When Audrey Met Alice: an author interview, part 2

29 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Interviews, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Writing

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Here is the second installment of the interview with Rebecca Behrens, author of When Audrey Met Alice. In case you missed yesterday’s segment, this just-releaed novel tells the story of first daughter Audrey Rhodes, who discovers the secret diary of Theodore Roosevelt’s teenage daughter Alice in the floorboards of her White House bedroom.

The Strawfoot: And your novel’s protagonist, Audrey Lee Rhodes, Tell us about her and her family.

Rebecca Behrens: After Audrey’s mother becomes the first female president of the United States, her family relocates from the Twin Cities to Washington. Her father takes on the role of “First Gentleman” as well as maintaining her career in scientific research at a university. Unlike Alice Roosevelt, Audrey is an only child, and a few years younger than Alice was during her time at the White House. But Audrey still forms a real connection with Alice by reading the diary entries—their emotional experiences of living in the White House and being the children of important politicians is similar, despite the century separating them.

You visited the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace with your parents, both of whom knew a fair amount about the twenty-sixth president. Did they inspire your interest in history?

Alice Roosevelt as she was in 1902

Absolutely! I was very lucky to be raised by two history-loving parents. We were also a family that enjoyed travel, and our road trips always included stops at historic sites. Specifically, interest in Theodore Roosevelt runs in my family—my great-grandfather was present at the famous speech TR gave in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, right after having been shot in an assassination attempt. My father has done a lot of reading and independent research on the Roosevelts (and has visited almost all of the Roosevelt NPS and NHS sites, from the Inaugural Site in Buffalo to Sagamore Hill on Long Island to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota). I first learned about Alice from my dad’s Roosevelt stories. I found her fascinating and decided I needed to find a way to write about her, one day.

What other historic sites, especially Roosevelt sites, have you visited?

I’ve visited Sagamore Hill and Youngs Memorial Cemetery in Oyster Bay, and I’ve spent time in Washington, DC, although I need to look up Alice’s house there. I also unknowingly visited where Alice’s Auntie Bye (TR’s sister Bamie/Anna Roosevelt Cowles) lived in New York City, at what once was 689 Madison Ave and 62nd Street. It was while I taking a walk and stopped for a break at that very intersection that I came up with the initial idea for the plot of When Audrey Met Alice. Later I found out that not only was that a Roosevelt family site, but Alice spent a fair amount of time there as a young person. Weird!

You are a children’s book editor. What advice might you have for aspiring writers?

I think that the most important qualities you need to be a writer are patience, dedication, and curiosity. Writing and publishing a book is a wonderful experience—but it’s also a long haul! Curiosity can lead you to a great concept, dedication is necessary to see it through, and patience is essential because writing is often slow, at all stages of the publishing process. I’m not a historian, so I had to work hard to try to do this setting and subject justice. But because I found the subject so fascinating, it was easy to keep trying.

Did your recent trip to the White House live up to expectations?

Absolutely! It was thrilling to be there in person. Looking out toward the Washington Monument from the inside of the South Lawn was a surreal, fantastic moment. My visit was also very useful in terms of improving the factual accuracy of my book. I got to experience visitor security firsthand, understand the scope of the space (I expected the lawn to feel larger and more exposed than it does), and soak up sensory details—like how the grounds smell and what ambient noise is around.

Where can people go to find out more about When Audrey Met Alice?

There is more information about the book as well as links to resources like an educator’s guide and an annotated version of Alice’s diary on my website, www.rebeccabehrens.com.

(image/Library of Congress)

When Audrey Met Alice: an author interview

28 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Interviews, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Writing

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Early this spring children’s book editor and first time author Rebecca Behrens visited the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site. After the house tour she introduced herself and told me about her first novel. When Audrey Met Alice. I read the book recently and enjoyed it a great deal. Here is the first of a two part interview.

The Strawfoot: Your new book, When Audrey Met Alice, tells the story of Audrey Rhodes and her experiences as first daughter. What inspired you to write the novel?

