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Memories Through the Fog
Part love letter, part call to action, Dr. Deborah McEniry's one-woman play is more than a tribute. It's real purpose is to save lives
(from Apple News)
The fog is so thick it surrounds the photographs lining her mantel, the faces within so obscured they might as well be those of strangers. The voices in the room – surely they hold a clue. Each spoken word is a hint. They call her Gramz.
But that fog. It is indiscriminate, hiding everything. A twin sister. Seven children. Faces. Names. Telephone numbers and birthdays and her favorite flavor of chewing gum. Memories, big and small.
As the cold blanket fills every corner of the room, Hazel Louise Corts reaches out, somewhere beyond the insidious cloud, to find something, anything, that will tell her where she is. Who she is.
When nothing works, she finds solace in a simple act. She peels potatoes.
Hazel Louise Corts was a woman ahead of her time. Adventurous and independent, she worked both in and out of the home – something that, while not unheard of, wasn’t the norm in 1950s' America. A pastor’s wife and secretary, she raised seven children. Three became college presidents, two were preachers, one a lawyer and another a teacher.
Dr. Deborah McEniry, chair of the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University’s Theatre Department, is one of her 15 grandchildren. It’s been 20 years since her “Gramz” passed, and McEniry is left with the very thing Alzheimer’s stole many years before from her grandmother: memories.
Like the one in which Hazel Louise Corts, on her last day on earth, peeled potatoes for her family’s dinner. Or that she took McEniry on her first roller coaster ride; Gramz was 52, her granddaughter six. Neither were afraid.
Her pocketbook always smelled of chewing gum, McEniry remembers; she can close her eyes today and still smell the purse, redolent of peppermint.
“I loved it when I had to get something from her purse because even if she was out of gum, her purse had that smell to it.”
As McEniry tells these stories, she briefly leaves behind the accomplished actress and professor she is today. She’s transported back into a little girl, enamored with the amazing woman – Hazel Louise Corts – who taught her so much, loved her so much.
But the moment passes, and McEniry understands that as life moves on, memories hold incredible value. Keeping them inside, you see, subjects them to the fog.
It means risking their loss.
That’s why McEniry decided to open the windows and let the sunlight burn it away.
On Oct. 4 at Anderson’s Daniel Recital Hall, McEniry is performing a play she wrote called “Hazel Louise,” a one-woman show about her grandmother. After that, she’s off to the theater capitol of the world, New York City, where she is one the select performers presenting at the United Solo festival on Theater Row. It’s the largest solo theatre festival in the world. Dr. Alicia Corts, McEniry’s cousin and a theatre professor at St. Leo University, co-wrote and is the play’s director.
It’s a love letter to their grandmother, who died in 1998. A 75-minute journey through Hazel Louise Corts’ life, McEniry portrays her as a child in Illinois during the Great Depression – a time that saw her twin sister pass away at just nine-years old – to her final days in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“Gramz practiced kindness until it became a habit,” McEniry said. “She never spoke harshly to anyone. I think her kindness and thoughtfulness was so habitual that even though she didn’t always know much about what was happening those last few years, she still knew how to be kind and polite.”
The play is more than a love letter, though.
Alzheimer’s is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, and the only one for which there is no cure or effective treatment. More than five million people suffer from it. It is progressive, and it is incurable.
Cindy Alewine has spent nearly 30 years of her life fighting Alzheimer’s. The executive director of the Alzheimer’s Association of South Carolina, she said the reason the illness is so devastating is tragically simple.
“The hardest part, I think, is a patient losing their memories,” she said from her office in Anderson. “Families tell us it’s like losing their loved ones a little bit at a time. They are still there, of course, but they lose their ability to communicate and they lose their personality. They forget who their children and grandchildren are. And that’s so painful.”
It’s a pain McEniry knows well.
“Even at the very end, she never got that combative spirit that can be common in Alzheimer’s patients,” McEniry said. “She didn’t know my name at the end, but she knew that I was someone she loved and so she just called me ‘sweetheart.’ And that was good enough for me.”
But it’s not good enough. Not really. McEniry is demonstrating that with her show. More than celebrating Hazel Louise Corts’ life, McEniry hopes her performance will generate awareness – and that awareness will lead to a cure.
“The disease has been around for a long time; Dr. Alzheimer’s discovery took place in 1906,” McEniry said. “The National Institute for Aging was formed in the 1970s. The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America was formed in 2002. Significant progress has been made, but more research is needed — particularly with an aging Baby Boomer population. My hope is that the more we can make our public aware of the disease and what it takes from the person and the person’s family, the more we can increase medical research and funding.”
Alewine with the Alzheimer’s Association agrees. She said that while progress is being made, “it’s going to take all of us to end the disease.”
As a professor, McEniry understands the mindset of youth. It’s all around her, every day. The importance of memories is often lost on college men and women, going about their studies while looking ahead to the next day, the next month, the next year. What good is looking back when what’s ahead is so full of promise?
But life is but a vapor, the Bible says. A fog. Here one day, gone the next.
“Memories are important – both the good and the bad,” McEniry said. “Just as important is the relationship we make with those memories. They help structure our lives and make us who we are today.
“The bad are important to remember so we learn from them and don’t repeat our mistakes," she said. "The good are to be savored — they make us smile and laugh when we are going through tough times.”
If you or a loved one is impacted by Alzheimer's, you can reach the Alzheimer's Association of South Carolina at Alz.org/SC or by telephone at 864-224-3045.
Paw Power: Is Clemson’s new radio distribution agreement changing the rules of the game?
