The Muse is Loose

Horton Foote died Wednesday, March 4 in Connecticut. He was 92. He has had a play this last year on Broadway. He was the holder of an Oscar and an Emmy. He was a writer, director, actor. His name will always be associated with the film, "To Kill A Mockingbird". He wrote the screen play and won an Oscar. "A Trip To Bountiful" was a wonderful movie. It was his writing.

Horton Foote was born In Wharton, Texas, where we lived, and served in a church, for twelve years. I never met him, but wanted to. I would drive by his home, hoping I might see him sitting on the front porch. I planned to go up and introduce myself. It never happened. He was a busy man and not in Wharton too often in his adult years. I had friends who knew him well and they would tell about him. In his last book entitled, "Farewell", he wrote of his early years growing up in Wharton. He graduated from Wharton High at 16 and set out for New York with dreams of acting. Those dreams blossomed far beyond that in his 76 years following Wharton. His plays were sometimes a mirror of early-day Wharton.

He wrote a bit about one of the earlier pastors of the church I served. " I remember walking in summer evenings with my parents and my brothers,the smell of honey-suckle everywhere, and we would often pass a small Victorian cottage, on whose porch a distinguished white-haired gentleman would be seated. He and my parents always exchanged greetings and once after we were a few yards away my father said, ' That's Mr. Armstrong and he was in the cotton fields of Mississippi when he got a call to come to Texas and preach.' 'What does that mean, Daddy?' I asked....'What does what mean?' 'He's a Baptist, son.'....he said as if that explained everything....When I was eleven I got a call, so to speak, not to be a preacher, but an actor. It came to me as clearly as I presume Mr. Armstrong's call came to him....I never wavered from that call until I began writing ten years later, and the desire to act left me as suddenly as it had arrived. Farewell - Horton Foote 1999 , Scribnerl