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Charles Jones: Looking Homeward
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One of my favorite pieces from the past decade is this New Horizons profile of the late Charles Jones, a theater director who made quite an impression on the Omaha Community Playhouse and the city. Jones was in the autumn of his life when I met him, confined to a wheelchair as the result of a stroke, but his mind and spirit were still impetuous, his personality still charming. He was no longer directing shows at the Playhouse, the historic theater where Henry Fonda and Dorothy McGuire got their acting starts and where he turned his adaptation of A Christmas Carol into a phenomenon. Rather, he was working at small theaters and loving every minute of it because he was getting to work on things dear to his heart. A Southerner through and through, Jones was a sweet gentleman. His abiding warm memories and piquant descriptions of his childhood Southern home and haunts made me want to turn the story into a nostalgic, vivid , and by-turns irreverent remembrance of things past , sort of in the vein of Truman Capote or Flannery O’Connor.
Charles Jones: Looking Homeward
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in the New Horizons
Former Omaha Community Playhouse director Charles Jones, a rake and raconteur of giant appetites, traces his deeply inquisitive nature to a childhood memory. Picture a Christmas-decorated parlor, circa 1941, at the Columbus, Ga. homestead of his maternal grandmother, Stella “Dovey” Trussell, a matriarchal Belle with an artistic bent. Charlie Jim peers over the edge of a table on tip-toes, a chubby 3-year-old teetering with wide-eyed wonder at his grammy’s handmade snow scene.
“Somehow, I think that memory of peeking over the edge of that big table to see what grandmother Trussell had done has influenced my whole life. I don’t know exactly how to explain that, except I’ve always been curious about things,” Jones said in his lilting native Georgia accent in an interview at the art-decorated home he shares with his wife Eleanor. From his warm wood-paneled den, the 61-year-old Jones, confined to a wheelchair since suffering a massive stroke in 1991, thinks a lot about the past these days. His nostalgia is due not to inactivity — he is busy writing, directing and volunteering — but to the richness of growing-up years filled with individuals and incidents as eccentric as any in a Southern Gothic novel.
His own first novel, The Sweet Breath of Cows, which he is writing with his younger sister Bunny (June), examines a way of life peculiar to the Deep South. One where the pious and profane, coarse and quaint, co-exist. Of his Southernism, he said, “I am so much a part of it. I am so much a product of the people” Yet, for one so steeped in the South, Jones feels at home in Nebraska. “There’s a wonderful attitude here that lets people live their lives.” His book charts gritty times on the family dairy farm and notorious exploits of a black sheep uncle, Louie, who left home to make his way in Prohibition-era Phenix City. Ala., then a wide-open town. “Here was a place that deliberately tried to create itself in the image of the devil. They loved the idea they were wicked. They took a certain bizarre pride in being the Sin City of America and in being able to maneuver around all the laws of the world. Bodies of soldiers were found every day floating in the Chattahoochee River. It was almost past belief a Southern town could have been like this, but my historical research has proven it true,” Jones said.
Louie’s equally improbable personal tale is true. Jones swears it. It seems after leaving home Louie was befriended by both a Sin City madam and a mother superior whose brothel and convent, respectively, did business in adjoining antebellum mansions. For Jones, “the juxtaposition of those sisters of love working next door to each other is amazing, and much of what the novel is about is the juxtaposition of life. I’m intrigued by the question, Is making love making God? It fascinates me.”
Charles Jones, center
While not all his relations were as colorful as Louie (a paratrooper in war and paramour in civilian life) Jones has only to look homeward to find ample inspiration for his work. Nearby Ft. Benning gave him a front row seat for the unfolding drama of the nation’s war mobilization. “Ft. Benning affected our lives from the time I was a child,” he said. “Columbus was only 38,000 people when the Second World War began. Then Benning was made the largest infantry training base and parachute school and suddenly there were 100,000 men there. It just mushroomed. And, of course, the soldiers’ families would come through too. So the war was very much a presence with us. And the fact Franklin Roosevelt had his Little White House retreat in Warm Springs, only 30 miles from our home, made his death, for us and for a lot of Georgians, an extremely personal experience.”
The Jones home, like many in the area, put-up military boarders during the conflict. Jones did his own part for the war effort when he used his gregarious verve to win a city-wide competition selling war bonds, earning the youngster a live on-air appearance on a local radio station. “Of course, I was so puffed-up, I was like a tiny little peacock just about to bust,” he said.
It was not his first brush with performing, however. From the time he could talk, he displayed an outgoing nature and impressive oratorical skills. He recalls standing on the steps of his family’s Baptist church and, like a preacher, greeting every churchgoer by name. He began exhibiting a vivid imagination at his paternal grandparents dairy farm in Smith Station, Ala., where he and his aunt Alice, only a few years his senior, devised and enacted 10-gallon plays, so named because the sketches lasted as long as it took for the cows’ milk to fill 10-gallon cans. Soon, nephew and aunt, more like brother and sister, began polishing their plays and performing them, complete with makeup, costumes, sets, outside the big farm house on Saturday nights. Their audiences, sprawled on the front porch or on the lawn, were mostly comprised of sympathetic kin but also included black tenant farming families whom the young thespians coaxed into attending. The plays became a family ritual for years. By all accounts, Charlie Jim (his legal name) was a big brash boy with a booming voice and captivating stage presence.
Far from genteel, Jones insists his family was a “dirt poor” lot that, if not as common as the folks in God’s Little Acre, were close cousins. “Our lives as children were visceral. We lived in a bare-footed world with mules and horses and manure. It was not up-town. It was not clean and nice.” But they knew how to have a good time. Weekends at the farm found the clan entertaining homesick GIs at picnics and parties full of Southern hospitality. “Many of the soldiers were farm kids who, stuck way out in the boonies, missed home,” he said. “Coming to Smith Station reminded them of home. It was very emotional for some of them. They’d even queue up to milk cows.”
Sunday dinners brought relations from all around. A preacher was often a feted guest but, man of God or not, he was subject to the same earthy treatment as everyone else. Jones explained: “One Sunday we had a preacher who was going on and on and on and just blessing everything. Finally, my little sister Julia, who was 2 at the time, said, ‘Oh, for Chris sakes, amen,’ and grabbed a chicken leg. Now, my aunts and uncles were the types who had a wonderful sense of humor and so they were just falling on the floor with laughter. And I’m sure Alice and I were laughing too. But my grandmother Jones was probably trying to spank all of us at one time.”