(from the Upstate Business Journal)
In an age when college sports are increasingly national, Clemson University’s athletic program is turning the “bigger is better” paradigm on its head.
Case in point: Rather than rely on a media-rights organization with a big footprint to broadcast Tiger football, baseball, and basketball, the university has signed a new deal with a boutique sports marketing firm, while expanding its relationship with local flagship station WCCP 105.5 The Roar.
“We’re actually not building our own brand. We’re building Clemson’s brand,” said Scott Morris, president of Clemson Sports and Campus Marketing for JMI Sports. In June, his company signed a seven-year, $68 million multimedia and marketing rights partnership with Clemson that’s different from what many other college athletics programs are doing.
A ‘Boutique’ Approach
JMI Sports is headquartered among the palm trees, sand, and surf in San Diego, Calif., far from the rolling foothills and red clay of Upstate South Carolina. But don’t let that fool you. Its portfolio of college properties is tiny by today’s standards. In addition to Clemson, it holds the media and marketing rights for the University of Kentucky, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Ivy League.
The first big news coming out of Clemson’s partnership with JMI Sports came in August, when the sports talk radio station WCCP announced an expansion of its role as Clemson athletics’ flagship station. Starting this season, WCCP began distributing broadcasts to 17 Clemson Tiger Network affiliates across the region, in addition to its historic role of broadcasting football, baseball, and men’s and women’s basketball games.
That’s a change from Clemson athletics’ previous agreement with Learfield, a 1,300-employee, nationwide media rights company that represents close to 130 institutions. Subsequent to Clemson’s deal with JMI Sports, Learfield served as distributor.
“In simplest terms, [Learfield was] Grand Central Station for all [Clemson athletics] broadcasts,” said Ben Milstead, director of operations for WCCP. He said radio broadcasts under Learfield connected first to its hub in Jefferson City, Mo., then back to stations like WCCP. In short, that’s what made Learfield the distributor of Clemson sports broadcasts.
Under the new agreement with JMI Sports – and WCCP’s role as Clemson’s new distributor – local broadcasts stay local. Milstead said the infrastructure needed to distribute broadcasts led to WCCP investing “around $50,000” to build a newer studio, buy equipment, and hire additional staff.
It’s worth it, Milstead said.
“It’s solidifying Clemson’s brand with ours,” he said. “It’s just a large part of who we are as a station. We are the only sports talk station in South Carolina that has live, local sports talk 13 hours a day. And the majority of that time is spent on Clemson.”
That’s the way JMI Sports wants it. Morris said the company partners with “premier” schools, and places trust in local stakeholders at those schools who know the brand, its audience, and how the two align.
“It’s all about the university, the local engagement,” Morris said. “We have to have an alignment of priorities. [WCCP has] the knowledge and relationships that are necessary to be our partner.”
Amateur Athletics is Big Business
Broadcasting college athletics is big business. Last October, Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm, sold its stake in Learfield for a reported $1.3 billion – a tidy profit from the stake it purchased for more than $500 million in 2013, the New York Times reported.
It’s getting bigger, too. Learfield and IMG College, two of the biggest names in the college media rights game, are reportedly in negotiations about a merger. If federal regulators approve the deal, the two companies would own an overwhelming majority of media rights for big-name schools.
Learfield alone owns the rights of three of the top four-ranked college football teams (No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Penn State, and No. 10 Oklahoma).
One way of managing broadcast rights for college athletics isn’t necessarily better than the other, Morris said. Companies like Learfield and IMG College have one model. JMI is just different.
“We have a very small corporate function,” Morris said. “We put most of our resources at the school. And you can only do that if you work with premier institutions.”
Of course, describing the new JMI Sports, Clemson University, and WCCP partnership as “local” is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, WCCP’s programming is Clemson-centric, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Yes, JMI has an entire team of locals, headquartered in Greenville, that wear orange most days of the week. And, yes, Clemson athletics is wildly popular in the Upstate.
Nor is JMI a small company. It is a major player in a very big game. In addition to its media-rights partnerships, its sports facility development clients include the San Diego Padres and the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, for example.
In many ways, the Clemson Tigers have the cachet of a professional team – especially the university’s football team. It is, in short, a national brand already. The key, WCCP officials said, is marrying the idea of Clemson’s status nationally with broadcasts that have a hyper-local focus. That’s the station’s model, and JMI is on board.
“Clemson was looking for a partner that is very boutique and personalized, but as a national brand,” said Debra Jones, WCCP’s general manager. “JMI offers that.”
“The feeling we got from Clemson was that they didn’t want… a cookie-cutter national broadcast,” said Milstead. “They wanted more localized content.”
In Morris, Clemson has an ally at JMI Sports. He bleeds orange. Raised in Rock Hill, he holds a degree from Clemson. The voicemail message on his cellphone ends with “Go Tigers,” a number that, by the way, has an 864 area code. It’s just another way a national company feels smaller than it really is.
“We’re going to take a backset,” Morris said. “We’re in the car, but we want to put our schools front and center. They drive everything. To that end, JMI’s approach is that we’re a bit of a boutique company. We carefully select and target schools in which we work.
“I’m only interested in Clemson.”
Over at WCCP, staff members say little has changed. More importantly, radio listeners won’t notice much of a difference.
“WCCP has been a longstanding affiliate with Clemson University; we are very Clemson-centric,” Milstead said. But the new partnership, he said, supports Clemson’s sports program in ways “that we didn’t have before.”
“There are very few Division I schools in the nation that originate the way we do now. So many schools use Learfield, IMG, and CBS. Few people do what we do on a local level. This is what’s gonna set JMI apart.”