Storyteller
marks
milestone
Kathryn Tucker Windham celebrates 90th birthday
June 1, 2008
Selma, Alabama
Photos and Web page by Ed Williams
Auburn University
Department of Communication and Journalism
Hundreds mark storyteller's 90th
BY ALVIN BENN • JUNE 2, 2008
Montgomery Advertiser
Click here
SELMA -- Alabama's favorite storyteller mentioned her years and the heat Sunday as more than 200 turned out to help her celebrate her 90th birthday.
Kathryn Tucker Windham had a great vantage point on the balcony at the Selma-Dallas County Library as she looked over a sea of smiling friends, fans and colorful balloons.
"I'm real happy to have the temperature match my age," she said.
The weather was hot and sticky with the temperature passing the 90-degree mark, but no one seemed to mind as they sang "Happy Birthday" to her at the end of the celebration.
Windham's 90th birthday is actually today, but she wanted her friends to help her celebrate on a Sunday when they wouldn't have to worry about work or conflicting events.
Her friends came from throughout the Southeast.
Son Ben came from Tuscaloosa where he is a newspaper editor, and daughter Dilcy drove down from Birmingham.
Some came from Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and other states, but most were from Alabama -- the place where she cemented her reputation as one of America's leading storytellers and authors.
Windham arrived in a golf cart and took her seat high above the huge crowd just as a Dixieland band strutted down the middle of the street to the library, playing "When The Saints Go Marching In."
The guest of honor even got a parade permit and, when the library portion of the celebration ended, the crowd marched across a busy, but blocked-off intersection to the Selma-Dallas County Performing Arts Center. That's where her birthday cake waited to be cut.
Mayor James Perkins Jr. held up a proclamation naming Sunday "Kathryn Tucker Windham Day" in Selma and then took his place in the crowd, holding a little plastic comb with wax paper around it -- soon to serve as a makeshift musical instrument. That's the way Windham wanted to celebrate her special birthday -- a fun time for all on a day in which she became an official nonagenarian.
Comb playing may be a lost art, but her friends quickly took to it and joined her in their own renditions of "Amazing Grace," "I'll Fly Away," "You Are My Sunshine" and many other selections.
When she arrived at the performing arts center, Windham changed from her straw hat with black sash to a more colorful birthday cake hat.
Inside, her friends were treated to Moon Pies, grape soda and water as they pushed toward the table to get a piece of her birthday cake. Among those celebrating was author and political observer Wayne Flynt, who is familiar with the glare of spotlights. He described Windham as a woman who is unique in Alabama.
"Some people are important to intellectuals, journalists or politicians, but Kathryn Tucker Windham is probably the only person I know in Alabama who is important to everybody," he said.
He said he never has heard "a negative word" about her and added: "If I had to be in one place in Alabama today, it would be in Selma to be a part of this celebration."
Episcopal minister Joe Knight, who gave the benediction, said Windham personifies "what life is all about."
"She's playful, fun, friendly, easygoing and so much more," he said. "She symbolizes what this community can become."
Local lawyer Vaughan Russell said he and most Selmians may not appreciate Windham "because we've known her all our lives, and don't realize how special she is until somebody from outside Selma tells us that.
"I thought she was wonderful, but I was amazed that the rest of the world thought the same thing," said Russell, a former city judge.
As she prepared to move from the library to the performing arts center, Windham made sure that everyone knew what's next on her agenda.
"Come back for my 100th birthday," she said to the roar of the happy crowd below.
The Montgomery Advertiser
Click here for story by Al Benn
Storyteller marks milestone
Kathryn Tucker Windham celebrates 90th birthday
Montgomery Advertiser
BY ALVIN BENN
MAY 30, 2008
SELMA -- Only days shy of turning 90, Kathryn Tucker Wind ham is far too busy to wonder about longevity. What she's think ing about right now is her "comb concert" Sunday.
Alabama's noted storyteller, au thor, photographer, performer, ra dio personality and "ghost host" can't wait to hum "Amazing Grace" and other favorites on tiny combs made for her concert, other wise known as a birthday bash like no other this town has ever seen.
Come rain or shine, the party gets started at 2 p.m. If the weather is nice, the concert will take place outside the public library down town. In the event of rain, the party will move inside to the convention center nearby.
Everybody's invited and Wind ham, who politely insists on no gifts, has already heard from friends "all over the country" that they plan to attend.
"I've heard there will even be folks coming in church buses," said Windham, whose actual birth day is Monday. "Some of my friends from California say they're coming. No tellin' how many we'll have, but it looks like a big crowd."
The past decade has taken its toll on Windham physically, but all she acknowledges is, "I've slowed down somewhat." She's outlasted two pacemakers (so far, so good on the third), licked cancer and healed nicely from a broken hip and a bro ken shoulder.
And Windham laughs at the no tion that she's about to give it all up and spend the rest of her life in a rocking chair.
"Too busy, just too busy," she said this week as she carefully cut a piece of wax paper and folded it over one of her combs for a test run.
Windham has hundreds of the colorful combs -- "Happy 90th Birthday" is on one side, "Play On, Kathryn" is on the other -- to give away Sunday, along with plenty of wax paper. She even has a parade permit just in case folks feel the urge to march in a town known for marches.