Down home religion offered Jones more grist for the mill. His mother’s family were ardent Methodists and his father’s devout Baptists. Jones found the country services at Smith Station Baptist Church “entertaining,” especially with cousin Samuel Jones present. “Sam was a brilliant man but became a religious fanatic at one time — growing this long beard — and as he took literally the Bible admonition for women to hold their tongues silent Sam would stomp out –clomp, clomp, clomp — in these big old farm boots whenever a woman stood up to testify. People thought his behavior stupid, but it was hysterical to me.”
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He credits his family’s keen appreciation for the absurd for why he found “terribly funny” what others found incredulous. “I suppose it’s because my daddy and grand daddy had a real sense of theater in life. They were entertained by things, and so was I.” His passion for drama was fed whenever his father, Harry Jones, a packing house laborer turned food services magnate, returned from business trips to Chicago or New York and recounted the big stage shows he’d seen. For a boy in Columbus it was a link to far-off places and glamorous goings-on. “Daddy would come back from every trip and describe whatever play he had seen. He would act it out for me. Oh, the magic and imagination of it.”
His imagination was further fired by movies and books and by a local librarian, Miss Loretta Chapel, “a beautiful little bird of a woman” who read stories to he and his school chums. “Miss Loretta would sit in a huge casement window with us children at her feet and she would read, and as she read everything came totally to life. I saw it all acted out in my mind’s eye. It was just amazing. We worshiped her.”
Mad about make-believe, Charlie Jim knew the world of greasepaint was for him long before seeing his first legitimate play — a touring production of Kiss Me Kate — at age 13. He “loved” performing in his first school production, although he claims he was “dreadful.” By 16 he was a bright overweight lad ill at ease among his peers and struggling at school. Then, as if by fate, he was selected with 13 other “misfits” to complete his high school education in an experimental program at Emory University in Atlanta. There, under the tutelage of PhDs determined to teach students in an innovative way, new horizons opened for him and he flourished.
“Our textbooks were the original works of the Greek and Roman playwrights and philosophers. I was just wild about them. Our studies covered the Hebrew tradition, the Middle Ages, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Kierkegaard and so on. What these professors had in mind was to give us the heritage of Western thought and literature and civilization. It was really demanding and interesting. I didn’t appreciate it then but I realize now I had an extraordinary opportunity to read a body of literature that has stayed with me. It was very important to my life.”
Jones said something he read then motivated him to take a big bite out of life: “It was Plato’s statement about cave people living in a shadow world and never having the strength and courage to go through that threshold into the light — into the real world. I was so devastated by that. I thought, ‘That’s not what my life is going to be. I’m not going to allow myself to sit in a cave and not participate. I am going to go out there and try things.’ And I have. I’ve really been a participant.” His tendency to overindulge led to a lifelong battle with obesity, which he blames for the stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side. It’s a battle he’s lately won.
It was at La Grange College, a small Methodist school in La Grange, Ga., he devoted himself body and soul to the theater. He feels indebted to its “fabulous tyrant” of a dramatic arts teacher — Miss Irene Arnett. “She had a strict moral code. To her, we were all sinners going straight to hell. But, man, could she teach Tennessee Williams. Carnality was something she really understood.” After graduating in 1960 Jones promptly landed an acting job in Kentucky, where he enjoyed “the most decadent summer of my life.” When not sowing his wild oats, he did some directing in Columbus before getting his big break as an Equity Actor with the prestigious Barter Theater of Virginia, whose famous alumni include Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn and Ned Beatty, whom Jones replaced.
At the Barter Jones found a mentor in its founder and director, Robert Porterfield. “Once you were inside the Barter family then Bob just looked after you and would do anything for you. Bob was a role model for me in leading the Omaha Community Playhouse,” Jones said.
When his Barter Theater tour ended Jones found himself back home — out of work. At the invitation of friends he attended a performance of Tea and Sympathy and was taken with “a beautiful red-haired woman on stage,” Eleanor Brodie, a University of Alabama theater major. He recalled, “She had on a tight turquoise dress with one shoulder bare. She was the most gorgeous and provocative thing I’d ever seen. I was absolutely wild to meet her and I went backstage feeling like the cock-of-the-walk.” When she promptly put him down a peg or two with her sardonic wit, he was even more smitten. He arranged meeting her again through one of her friends and the two married three months later. Partners in life for 38 years now, Eleanor and Charles have two grown sons, Jonathan and Geoffrey, and one grand-daughter, Kathryn.
Of Eleanor, Jones said, “We both made such a total commitment to one another. She has been the most important person in my life. She has pulled me through more things than you can imagine. She’s a fierce lady and our relationship has not always been peaches and cream, but she believes in me. I’m just so damn lucky.”
Like many young actors the pair set their sights on New York, investing everything for their Big Apple fling. Jones found work, even understudying Zero Mostel on Broadway, but after three months of scraping by and enduring rejections he and Eleanor did some soul searching and decided their hearts were back home. “I was a big showy actor, but not nearly as good as many others. It was not ever going to be satisfactory,” he said. “We wanted to go home where we would have a chance to use our very expensive educations as teachers and theater directors. Fortunately, my hometown gave us the opportunity to do that.” He oversaw the restoration and reopening of the historic Springer Opera House, now the state theater of Georgia.
His success as a theater director/manager there prompted the Omaha Community Playhouse to hire him away in 1974. He soon sparked a rebirth of the venerable facility, severely damaged in the May 1975 tornado, by raising funds for its repair and, later, for an ambitious expansion. He launched its professional touring wing — the Nebraska Theater Caravan. His sumptuous adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol became an annual tradition. His musical extravaganzas dazzled audiences. Season memberships soared. Through it all, he felt the support of his father, who lived to see him grow the Playhouse into the nation’s largest community theater.