Rebecca Behrens: The White House seems like such a serious, powerful place—but it’s both a historic site and a home, one where first kids can have tea parties, build tree houses, and play hide-and-seek. When I made that connection as a kid, after seeing photographs of the Kennedy children playing in the Oval Office, I became fascinated by the idea of families in the White House. After President Obama was elected in 2008, I wondered how the lives of his daughters would change as they headed to Washington. I imagined that there would be a lot of wonderful and exciting opportunities for them in the coming years—and probably some hardships, too. The idea of a “first daughter” feeling a little isolated and constrained stuck with me, and soon developed into Audrey’s character.

Audrey is thirteen and discovers the fictional diary of the very real Alice Roosevelt in the floorboards of her closet in the Yellow Bedroom. Alice was also a teenage first daughter, or FIDO. How did you research and write the diary?

author Rebecca Behrens

Much of my research was done the old-fashioned way: heading to the public library and checking out lots and lots of books on Alice Roosevelt and White House life. I used many online resources, including official White House websites, the White House Historical Association, National Parks Service sites, newspaper archives, and unofficial pages that detail White House history. I also read fiction set around Alice’s time to get a feel for how language was used. And I looked up a lot of words in etymology dictionaries to try to figure out if they were ones Alice Roosevelt and her family might have used. To write the diary entries, I started by making a timeline of events and experiences during the real Alice’s life. Then I retold them in the fictional Alice’s voice. Occasionally, I even worked in a real quote from Alice or her father.

Alice was a teenager more than a century ago and yet her experiences were similar to young people’s of every generation, minus the White House bit. What advice do you think she might give to twenty-first century teens?

While researching Alice’s White House years, I was really struck by how universal many of her experiences and concerns were. I wasn’t expecting that! She worried about her looks, her friends, and her future—just like girls who weren’t the daughter of the president, and girls today. What made Alice very unique, though, was her brave (and, at the time, pretty unconventional) commitment to living authentically. She embraced the idea of doing things differently and being true to herself—even if that ruffled some feathers. I think her famous phrase, “eat up the world!” is a great message for teens today.

There were no paparazzi as we know them today during Alice’s time but in many ways she was one of the original modern celebrities. Describe the world she lived in.

There is a great line from one of Alice’s interviews: “Woe betide the girl who emerged from the conservatory at a dance with her hair slightly disheveled. As one’s hair tended to fall down at the best of times it was frightfully difficult trying to keep up appearances.” (Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Michael Teague, p. 66) Girls in her time period were subject to intense scrutiny about their appearances and activities. It’s interesting that while famous people today are subject to invasive paparazzi and a huge amount of attention online, there is much more protection for the first family’s privacy.

The media has an unofficial agreement to not report on the first daughters outside of official events and appearances. Alice, however, had “camera fiends” appearing on the White House doorstep to take her picture. Enormous crowds showed up at her public appearances. Newspapers reported breathlessly about her activities, including her dating life. And they reported a fair number of lies: like false stories about her getting engaged or dancing on a roof in her undergarments.

Tomorrow, part 2

Questions for Ranger Shelton Johnson

09 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Heritage tourism, Interviews, National Park Service

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Over the weekend I had a discussion with someone concerning the Times article about African American attendance at National Parks. This, in turn, led to the topic of Ranger Shelton Johnson and the work he has done at Yosemite. So, here again is the interview I did with Ranger Johnson this past March.

Shelton Johnson’s Gloryland is one of the most meaningful books I have read in recent years. The novel tells the story of Elijah Yancy, a Buffalo Soldier serving in the U.S. Army at the turn of the twentieth century. The book is many things: a meditation on the importance of family and place, a reminder of the role that nature plays, or should play, in all of our lives, a treatise on the ironies and injustices of race in America, a thoughtful work of literature. If you have not read Gloryland, I recommend adding it to your reading list. Regular readers of this site may remember Ranger Johnson from the poignant short film The Way Home. He was also prominent in Ken Burns’s The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Ranger Johnson has had a long and successful career with the NPS and currently serves at Yosemite National Park. Recently, he took time from his busy schedule to answer some question about his debut novel, his thoughts on Interpretation, and more.

