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Kathryn Tucker Windham champions storytelling art
"...When I'm telling stories I'm looking into those people's faces." She wants to see their reaction. "That's the beauty of storytelling. It's the most personal of the arts." She doesn't have any use for computers or Emails, either. She often doesn't respond to typewritten letters, preferring handwritten letters. Windham was honored Sept. 29 with a celebration of her life and work at the museum named in her honor at the Alabama Southern Community College campus in Thomasville. The program involved storytelling by Windham and a noon "dinner" function featuring speeches by her friends, admirers and the lady herself.
"...When I was a little girl, we didn't have electricity all the time. We got our power from the mill. They cut off at 10:30 at night....If you had a date, he better leave then, because it was scandalous if anybody stayed after the lights went off. "...I was exposed first to storytelling in this town. It's where I heard the good stories. I heard them in the post office lobby, at the depot, and after church on our front porch. Wherever people gathered, we told stories. It took time to tell stories - talk about what was important to us." Windham said she learned from her father that the most important things were not just the three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic, but "the four L's: listening, learning, laughing and loving. It is a lesson I have tried to carry with me." A former reporter for the Alabama Journal, The Birmingham News and The Selma Times- Journal, Windham is famous for her series of books, beginning with "13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey" (1964), her onewoman portrayal of Julia Tutwiler, photography exhibits, and her constant appearances as a storyteller at festivals throughout the country, Canada and Germany. She has won numerous honors including the Alabama Humanities Award, Governor's Award for the Arts, and being named in September to the Alabama Senior Citizens Hall of Fame. Windham currently lives in Selma. She is concerned that the Southern language is being lost through exposure to TV and media. "We're becoming homogenized," Windham said. "We all sound like we've just come off of television....I don't fool enough with it (TV) to be changed by it. "...We need so badly to get back to the days of families eating together. We let so many things interfere with our sitting down with people we love. "...We don't give ourselves time to know the people we love," she said. "We don't give ourselves time to tell the stories. It was at that family supper table that I heard some of the finest stories I've ever heard. "...My father believed in laughter. We don't laugh nearly enough. We don't laugh at ourselves enough." Once when she had visited some customers with her father who was a banker, he had asked her "did you listen to the story that man told? Did you hear the inflections in his voice when he talked - the unusual words he used - the expressions? Did you listen? And more than 80 years later I'm still remembering those experiences." Windham believes the storytelling tradition is strong with artists such as Wanda Johnson of Prichard and many others across the U.S. "It used to be you said 'I'm a storyteller,' and nobody knew what you were talking about. Now, everybody is one. "...See I didn't know what I was getting involved in when I started," Windham said. "I never had heard of festivals and such." While working as Community Relations Coordinator for the Area Agency on Aging in Camden, Jimmy Neal Smith called her to appear at the The National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, the beginning of her storytelling career. "I had a good time up there," she said, "and I've been doing it ever since." She said the enthusiasm for her stories remains with each generation. "I wouldn't do it if I didn't have that to give me the energy. That's where I get my energy from their enthusiasm and their response. "...I'm everybody's grandmother," said Windham who turned 89-years-old on June 2. "...My friends say I'm snatching at 90." | ||||||
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