Jones finds his thoughts drifting more and more to his late father. “I realize now he was my strongest supporter. He really was.” He fondly recalls the time his father broke into the slated-for-demolition Springer Opera House to plead its case to reporters. The father’s dramatic stunt worked and the theater was saved for the son to guide. One early memory of his father lingers still. It was a Sunday afternoon on the farm. The extended family had finished dinner. Four-year-old Charlie Jim and grandfather Jones were feeding long sugar cane stalks into a mule-drawn mill to be ground into pulp for molasses. Jones tells what happened next: “I shoved a stalk in too far and my right hand got stuck, and the grinder clipped off the ends of all the fingers. I bled like a stuck pig. I can remember the women screaming and even my grandfather panicking. But the one in control was my daddy. He picked me up and he ran with me. All the while, my uncles were running alongside my father, a rather small man, telling him I was too heavy for him to carry, but my daddy would not give me away. He was determined to get me to a doctor, and he did too.”
“That memory of my daddy not giving me away is very powerful and it’s affected my whole life,” a sobbing Jones said, holding up nubby, scarred fingertips. “I wish I could tell him, ‘Thank you.’”
Today, Jones is drawing more and more on his past for his work. Sweet and sour Southern memories abound in his novel as well as in the nostalgic Papa’s Angels, a musical play written by North Carolinian Collin Wilcox Paxton in collaboration with Jones. The play had its premiere last winter with the Grand Olde Players and will be reprised this year. Currently, he is directing The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas for the Dundee Dinner Theater (it runs through May 6). Directing is still his passion: “I love putting the thing together. I love the process of rehearsing a play. That one-on-one with the cast and that working out how we’re going to do it is the fun for me,” he said. But directing is just one of many things he has immersed himself in since leaving the Playhouse due to health reasons in 1998. His work today includes serving on the board of directors for Theaters of the Midlands, a new non-profit corporation designed to support small community theaters in the area.
He is perhaps most excited working with Creighton University occupational therapy students to help them learn about stroke patients like himself. “If I have to endure this at least I can be purposeful by letting students work with me and ask me questions,” he said. “Maybe this will give them some knowledge they can’t get from a textbook and maybe that’s going to help somebody else who has this problem.” His ongoing post-stroke rehab includes aquatic therapy twice a week at Immanuel Rehabilitation Center, which honored him with its Victories Award for his dedication to “soar past limitations with determination, commitment and hope.” For a sensualist like Jones, any debilitation is a curse. Aside from the physical challenges he’s faced, including suffering severe falls and medical complications, his condition has extracted a heavy emotional toll. He credits Eleanor for his recovery. “She was just determined the stroke would not stop me, and it’s amazing how much creative work I’ve done since then.”
On his darkest days he recalls his father’s cheery nature. “He was the most optimistic person I’ve ever known and I feel blessed to have been born with his same optimism. I can be as low as a human being can get. I can think there’s no reason to go on living and then, it’s so incredible, I’ll wake up the next morning and feel, ‘Wow, let’s go.!’ I think one of the reasons I want to keep going is because I am so damn curious about things,” he said. “Part of my curiosity is to know how other people feel about life and what they have to deal with. Do we see things the same way? Do we feel things the same way? To me, that’s fascinating.”
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Tom Lovgren, A Good Man to Have in Your Corner
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In the course of developing boxing stories over the years I met the subject of this story, Tom Lovgren, who at one time or another was involved in about every aspect of the fight game. He’s still a passionate fan of the sport today and is the unofficial historian and expert on boxing in Nebraska. Tom is one of those plain talking, call-it-like-is sorts, and I love him for it. He’s also a good storyteller, and his rich experiences in the prizefighting community provide him with plenty of material. Prior to profiling Tom, he was a source for me on several boxing pieces I did, including profiles on Ron Stander, a once Great White Hope who was billed as the “Bluffs Butcher.” Lovgren was in the Stander camp when Stander fought Joe Frazier for the world heavyweight title in Omaha in 1972, still the biggest boxing event in the city’s history. You’ll find my Stander pieces on this site. Tom also contributed to stories I did on Morris Jackson, Harley Cooper, the Hernandez Brothers, Kenny Wingo, the Downtown Boxing Club, and Dr. Jack Lewis. all of which can also be found on this blog. My story about Tom originally appeared in the New Horizons.
Tom Lovgren, A Good Man to Have in Your Corner
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in the New Horizons
During one spring night in 1972, Omaha, Neb. became the center of the professional boxing world. A record Omaha fight night crowd of 9.863 jammed the Civic Auditorium to witness the May 25 heavyweight title bout between the challenger, local favorite Ron “The Bluffs Butcher” Stander, and the popular champion, “Smokin’” Joe Frazier. A gallery of veteran boxing reporters covered the event. Film cameras fed the action to a national syndicated TV audience. Canadian heavyweight champ George Chuvalo did the color commentary. Area dignitaries and sports celebrities mingled in the electric crowd. Top heavyweight contender George Foreman looked fearsome at ringside. Legendary referee Zack Clayton appeared spiffy in his bow tie. Nervous Dick Noland ran the Stander corner while his counterpart, the sage-like Yank Durham, led the Frazier contingent.
In terms of sheer impact, the fight remains arguably the biggest sporting event ever held in Omaha. The allure of the heavyweight championship was enough that, with the title on the line, the results made headlines around the globe. And while Stander-Frazier does not rank highly in the annals of title bouts, it proved a smashing success, pulling in live gate receipts of nearly $250,000 in an era when tickets went for a fraction of today’s prices. For former Omaha boxing promoter and matchmaker Tom Lovgren, one of the men responsible for making the fight happen, it was the apex of a 20-year career that saw him put on fight cards featuring everyone from world-class boxers to journeymen pugs. A blunt man with a biting wit, Lovgren recalls a well-wisher that night praising him for pulling off such a coup, whereupon he quipped, “It’ll all be down hill from here.”
The sardonic Lovgren sat for a recent interview in his ranch-style Omaha home near Rosenblatt Stadium and explained his seeming pessimism the night of his crowning feat. “What I meant by down hill was I’d been to the peak. What was the chance of developing another heavyweight in Omaha, Neb. who drew like Stander did and who could be ready to fight for a championship? It’s all got to work together. And that time it did. All the dreams came true. A lot of people talk about doing something like this, but a lot of stuff can go wrong. A guy can get cut in training camp. Tempers can flare up and the whole deal get called off. With this situation, everything worked. It came off.” Proving himself a prophet, Stander-Frazier was indeed the one and only title fight he promoted.