The Strawfoot: The protagonist of your novel, Gloryland, is Sergeant Elijah Yancy. Tell us something about him. Where was he born and what was his family history?

Ranger Johnson: Elijah is the son of sharecroppers. His mother and father were enslaved before emancipation. He was born in Spartanburg, SC and raised there until he left forever as a young man.

His grandmother was Seminole. Relations between African and Native Americans may surprise some readers. Is this something readers comment on?

The fact that he had 2 grandmothers who were Seminole and Cherokee would not surprise African American readers. There was a census done around 1900 that determined that roughly 1 out of every 3 African Americans had an Indian branch to their family tree. Certain Indian cultures took in runaway slaves such as the Seminole, but also the Cherokee and the Choctaw. Consequently, many African Americans are also part Indian as a result of this history. It’s just that you never hear about it in popular culture such as novels and movies, but Black people have known about this heritage for years. My maternal grandparents are Black Cherokees from Oklahoma.

Elijah was born on Emancipation Day, January 1, 1863, and had an older brother killed at Fort Wagner during the Civil War. What were the experiences of African American soldiers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Fighting Indians, Cubans, Filipinos, and other people of color must have have, to say the least, brought about mixed feelings in these men. Is this something they discussed privately amongst themselves, or shared in letters to friends and loved ones back home?

This fact and the soldiers feelings about this “activity” was shared in their correspondence. There’s a book that collects some of these reminiscences entitled, “Smoked Yankees and the Struggle for Empire” by Willard Gatewood. In these letters you can hear how the buffalo soldiers felt about their struggle with the Filipino Insurrectos, men that were fighting for their own freedom from the Spanish, and then the U.S. They were definitely aware of the irony! Some of these soldiers just concentrated on doing their duty. Period. But others were conflicted, most notably David Fagan who deserted from the American forces and joined with the Filipino people and their struggle for independence. Some of the Buffalo Soldiers stayed on in the Philippines after the war, married, and became part of the culture. There was even a call for African Americans to move to the Philippines because life there was so much better than life at the time in any part of the South…

You have spoken to many descendants of Buffalo Soldiers over the years. Yancy himself is telling his story thirty years after his military service ended. Were the stories these men had to tell passed on from one generation to the next, or is it something that has only come to light in recent decades?

I haven’t spoken to many descendants, but I have spoken to a few. These stories/contributions were passed on from family member to family member, generation to generation. They weren’t in the history books but they were shared in the homes of hundreds of families…

What was it like working as a Buffalo Soldier in Yosemite National Park in 1903? Why were they there and what duties did they perform?

It was hard work, but a soldier was used to hard work! It was also a “dream” job so to speak. One officer referred to service in Yosemite as “the Cavalryman’s Paradise!” Their duties weren’t that different from today’s Wilderness Ranger, i.e. long patrols, enforcement of park rules and regulations, basically providing a presence of authority, that the park was being taken care of…

You grew up in Detroit, but also spent time in Europe and elsewhere because your father was in the Army. What was it like living in these places?

I was very young at the time so my memories are vivid but limited! I went to Kindergarten in Germany and first grade in England, but those memories became very important once I returned to Detroit because they provided an imaginative alternative to the inner city environment that was my home for many years. Most of my friends in Detroit had never been overseas let alone lived overseas. It made it easier for me to imagine life in a place that was different…

How did you eventually come to work for the National Park Service and what inspired you to do so?