"Hmmmmmmm," was the buz zing sound that came from her waxed comb as she launched into a popular ditty she's known since her days growing up in Thom asville.
In the 1920s, Windham spent her warm summer nights on the porch, watching lightning bugs flicker around her and listening to her banker daddy spin his tales. She couldn't get enough of them. Her uncle Earl, who ran the local weekly paper, added his yarns for good measure.
Kathryn Tucker began doing movie reviews for her uncle's pa per before she became a teenager. It was all part of her dream to be come a newspaper reporter. She not only did it, she chalked one up for her gender.
A year out of Huntingdon Col lege, she went to work for the now-defunct Alabama Journal in 1940. She is believed to have been one of the first female police reporters at a major daily newspaper in the South.
Windham's introduction to dai ly journalism included a "promise" from her Yankee city editor, Meriwether Lewis Sharp ley.
"The first day I reported for work, he said: 'Miss Tucker, let me tell you something...any afternoon that you open the Alabama Jour to work.'"
She never missed a day of work as she reported on misdeeds in the Capital City. Years later, some of those stories would be included in "Odd Egg Editor," one of many pop ular books she's written through the years.
After a stint selling bonds to help the troops during World War II, she moved to the Birmingham News where she met the love of her life.
Amasa Benjamin Windham had just returned from the war in late 1945. When he got off the elevator at the newspaper in his sparkling white Navy uniform, almost every one in the newsroom turned to look.
Kathryn Tucker wasn't one of them. She didn't play hard to get, but she didn't fawn over him as did some of her female colleagues.
"You must be Kathryn," he said when they met. "You must be Amasa," she responded. It wasn't long before they married.
The couple moved to Selma, where he edited the local paper and they raised three children.
Amasa Windham had heart problems and died in 1956. His grieving widow had the challenge of supporting two daughters and a son.
Kathryn Windham met that challenge, becoming a symbol of single parent determination as well as a beloved performer and au thor.
Perhaps her best known works are about "Jeffrey." Windham be gan to feel "a presence" in her mod est brick house but couldn't pin point just what it was.
Eventually, she named "it" Jef frey and began to write about "him." She even named several of her ghost books after an apparition she is convinced exists. One is ti tled: "13 Alabama Ghosts and Jef frey." She's also written about ghosts in Mississippi and Tennes see.
Her son, Ben, editorial page ed itor of the Tuscaloosa News, has a ready response for those who cast doubts about whether "Jeffrey" is nothing more than a figment of his famous mother's literary imagina tion.
"Well, I can say one thing about Jeffrey and that is he paid my way through college," says Ben Wind ham -- with a big laugh.
Windham's other books are filled with recipes, photographs and her days as a journalist. Her one-woman show about Alabama prison reformer Julia Tutwiler played to packed houses and she has been a contributor on National Public Radio's "All Things Consid ered." And she performs each fall at the National Storytelling Festi val in Jonesborough, Tenn.
A personal highlight for Wind ham was the naming of a museum for her in Thomasville. It's filled with Kathryn Windham memora bilia.
A good friend is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Nelle Harper Lee of Monroeville.
"She is a person of great gifts and uses those gifts with wisdom and love," Lee said this week. "I am proud to say that Kathryn is my friend."
Becky Nichols loves to see Windham walk into the Selma li brary that she directs.
"Kathryn Windham is an abso lute treasure of a human being," said Nichols. "Her wit and humor bring a smile to every face. Most of all, her stories give us the greatest gift of all --the gift of our memo ries."
Windham admits she isn't sure what has driven her for so many years. Now, she has lost many of those closest to her, including her daughter, Kitti, who died three years ago after a brief illness, but she still keeps going.
"I don't know what it is that al lows me to do what I've been doing for so long," she said. "There must be something I'm supposed to be doing, but haven't done yet. I guess I just haven't finished my assign ment."
A look back at
Kathryn Tucker Windham's
90th birthday celebration
today in Selma
Kathryn Tucker Windham demonstrates the art of "playing a comb"
Kathryn Tucker Windham was born June 2,1918,
in Selma.
The beloved storyteller and Alabama journalist
grew up in Thomasville, Alabama
Church Street United Methodist Church
SUNDAY SCHEDULE
June 1, 2008
Church Street United Methodist Church senior pastor,
the Rev. Rev. Fred E. Zeigler Jr., reads proclamation from Gov. Bob Riley
at Sunday morning worship service
Kathryn Tucker Windham Day
Church Street United Methodist Church Web page
Click here
Special Music at 10:15 a.m.
Music in the sanctuary by The Dill Pickers
Morning Worship at 10:30 a.m.
followed by "Sunday Dinner" in
the Kathryn Tucker Windham
Fellowship Hall at
Church Street United Methodist Church
Fried chicken!
Cole Slaw!
Potato Salad!
Sliced Fresh Tomatoes!
Rolls!
Sweet Tea!
Moon Pies!
Sunday Dinner followed by
the Comb Concert that started at 2:30 p.m.
in front of the library