At the time, Lovgren was a one-quarter partner in the recently formed Cornhusker Boxing Club, which staged most of Omaha’s top fight cards in the 1970s. Club president Dick Noland was Stander’s longtime manager. Noland and Lovgren were friends from the days when Lovgren was a correspondent for Ring Magazine. A Sheldon, Iowa native, Lovgren fell in love with boxing watching televised bouts as a kid. His short-lived amateur boxing career came to a halt at 16 when he got “dropped” three times in round one of a Golden Gloves bout. “It was at that point I decided, If you’re going to do anything in this game it’s going to have to be as something other than a boxer, because you obviously don’t have the talent it takes.”
Outside the ring, the University of Denver-educated Lovgren was a food services manager at many different stops, including Omaha’s Union Stockyards Company. Wherever he, his former school teacher wife, Jeaninne, and their four sons settled, Lovgren made it a point to acquaint himself with the area boxing scene — its gyms, fighters, managers, trainers — and to attend bouts. He often traveled 100 miles or more just to see a good fight.
He promoted his first fight card in Ohio, later detailing the highs and lows of that experience in an article he authored for Boxing Illustrated entitled, “So You Want to Be a Promoter?” His wife was skeptical about the promotion racket until he emptied his pockets after that first fight card and hundreds of dollars in gate receipts came tumbling out. Catching fights and filing stories around the Midwest helped him develop contacts among the boxing brotherhood. After contracting multiple sclerosis in 1970 Lovgren retired from the food services field, which gave him more time to feed his passion. Always the fighter, he’s not allowed MS to break his spirit, noting that managing the disease is a matter of “knowing what you can do and what you can’t do.”
When asked by Noland to join the Cornhusker Boxing Club, Lovgren jumped at the chance. Before teaming with Noland he had bailed-out the manager more than once by finding last-minute replacement opponents for Stander, whose reputation as a heavy hitter preceded him. “I was very good at coming up with fighters, and right now,” Lovgren said. “Good fighters, poor fighters, whatever it was, I would get those opponents. My strong suit was my ability to deliver a body. I knew a lot of people. I’d been a lot of places. I knew what talent was available.”
With Noland in charge of getting Stander fight-ready and Lovgren taking care of the business side of things, “The Bluffs Butcher” became their meal ticket. But getting Stander in shape was a daunting task given the fighter’s notoriously lax approach to training. “It was hard to get Ron enthusiastic about training,” Lovgren said. “There was no inner drive, no fire in the furnace, except for certain fights. I tried talking to him about it. I tried playing mind games with him. I did everything I could.” With his matchmaking acumen, Lovgren helped build Stander into a contender by putting him in “against the right guys at the right time to develop his skills.”
“He made some good fights for me,” recalls Stander, “Like the Ernie Shavers fight (a Stander KO victim). He got me in shape. We had a good time”
By the end of ‘71 Stander owned credentials for an inside track to a title shot. First, he was a Great White Hope. Second, as a short-armed slugger he played into Frazier’s smothering style. Third, he cut easily, reducing the chances the fight would go the distance and hazard a decision. Finally, he was a crowd-pleasing brawler with a knockout punch. A guy who, as Lovgren likes to phrase it, “put asses in seats,” guaranteeing a good gate. “Ron drew better than any fighter who ever fought in Omaha. There were guys with more talent, but Ron had the charisma that drew people like no one else. Some people came to see him win and some came to see him get beat. I didn’t care why they came, as long as they came.”
To ensure the chronically overweight Stander got fit, Lovgren moved him into his home for the fight. Training under Leonard Hawkins at the Fox Hole Gym in Omaha and under Johnny Dunn in Boston, Stander steeled himself. “Ron was a real fighter who asked no quarter and gave none. He backed away from no one and had no fear. He’d walk right into you. He was not going to be embarrassed,” Lovgren said.
In a confrontation that could have served as an inspiration for Rocky, Stander, the 10-1 underdog, showed admirable courage by standing toe-to-toe with the champ and exchanging haymakers. Despite taking a beating, he kept wading in until, bloodied and blinded by cuts, the fight was stopped after the 4th round. Still, there was a moment early on when the underdog appeared to rock the champ, even buckling his knees. “A lot of people say that Frazier slipped. He did, but he was hit with a shot by Stander and that’s why he staggered. Another time, Ronnie missed with an uppercut that was about that far away,” said Lovgren, holding his fingers about two inches apart. “If he landed that punch he may very well have been heavyweight champ of the world. That’s how close he was.”
Frazier retained his belt, only to lose it the very next fight to Foreman. Meanwhile, Stander got a one-way ticket back to Palookaville, where for another decade he toiled in obscurity as a club fighter whose main claim to fame was having got that one-in-a-million crack at immortality. Yet the fight that will forever link these two men almost didn’t come off when negotiations bogged down over money. “Frazier’s Philadelphia lawyers sent us a couple proposals and we turned them down because there wasn’t any money for us. Until the contracts were squared away to where we were going to make some money, that fight was not going to happen,” Lovgren said. “Then, television got involved and all of a sudden there was money enough for everybody.” With the bout confirmed, Omaha took center stage in the big time boxing arena. “Once the word was out that this title fight was on, everybody from the world of boxing was there. Everything you wanted was possible. Everybody wanted something. That’s how it is.”
Besides promoting Stander fights, he showcased the fighting Hernandez brothers (Art, Ferd, Dale) of Omaha. He considers long retired welterweight contender Art Hernandez the best fighter, pound-for-pound, the city has produced. He also organized cards featuring such top-ranked imported talent as Sean O’Grady, Lennox Blackmore and Jimmy Lester.
In his career, he saw it all — from guys taking dives to being handed bad decisions to getting “beat within a whisker of their life.” When it’s suggested boxing suffers a black eye due to mercenary, deceitful practices, he sharply replies, “Do I think there are crooks in boxing? Yes. Did I ever deal with any? Yeah, I probably did. I’ve heard a lot of bad stories, but every time I dealt with Mr. Boxing types, and I did a lot, they delivered the product and were straight down the line with me.” He feels a few unsavory elements sully the image of an otherwise above-board sport. “Anybody who ever fought for me got paid. If I said you were going to get $100, you got $100. I paid what I thought was the going rate for a 4-rounder or whatever it was, and that meant you got paid whether there was one person in the auditorium or whether the auditorium was full. If you’re going to play the game, you better be able to afford it.”
