Last week in this space we looked at that wonderful billboard on Church Street, just as you enter Elmira from I-86. Seven famous Elmirans gaze benignly down on arriving visitors, and last week we looked at three of them – Mark Twain, John Jones, and Ernie Davis.
Of the seven probably two are pretty much instantly recognizable to the broad body of Americans: Mark Twain, and Brian Williams.
Brian Williams has been giving the news for many years. Unfortunately for the last few weeks he’s also been making the news, and not in a good way.
Williams was born in Elmira and lived there until his middle-school years. In adulthood he became a broadcast newsman, working his way through the usual round of local stations to the CBS flagship station in New York City, and then to network news on NBC. He got a Peabody Award in journalistic excellence for Hurricane Katrina coverage, and anchored the NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams for ten years. Walter Cronkite spoke warmly and admiringly.
Since New Year’s, though, he’s been placed on six months unpaid suspension for inflating personal experiences during our latest war in Iraq, along with other questionable statements.
As a longtime newsman myself, I agree. Mistakes happen and can be forgiven, but they’ve got to be honest mistakes, conscientiously arrived at, and they’ve got to be corrected when discovered. Only then can the public trust you.
At the same time, I cynically and sourly note that this never hurt, for instance, Ronald Reagan’s career. He continued telling stories to wild applause, even though both he and his applauders knew they’d been proven to be lies, and millions still consider him a secular saint. All the more reason for news reporters to be above reproach.
Another face may puzzle out-of-towners unfamiliar with it, though they may recognize his name: Tommy Hilfiger. The design and clothing magnate began his life and his career in Elmira, even losing his store (when he was 21) in the Hurricane Agnes flood. He appears at some length in the WSKG public TV documentary on the flood, and his observations really add color and depth. Since then he’s parlayed the business into what just about anybody could consider a pretty reasonable success.
There’s just one woman on the billboard, and that’s Colonel Eileen Collins. Born in Elmira of immigrant parents, she made herself useful at Harris Hill in quest of flying lessons. She graduated from Elmira Free Academy, Corning Community College, and Syracuse University – besides getting two master’s degrees – and joined the Air Force, eventually becoming a space shuttle astronaut.
Taking nothing away from Sally Ride, Valentina Tereshkova, and others, Eileen Collins actually piloted, and finally commanded, her spacecraft, making her the highest-flying American woman ever. There’s a special gratification to know that Blanche Stuart Scott of Rochester became America’s FIRST woman pilot with a 1910 flight in Hammondsport, neatly bracketing the first woman pilot and the highest woman pilot right here in the Finger Lakes.
I could have written these columns much earlier if I could have figured out who the seventh figure was. He looked like a chef… in fact, he looked like Emeril. Or maybe he was one of the local NASCAR drivers? My son Erik broke the logjam by just casually remarking one day, “Looks like a movie director.” Hal Roach!
Yes indeed, that master of magical movie mirth and mayhem was born (and lies buried) in Elmira. Arriving in Hollywood as far back as 1912, Roach started as an extra but was soon directing and producing, most notably with Harold Lloyd, Will Rogers, “Our Gang,” and EXTRA most notably – Laurel and Hardy. He was shrewd enough to make a strong early move into television, producing new shows and retailing his old movies. He was just short of 101 when he died. His Wikipedia article points out that he had outlived many of his “Our Gang” child actors. He’d also brought the world a lot of laughs, and what could be a better epitaph than that?
So… a social critic, a freedom fighter, an athlete, an astronaut and pilot, a designer and entrepreneur, a news reporter, and a pioneering producer of comedies. All of them welcome you to Elmira, their old home town. Really, that’s a delightful billboard. Well done.