I was a student in the University of Michigan’s Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. My emphasis was poetry. I decided to take a job as a dishwasher in Yellowstone National Park. I did this because I grew up in Detroit watching nature programs with my grandfather who used to fish on Mackinac Island. I remember seeing many documentaries about Yellowstone and the other national parks but I had never visited a national park in this country. I had been in the mountains before during the time my family lived in Germany. We visited Berchtesgaden or Eagle’s Nest which was a former stronghold of Hitler during WWII. It was also high in the Bavarian Alps and I never forgot the beauty of those snowy mountains…

Traditionally, African American attendance at National Parks, especially the nature parks, has been significantly lower than that of whites. One of your goals is to increase awareness of the National Parks within the African American community. What are some of the misconceptions Africans Americans, Latinos, and other minority groups have about Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and elsewhere?

I think it’s basically an unknown and with any unknown there’s a certain amount of fear. Some African American are nervous about visiting ANY area where there are very few other African Americans. You have to remember that there’s a history of violence against African Americans, and those cultural memories are alive and well. There’s still fear of groups like the KKK and other supremacist organizations, and that results in fear and anxiety. People don’t go on vacation to be fearful or anxious! Consequently, some African Americans who briefly considered a trip to a national park, decide to go somewhere else because of this fear of the unknown. But history can work in your favor too. The knowledge that the Buffalo Soldiers once protected Yosemite and Sequoia can result in a feeling of ownership and pride rather than fear and that can lead to a trip back to the mountains.

Who, or what, would you say are your greatest intellectual influences?

Too many to list. I was a literature major! John Keats, Langston Hughes, Shelley, Richard Wright, Shakespeare, Chaucer, St. John Perse, Cavafy, Anna Akmatova, Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Aime Cesaire, and the list goes on!

You have a Literature background. What role, if any, has this played in your approach to Interpretation?

It has shaped everything in terms of structure and content with regard to my Interpretive programs, as well as my classical music background!

(images/top, Sierra Club; bottom, National Park Service)

Moving Midway: An interview

24 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Interviews, The new South

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Earlier this month I mentioned re-watching Godfrey Cheshire’s Moving Midway. [Original review here.] Since then Mr. Cheshire kindly sat down to answer some questions:

The Strawfoot: The focus of the film is the physical relocation of your family’s ancestral home, Midway Plantation. Tell us about Midway and your cousin’s decision to move it.

Mary Hilliard Hinton (1869-1961), Midway Plantation matriarch, as she was in 1914

Mary Hilliard Hinton, 1869-1961: Midway matriarch and family storyteller as she was in 1914

Godfrey Cheshire: Midway Plantation was built in 1848 on land in central North Carolina that my mother’s family, the Hintons, had occupied since getting a land grant from the British crown circa 1740. When I was a kid, it was this magical, ancient realm where I spent many weekends; it was also the center of our family’s memory and holiday gatherings. Flash forward to 2002, when my first cousin Charlie Silver and his wife Dena, who now own Midway, tell me they are thinking of moving all its buildings to a new location (if they can find one) in order to escape the urban sprawl that’s encroaching on the property and making it unpleasant to live there. At that point I began thinking of making a film that would not only document the family drama and logistical challenges of this project, but that would also look at the conflicted image of the Southern plantation in American history.

Who is Robert Hinton and what is his role in the story?

For me, Robert was a godsend. In early 2004 I shot some initial footage for the film at Midway. When I returned to New York, I saw a letter in the New York Times Book Review from a man named Robert Hinton who said he had grown up in Raleigh and was now a historian who taught African-American studies at NYU. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I read that. I contacted him and he said his grandfather was born a slave at Midway, and it turns out he had done lots of research about the Hintons and their history. So he came aboard as the film’s Chief Historian and Associate Producer, and made innumerable contributions to it. He is on camera a lot in the film, which is great since he’s as witty and charismatic as he is knowledgeable.

Robert Hinton is not your blood relation. You discovered in making the film, however, that you have numerous African American relatives. What has that experience been like?