Stander said Lovgren has always owned his trust and respect. “Tom always took good care of me. You could count on him right to the end, every bit of the way. He’s just a stand-up guy. Straight as an arrow. His word is as solid as a rock, as good as gold. I love the guy.”
Because all manner of things can cause a fighter to drop out of a scheduled match, a savvy promoter like Lovgren must be able to improvise at a moment’s notice. “Once, I had a couple fighters pull out the night of the fight. These two guys that trained at a local gym had come to watch, and I went up to them and said, ‘Hey, you’re here, you can fight. You guys don’t have to kill each other — just go out and put on a good show, and I’ll pay ya.’ So, they fought an exhibition. Does that kind of thing happen? Yes. Often? Yes. Too often? Yes.”
Lovgren, who’s aimed his cutting remarks at referees, judges and athletic officials, makes no bones about the fact his frank style rubs some people the wrong way. “If you took a poll of all the boxing people in Omaha I wouldn’t make the Top 10 friendliest guys, but you’ve got to have people’s respect” and that means speaking your mind and stepping on some toes. Venerable Omaha amateur boxing coach Kenny Wingo, who’s worked alongside Lovgren organizing the Golden Gloves, admires his friend’s penchant for “telling it like it is,” adding: “He’s very opinionated and he’s a little rough around the edges. He takes no prisoners. He runs everything with an iron fist. But if he tells you something, you can take it to the bank. He’s honest. He’s got quite a history in the boxing world and he’s done a lot of good things for the sport along the way.”
If Lovgren leaves any legacy, it will be his role in bringing off Stander-Frazier, an event whose like may not be seen here again. Since retiring as a promoter in the early 1980s, this self-described “serious student” of The Sweet Science has continued his love affair with the sport by organizing his vast collection of boxing memorabilia (books, magazines clippings, tapes, wire service photos) and by writing a pair of boxing histories. The first, which he self-published, chronicles the life and times of Ron Stander, with whom he’s remained close friends. The second, which he just started, details the career of Art Hernandez, a man who fought five world champions and, in retirement, lost part of a leg following a fall at his home. The materials and histories are his attempt at preserving a record of local ring greats.
Like most passions, once boxing gets in your blood, it never leaves you. Even if many of the gyms, watering holes and ringside characters he knew are now gone, Lovgren still closely follows the sport. “You never get out of the game,” he said.
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Marcia Hinkle and Bill Sprague are the Omaha Symphony Orchestra’s Golden Anniversary Players
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Something I would like to do more of is luxuriate in the warm cascade of live symphonic music. My girlfriend and I happened to attend an Omaha Symphony program when I read in the program that two orchestra players were celebrating 50 years each with the organization. That sparked my doing the following article. Violinist Marcia Hinkle and French Horn player Bill Sprague proved gracious subjects and I am confident you will find them as charming as I did. My story originally appeared in the New Horizons.
Marcia Hinkle and Bill Sprague are the Omaha Symphony Orcheste’s Golden Anniversary Players
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally published in the New Horizons
Fifty years doing the same job, for the same organization, is a rare feat anymore. That’s why when Omaha Symphony Orchestra players Marcia Hinkle and Bill Sprague marked their 50th anniversaries last spring it was cause for celebration. The musicians were recognized on a flyer in the program for the 2008-2009 season’s final Masterworks concert at the Holland Performing Arts Center. The veteran second violinist and French Horn player, respectively, were singled out prior to the performance of Mahler’s 5th, taking bows before an appreciative crowd. The pair were also feted at parties following the concert.
Omaha natives Hinkle and Sprague took singular paths reaching this golden anniversary. They’re believed to be only the second and third musicians to ever notch the milestone with the orchestra. Neither has plans to retire. Music is too much a part of their lives to imagine life without it.
They’ve seen the evolution from a community-based, part-time orchestra to one with a full-time professional core. Along the way, the Symphony’s grown in terms of artistry, staff, budget, schedule and outreach. They’ve served six music directors and survived numerous board turnovers. They’ve performed in all manner of venues, from the Holland to the Music Hall to the Joslyn to the Orpheum to Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum to Peony Park’s Royal Grove to Memorial Park to Lewis & Clark Landing to Gene Leahy Mall. They’ve weathered wind, rain, bugs, egos, makeovers, strikes.
Then there are the legendary guest artists they’ve shared the stage with. Performers Van Cliburn, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma and conductors Arthur Fiedler, Howard Hanson, Robert Shaw. The list goes on and on.
Marcia Hinkle: Still An All-American Girl After All These Years
In a simpler time when schools honored students for their combined character, personality, appearance, academics and extracurricular activities, Marcia Hinkle was named Best All-Around Girl at Omaha North High School. “I was in a lot of things” she said. “I was the boys sports editor, I played tennis, I played in the orchestra, I was the drum majorette for the band and I was a decent student.”
It was the mid-1950s and the striking, athletic, talented, vivacious blond embodied the wholesome qualities of the All-American Girl Next Door. Think Sandra Dee. She even won the title of Miss Omaha after a fraternity put her up for it, making appearances during the city’s centennial celebration year (1954).
As a young woman Hinkle was the spitting image of Doris Day’s or Donna Reed’s Goodie-Good screen personas. She was the picture-perfect wife, mother and homemaker who still found time to play tennis, to volunteer — with the Junior League, the PTA, the Omaha Community Playhouse, among others. Where the similarity stopped is that Marcia was also a serious symphony musician. Then, as now, that meant sacrificing some family time in order to fulfill the demands of busy concert and rehearsal schedules and performing in string ensembles (the Myron Cohen and Midlands String Quartets). She began a second career as a real estate agent in the ‘70s that she continues today.
“I’m not absolutely dynamic or terrific at any particular thing,” she said, “but I’m pretty good at quite a few things.”
Not all was so picture-perfect. She and her first husband ended up divorcing after their three kids were grown. Through a mutual friend she then met Don Hinkle, her husband of nearly three decades years now. The two had actually gone on a blind date together in college but had not seen each other since. When they did, both were middle-aged, divorced, single, soon-to-be empty-nesters unsure if they wanted to take the plunge again but certain they were right for each other. Besides, he was a fellow real estate agent and tennis nut. They became partners in business and in life. Their CBS Home Real Estate office has flourished during their marriage.
