. It gives me chills. But if you talk to Jennings, you have to tell him you're writing about Truman, because if you tell him you're writing about Nelle, he won't talk to you. That's just the way it is. You'll still get your story, because the three of them were always together. And who knows, you may very well write about Truman too.
Here in Monroeville, the river culture is very much a part of the family. The steamboat era was 1820-1920. Finchburg has a landing. The steamboats shipped cotton to Mobile. Winter was a time to relax. Mr. Lee was from North Florida before he moved here.
? In 1948, Truman had his hit book, so I imagine he said to Nelle, ?If you ever wanted to come, you should come now.? So she could go?that was when Nelle left law school.
This might be the outline of your book: Childhood, college years, first years in New York, Kansas and IN COLD BLOOD, then TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD comes out and she does the press thing for four years. She quit talking in 1964. Get Pickett's History of Alabama. Read her speech about WHY CHILDREN SHOULD LIKE HISTORY. (Louise, her sister, convinced her to give that talk in Eufaula in 1983.) And then she wrote that thing for Oprah in 2006.
? Truman and Nelle loved word games. Anne Farish, the mayor, and my mother used to see them playing word games at the movies. Truman made her go to the movies. There was a first grade graduation, and they stood side-by-side. They were isolated because they were outsiders. It drove them into their own imaginations. The bond between Truman and Nelle was tremendous. She gave him her notes from Kansas. She was also the master of the perfect sentence.
Readers pull things together and make assumptions because both Nelle and Truman wrote about the same place. There were so many threads and all the layers of a real place. Truman and Nelle were best friends. They loved each other. They still loved each other much later.?
My sister Keely?s notes on Jane Ellen Clark? Then we went to the courthouse just to see it and ended up spending three hours with Jane Ellen Clark the museum curator.? Jane Ellen is in her fifties with bright brown eyes behind glasses.? She has gray hair and wears more casual clothes than most of the other women in town.? The museum is made up of small intimate rooms dedicated to Harper Lee and Truman Capote.?
Downstairs there is a gift shop and replicas of attorney?s offices.? Then there is the centerpiece, the courtroom.? It was the first moment I understood that I was standing in history. Jane Ellen is passionate about her job.? She is very respectful of Harper Lee.? Jane Ellen?s mother went to school with Harper Lee and when Nelle pushed her down she got her dress dirty.? Jane Ellen?s mom was doubly upset because she was a ?country kid? and could not go home and change and Nelle knew that.?
Jane Ellen is the divorced mother of twin girls.? She moved back to the area when her girls were nine. Jane Ellen gave us facts about the museum.? It is the only oval courthouse in the United States.? Most are round. She told us about the Gee's Bend Ferry and the gristmill. She talked about Finchburg, steamboats and Scratch Ankle, Alabama.?
She told us about Franklin County, which has a lot of Scots descendants.? It was settled in 1819 before statehood.? The Creek Indians were there in 1814 and if you were a trader you could stay. The people in Franklin County now are wild hog hunters. It was once a river and a farming culture.? You relaxed in the winter, which was the off-season.??
?
* * *
Okay, that's it for this week...Next week, I'd love to hear some stories from Elizabeth Partridge and Tanya Lee Stone. I turned to both of them for advice when writing my Harper Lee biography. I would love to hear about their primary research too. I also had the pleasure of meeting Carole Boston Weatherford at the Alabama Book Festival this year in Montgomery and hear her talk about her new book, BECOMING BILLIE HOLIDAY. She has some wonderful stories to tell.
LINKS
http://www.caroleweatherford.com/ http://www.elizabethpartridge.com/ http://www.tanyastone.com/
Thanks again to Tessa and all the CCBC librarians. I'm happy to answer any questions, and I'll be posting some stories next week too. Thank you!!
All best Kerry Madden
UP CLOSE: HARPER LEE
?"My needs are simple: pen, paper, and privacy." Harper Lee, 1961 www.kerrymadden.com
?
Received on Fri 22 May 2009 03:10:01 PM CDT