Well, the initial experience was quite stunning. I had grown up never suspecting that I had any African-American blood relations, but in the early stages of shooting, Charlie told me of having been visited by a black man who showed him evidence that we had a common mixed-race ancestor, a man named Ruffin Hinton, who was born in 1848, the product of a liaison between the builder of Midway and a slave. Charlie accepted this evidence, but soon afterwards the black man died and I was unable to locate his family. Then, in 2006, in the latter stage of shooting the film, Robert received an email from a middle-school teacher in Brooklyn named Al Hinton who said he was researching family history online and believed that he was kin to the Hintons of Midway. This was how we connected with the roughly 100 descendents of Ruffin Hinton, most of whom still live in North Carolina. They invited me to one of their family reunions and I was quite moved by the experience. Obviously the whole issue of slavery is a complex and painful one, but they were very warm and welcoming. I felt a real connection with them that came from this shared history. This was very important not just to the film but also to me personally; I felt like I was discovering a part of myself that I’d never known. I’ve kept in touch with some of these “new” cousins and I value these relationships greatly.

Midway in its new location, 2007

One of the film’s biggest strengths is the blending of the personal and the historical. How did the people depicted in the documentary react to the film?

For the most part, the reactions were very, very good. When we premiered the film at the 2007 Full Frame Documentary in Durham, N.C., members of the black and white sides of the family came for it, seemed to really enjoy the way the film explored the history and meaning of Midway, and met each other at the very celebratory party that was held afterwards. That’s been the general tenor of things since, too. However, I must note, rather sadly, that a few members of the white family seem to have been disaffected. They haven’t communicated with me, so I don’t know specifically what they’re upset about, but it’s too bad.

You are a film critic in your “day job.” In that capacity you were uniquely positioned to analyze the moonlight and magnolias interpretation of the Old South given to us in such films as Gone with the WInd. Was this Lost Cause narrative something you were always aware of, or did it become significant as the film project took off?

It was something I intended from the first, because I’ve always been interested in the image of the Southern plantation in popular culture, and I figured I couldn’t make a film about Midway without exploring the plantation’s meanings to Americans over the course of history. The “Lost Cause” mythology that you mention belongs to the late 19th/early 20th centuries and thus is only a part of the larger Plantation Myth, which started before the Civil War. When I began my research, I was surprised to find that the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture had a longer entry for “Plantation Myth” than it did for “Plantation,” suggesting that the imaginary plantation was even more important than the actual institution! In the film, I trace the evolution of the plantation’s image across several milestones of popular culture, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin through The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind to Roots: an evolution that of course both mirrored and helped create a whole complex set of attitudes about race, politics and history.

Have different viewers–white/black; Northern/Southern; older/younger–responded differently to the film?

That’s a good question, because I was frankly more concerned about one side in each of those pairings you mention: that is, I was a bit nervous about the reactions of black people, non-Southerners, and young people. But in every case I was extremely pleased with the responses. I think this is because the film intends to be inclusive and to respect all the people and points of view it includes – even ones that we don’t necessarily like or agree with. In that way, it “depolarizes” issues that seem inherently polarizing. Black people like it I think because it recognizes their struggles and shows me and my black cousins trying to bridge our divided histories. Northerners appreciate that it presents Southerners black and white as real people rather than as abstractions connected to certain “issues.” But I must say I’ve been most gratified by the reactions of young people, who are often supposed not to be interested in history. I didn’t give a single thought to this while making the film, but teachers have told me that students love the film because it has colorful real-life characters and an engaging, even suspenseful story that brings to life issues that can seem dry and remote in textbooks. I tell people that the best Q&A I did was with a ninth grade class in Virginia. They “got” the film on every level and asked amazingly sophisticated and thoughtful questions. I would love other history teachers to discover and use the film as a classroom tool.

The plantation house, along with several outbuildings, have been in the new spot for a few years now. What has the experience been like in the new location?

When we shot the last scene in the film, Charlie and Dena had only been back in the house four days, and it was all so brand-new that it seemed like a stage set. But since then it has really come back to life, not only as a truly gorgeous restoration of a historic home, but as a place where people live, work and entertain. I love going out there now. It’s like Midway has been reborn.

(images/top, North Carolina Digital Collections; bottom, Preservation North Carolina)

Questions for Ranger Shelton Johnson

14 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Interviews, National Park Service