“We’ve been multi-million dollar producers for 30 years,” she said proudly. Being a people-person is a must in that game. “I enjoy people,” she confirmed.
Marcia and Don are still actively engaged in helping put folks in homes, including some of her symphony colleagues — “I just sold one to another violinist.” Any marriage that can survive decades as realtors together must be solid. “We’ve just always gotten along together,” she said. “We enjoy working together. He’s not a huge symphony-goer. He loves the Pops and the lighter classics. But I haven’t gotten him to be a total die-hard for the masterworks. We also had the tennis connection.”
They played mixed doubles for years. “He would still be playing but he ended up with two new hips and then he ended up with bone cancer,” she said. When not caring for Don and attending to her symphony gigs, she’s likely tending her home or playing a match. “I love it. I still play. I’m in a ladies tennis league that’s been going probably 42 years now. There’s still quite a few of us playing that were in that original group. We play a competitive level of tennis once or twice a week. It’s great exercise. It’s a wonderful lifetime sport.”
The couple share a comfortable home in northwest Omaha’s Sunny Slope neighborhood. She’s as busy as ever these days between the symphony, her tennis and her grandkids but her and Don’s life has changed in one significant way recently — his cancer. It’s meant making certain accommodations, but they’re not letting the disease stand in the way of enjoying each other.
Marcia Hinkle, second from left, and the Midlands String Quartet
Through it all, music’s been the one constant in Marcia’s life, though it’s not something that’s consumed her. By some measures, she even got a late start. She was in 3rd grade when she began playing the tonette or song flute. In the 5th grade it was recommended she try the violin. It was as if the stringed instrument and her were made for each other. Still, she wasn’t completely carried away. “At one point I told my parents, ‘I don’t want to play,’ and they said, ‘OK.’ So I put my instrument down and two or three weeks later I decided I really did. That was sort of the turning point.”
An only child, Marcia was the apple of her Storz Brewery business manager father, Bill Wetzler, and her homemaker mother. Her dad started her playing tennis. She got her strokes down hitting against the garage door of her family’s home on Belvedere Blvd. across from Miller Park. She played on the North High girls squad. She went on to win state club titles.
Music was just another activity but as she progressed it became more than that. She was concertmaster with both the North High orchestra, which enjoyed a fine reputation, and with the All-City Youth Orchestra.
“I had a really fine high school teacher named Sam Thomas. He was a violinist. He coached and helped prepare me and a lot of other students for the music profession. He was very encouraging. He was one of my mentors.”
Surprisingly, she did not major in music at college. Instead, she majored in education. She was actually interested in studying law but the restrictive times discouraged her from pursuing such a male-centric field.
She tarried with the piano in college but, she said, “I had a horrid time. I couldn’t read bass clef.” She regrets not having learned piano first and then violin. She doesn’t recommend doing it “backwards” the way she did. After college she worked as an Omaha Public Schools 3rd and 6th grade teacher for two-plus years. Her husband Don also taught for a time.
Following her classroom gig she got hired by the Joslyn Art Museum as program hostess, a job that entailed supervising various events.
Music was always in her life. “I just wanted to play,” she said. “I liked performing. I didn’t have aspirations of being a soloist on the New York stage or anything. I really enjoyed playing in the orchestra setting. That was my forte. I didn’t like solo work that much. I suppose my passion honestly developed when I did more of the masterworks and the classics with the symphony. You know, they’re beautiful and thrilling to play as well as listen to, and they’re challenging, and that’s fun, too.”
She said she long ago found her niche playing as part of ensembles rather than soloing. “I suppose it’s gotten to be a comfort level over the years. If you’re going to be a soloist and enjoy it I think you have to do it pretty often to really not get uptight and nervous. I enjoy so much more being in an orchestra and there’s a talent to being an orchestra musician versus a soloist. Not every solo performer can be an orchestral person. Probably a lot of orchestral players can be soloists. I also love the people. I’ve sold a lot of them houses. A lot of them I call ‘my kids.’”
The man responsible for bringing her to the Omaha Symphony was its then-music director, Richard Duncan, one of her teachers at UNO, whose orchestra she played in. “I didn’t study with him until about my junior year in college,” said Marcia. “I worked with him a couple years and he was the one that encouraged me.” She recalled Duncan as “a very fine violinist” and taskmaster. “He wanted you to be a very diligent student, which became difficult because I was very widespread by my senior year in college.” Within a short span her appendix was removed, she married, she earned her degree, she began teaching and she joined the Symphony. All at age 20. Then came her three children.
Her new taskmaster became Joseph Levine, who replaced Duncan as music director. Even before the demands of a family, a home and a day job she had trouble making time for as much practice as her conductors expected. Her saving grace was being a quick study, “I always was blessed with an ability to sight read well, which they knew, but they still thought I should be spending more time practicing.” Once in the orchestra intensive attention to her craft became paramount. “It takes a tremendous commitment,” she said. So she found ways to fit in all the prep and performances around her many other responsibilities. Still, there were and are sacrifices she’s had to make in her personal life. Her loved ones perhaps didn’t always like it but they understood.
“I feel extremely blessed. My family’s been really wonderful in letting me do this. Your family has to be supportive or you can’t do it. You can’t be gone the hours you’re gone. You end up missing birthdays and…that’s just what you do. I mean, you do that with a lot of professions, but with the symphony the show always must goes on. You’re there and you do it and it doesn’t much matter what else it is. This takes priority. Like I love tennis, but when I’m doing a lot of music I don’t do tennis. Music is my first love. I love playing. I guess it’s just something that happens to you and I’m just grateful for everything I’ve been able to do in music.”
Over these 50 years she’s nary missed a scheduled performance, with the exception of a rare illness. She still eats the same preconcert meal she always has — a home cooked hamburger — and still plays the same violin she came to the symphony with a half-century ago. In fact, it’s the same one she’s primarily played since age 11. For that reason alone, it holds much sentimental value.
“I’ve had it ever since 8th grade,” said Marcia. “It’s a pretty nice violin. It was supposedly an Enrico Rocca-made instrument but I was told by someone that was not correct. Somewhere, years back, I had a certificate (of authenticity), but it’s long disappeared. I’m hoping one of my grandchildren will play it and I’ll pass it onto them. We’ll see. It’s served me well.”
She said her parents purchased it from Nielsen Violin Shop in Omaha, a third-generation store where such world-class string players as Isaac Stern, Fritz Kreisler and Midori have come to peruse its high-caliber instruments, bows and accessories.
Her violin’s unchanged but the orchestra she plays in is quite different than the one she joined 50 years ago. Besides wholesale changeovers in personnel, it’s gone from second-rate to first-class. “It’s a tremendous difference,” she said. “The repertoire we play is much more challenging, the level of performance is much better, the qualifications of the musicians are much better. I mean, there were some really talented musicians in the past but we have extremely talented people (across the board now). We just have experienced a lot of growth.”
That growth did not come without a cost. In the mid-’70s music director Thomas Briccetti and the Symphony board moved away from an orchestra drawn almost exclusively from community members to a core group drawn from the best players in the world. At least the best artists Omaha could afford to attract. That meant demoting some existing players and letting others go. Some left on their own, feeling insulted or betrayed their many years of service were not appreciated.
“It was a tough time,” she said. “That was a difficult change. Kind of heart-breaking in a way. We lost some people that were really good musicians that I wish would have stayed with us.”
There was also a musicians strike around then that brought long simmering tensions between artists and management to a head. In its wake she formed the Omaha Symphony Committee, a musicians group to voice their interests. “We really needed to be able to sit down and talk about things and the committee did sit down with board members. It was a very good thing.” So good that the differences were resolved and the committee still exists today as a vehicle for airing grievances, settling disputes and keeping the lines of communication open.
“You don’t want to get involved in something like a strike, You want to be able to talk about things in good discussions before the problem is too big.” She said there hasn’t been an outright strike since, although there’s been a work stoppage. “We missed a few concerts,” she said.
Marcia’s pro-active efforts reflect her conciliatory nature. “I don’t like to be negative, I like for people to be happy, especially when you’re making music. You don’t make beautiful music when you’re not feeling somewhat beautiful. It’s a lot more fun when everybody’s happy about what they’re doing.” One perpetual complaint that hasn’t changed, she added, is the pay symphony players receive.
Fifty years and counting and she’s still looking forward to the next season. “It’s been a great joy to play with the Symphony and to be a part of that organization. I can’t believe it’s been that long. I just kind of keep going. I don’t stop and think about it. I’m very happy to be here today and hopefully I’ll be here tomorrow.” She said she’s certain she’ll know when it’s time to step down. Until that time comes, however, she said she plans to continue “as long as I’m qualified, as long as I’m doing my job the way it should be done.”
A life without playing music is inconceivable. “It would be hard. I’m not sure I could just sit and listen. I just don’t know,” she said. “I’m so used to performing it. That’s what I enjoy most.”
Bill Sprague — Tinker, Teacher, Player, Cat
For almost as long as he can remember Bill Sprague’s had an affinity for music and tinkering with things. At 64 he’s still making music as an Omaha Symphony French Horn player and he’s still a Mr. Fix It specializing in instrument repair at his The Horn Works store in Ralston, Neb.
It’s not an exaggeration to say Sprague’s played with the symphony since coming of age. His unlikely start began as a 14 year-old Omaha Benson High School freshman. He was already well advanced despite having picked up the horn for the first time only five years earlier, in 4th grade. He took piano lessons before that at the insistence of his mother, a pianist who also taught the instrument. He was an only adopted child. His mother wisely didn’t try to instruct her son but even the private teacher she hired couldn’t get Bill to embrace the keyboards. “It did nothing for me,” he said. But the first time he laid sight on that shiny horn, he was smitten.
His horn work was confined to school lessons that first year and then his folks got him a private instructor, Don Swaggard, who played in the Symphony. Bill credits much of his early development to Swaggard, who still teaches today.
“I progressed, I wouldn’t say phenomenally quickly. I got from a beginner’s point to a reasonably good player by junior high,” said Bill. “Being in all city bands and orchestras and all those things I was usually at the top of the section or pretty close to the top. I got to the place where I was feeling pretty good about myself.”
Away from music, Bill learned what it meant to be meticulous working in the stock room at the family’s Sprague Pharmacy in Benson. He was also getting skilled using his dad’s woodworking tools, doing refinishing projects, and anything to do with cars. As a teen he worked at a Chevrolet auto dealership installing hubcaps, carpet, radios, air conditioners, you name it, on new arrivals.
By ‘58 Symphony music director Joseph Levine began a training orchestra of this area’s finest young musicians called the Omaha Youth Symphony, which is still going strong today. Bill’s private coach identified his protege as a prime candidate and, sure enough, Bill made the grade. Even in the Youth Symphony he stood out, as he was younger than any of the other players, who were largely high school or college upperclassmen. The experience of playing with the group had a big impact on the teen. “I really got to loving the orchestral music,” he said. Being pegged a rising star among local players meant being “a big fish in a small pond,” he said, “but nevertheless it was a very gratifying feeling.”
When a seat in the regular adult Symphony opened that next season Swaggard urged Bill to go for it. “Don was an aggressive person about that sort of thing and had he not been so in favor of it and really pushing on it I probably wouldn’t have done it, at least not with the (same) vigor. I wanted it, but mostly because he said, ‘This is something you can get, this is something you can do.’” Swaggard didn’t mislead either, telling Bill he would have to work harder than he ever had before to reach a level he couldn’t yet appreciate. “And all of that was true,” said Bill. “It did take a great deal more work. He really paved the way with the conductor, Joseph Levine, and got him to believe that he could take somebody like me and work with me and make it happen.”
Bill did make it, as did a Youth Symphony percussionist and a violinist. Earning a Symphony slot — as 4th French Horn — at 14 is analogous “to a kid playing Pop Warner League ball suddenly getting to play semi-pro ball, just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “How awesome it was to be at that level. It was amazing. I felt I was really special and I had that feeling for a number of years.”
How was Bill treated at the start by veteran musicians old enough to be his parents or grandparents?
“More as a novelty than anything at first,” he said. “The age difference was so great that it was hard for them to really believe that you belonged. It took awhile to really gain any acceptance and you had to earn it, definitely earn it. I would say the three of us were the type of players that were willing to work on that and earn it and to find out what it took to do it and gain that respect.”
He said “it probably wasn’t until I was into the college years” that that respect was granted. He continued his development at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education and performance. He taught and was a band director in the Papillion and Bellevue public schools. Meanwhile, he and childhood sweetheart, Kathie, a retired teacher and fellow musician, married and raised two sons, both of whom are musicians. His wife does the books at The Horn Works and both boys have apprenticed as repair technicians there. Drew is electronic department manager and does percussion and electronic repair. David works for the state.
Bill’s penchant for working with his hands made it “natural” and practical that he began repairing his own horns in his basement. He moved on to working on a wide range of students’ and professionals’ instruments. He was very intentional about learning the trade of instrument repair from masters and mentors he sought out.
“All of whom have passed away,” he said, “and this is kind of the way this profession is. We don’t have many of us and there’s not a lot of guys hammering at the door to get in and find out how to do this. I would say the number one person was Charlie Sheppard. As a teacher I used to go out and hang around with him during vacation breaks. A lot of schools would send instruments in during Christmas break because nobody’s using them then. I’d watch and learn from him. It takes a lifetime and you may never get there, but you can watch somebody who knows, who’s already made the mistakes and learned the ways to do it, and it helps a lot.”
Ultimately, he said, “you learn by doing.” Before long, Charlie, who also played and taught music, trusted his protege. “He’d say, ‘Here, go do this one,’ handing me a horn. “So I did that. It’s a trial and error method.” Bill misses the Charlies and their Old World shops. “It was just fascinating to watch these guys sitting at their benches working on things. There was something about those shops — you got within a hundred feet and you could smell the chemicals. Today, EPA and OSHA rules prohibit that. But I loved that smell. I mean, you could get high on it,” he said, laughing.
Being mechanically inclined helped Bill master the craft but working on trumpets and motor vehicles are worlds apart. “The biggest difference is that an instrument is so much more finely concentrated with so many small pieces in very small areas,” he said. Where a car dent fender may entail hammering, disc grinding, painting and priming, a horn dent involves a refined burnishing process whose tools must reach narrow, hard to access spaces. Some tools are like plumbers’ snakes with strings of teflon-coated ball bearings thread through the instrument’s arteries and guts. Surgical-like copes are sometimes used to see up inside joints.
That’s not to say Bill and his techs never get to pound things. Sometimes a repair requires heating the metal and hammering or pressing it back into shape. The only way to get at some problems is to dismantle the piece. After decades diagnosing and doctoring instruments, Bill’s just about seen it all. “I think there’s not too many we haven’t encountered,” he said. A unique one was a sousaphone with a rotted peach stuck in its tubing. The gunk had to be rotor-rooted out.
Occasionally a name musician comes into the shop. One is former Tonight Show band leader Doc Severinson. “I’ve known Doc now for better than 30 years,” said Bill. “The first time he played Omaha with the Symphony he needed something done on his trumpet and one of the players in our section said, ‘Well, just give it to Bill, he’ll take a look.’ Doc did and Bill brought the famed’s musician’s trumpet back to the shop and took care of the problem. Before Bill could call to say he’d fixed it Doc showed up. “He just couldn’t be without it any longer,” said Bill.
Bill delights in an anecdote from Doc’s visit. After testing out his patched-up horn Doc pawed through a box of odds-and-ends Bill kept — spare parts and just plain junk — when hr fished out a filthy mouthpiece, put it in his mouth and buzzed it just as Bill warned, “No, don’t do that!” Too late. “You want to sell this?” Doc asked, none-the-worse-for-wear. “You can keep it, I was going to throw it away,” Bill replied, shocked that a world-class artist would want it. “It was an old New York Bach 3 mouthpiece and he couldn’t have too many of them,” Bill noted.
“Every time since then when he comes to town we sit down and talk in the rehearsal room or in his dressing room. On three occasions he’s come to the store. He’d rather come here and talk to us than sit in his hotel room all day. Once, he took us all to lunch. We worked on four of his instruments at the same time. His horns actually were in pretty bad shape for a guy at that level. It was amazing to us he could and would play on those.” Bill and his crew also did some silver plating for Doc. “He’s a very nice man and, oh, the stories he tells us about his life.”
Another star Bill has a long relationship with is Chip Davis, the visionary Omaha musician behind American Gramaphone and Mannheim Steamroller, with whom Bill’s played off and on from the start. Bill drove Itzhak Perlman between Omaha and Lincoln for a series of symphony engagements, allowing him to hear “all these marvelous stories of his life.”
The orchestra keeps Bill plenty busy but he’s also played with the Lincoln, Sioux City and Des Moines symphonies — when they put out calls for extra brass — and with the Omaha-based Palladium Brass Quintet. He does some teaching with the Omaha Youth Symphony and with private students. His full-line Horn Works store, which he’s run full-time since retiring from the classroom, does more than just repair instruments. It sells them and offers lessons.
Bill’s still learning himself even after all these years. He fondly recalls former Omaha Symphony maestro Victor Yampolsky as a superb teacher who brought out the best in him and in the orchestra. “No question in my estimation he was the finest conductor/musician we’ve had around here. When he was here he was always teaching and there wasn’t anybody that wasn’t always just right there (with him).”
An Omaha Symphony career was Bill’s goal but he never thought he’d still be at it 50 years and counting. “Am I proud? Yes I am, very much so,” he said. “To be 50 years in about anything — a marriage, a job — is a milestone. For most of us it’s at least half our life, if not more. It’s a big deal to do something for that long and to still enjoy it, and I know Marcia (Hinkle) does just as I do. You do this not because it’s a habit, you do it because you enjoy it. If they would stop paying me tomorrow I’d continue to do it,” said Bill, hastily adding, “I don’t want them to know that.”
He’s committed to keep right on enjoying it, too. “As long as I can keep my job by doing what I do well enough to stay in there I want to play with the Symphony. I had no idea it would be this long either but I also didn’t think I was going to use Omaha as a steppingstone and go somewhere else. Maybe very early on I did. But then I got into the real world of auditioning and saw what the level was out there that’s beyond Omaha and how much that takes, and I wasn’t willing to give up my life to do that. That’s basically what it takes — you dedicate everything to it, and everything I had was here. My family was here, my regular day job was here.
“For me, this is the only gig in town.”
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