Raise a glass for artistic endeavors

Arts Place celebrated its 50th anniversary Saturday night in fine style, with music, speeches, toasts, dancing and plenty of good cheer.

Its roots officially go back to the founding of the Portland Society for the Arts in 1967, a valiant attempt by several young couples to broaden the cultural offerings in Jay County.

In our media-saturated 21st century, it’s sometimes hard for young people to understand how isolated and cut-off small towns could feel from the world at large in those days.

No internet, no cable television, few bookstores and a limited selection at the library made for a pretty stark scene. 

There were three moviehouses in the county — the Hines in Portland, the Main in Dunkirk and the Key in Redkey — but they provided a minimal menu. It could take months for a first-run movie to make it to Jay County, if it made it here at all.

That’s what prompted the Rottenbergs, the Jaquas, the Mosiers and the Mallers to launch a foreign film series. Skip Mallers and his family owned the Hines, Dan Rottenberg was editor of The Commercial Review, John Jaqua Jr. was a rising young banker and David Mosier was an extremely bright young attorney.

It created a stir, and everyone involved had a lot of fun. But like many ventures launched with enthusiasm, this one suffered from burn-out and the realities of change. Careers and families took precedence.

And by the mid-1970s, the film series had sputtered to an end.

Only the hopes and dedication of John Jaqua Jr. kept the organization alive.

Toward the end of 1975, Connie and I were invited to dinner by John and his wife Margo along with school administrator Sid Austin and his wife Fran. The other member of the dinner party was a guy named Joey Hale.

He was from the Indiana Arts Commission, and he had a deal to offer us: If we could find a venue, the arts commission would provide a performance series.

Before you knew it, the Portland Society for the Arts had been re-christened the Jay County Arts Council and John was off lobbying the school board for use of the auditorium at Jay County High School, which was then brand new.

The organization had a new name, and it had a performance series. But was it a good performance series? Not so much.

What the arts commission had provided was funding to bring collegiate drama and musical groups to Jay County to perform. And those performances ranged from good to cringe-worthy.

The first was a Ball State production of “Dames at Sea,” a kind of Busby Berkely musical with lots of energetic, young college students on the stage.

(A few weeks ago, it hit me that all of those “energetic young college students” are now eligible for membership in AARP. Time gets away from us.)

With John and Sid at the helm, we pushed on, not knowing what we were not capable of. By mid-summer of 1976, the arts commission had come back to with another proposal.

If the organization could come up with $1,000, the commission would provide a grant that would allow us to hire a full-time director for a period of months.

The guy’s name was Eric Rogers. He was working under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, CETA, on an artist in the schools project that was winding down. He needed a new gig, and we were ready to take a chance.

Eric came to Jay County with all the tools a young man needed for success in rural Indiana in the 1970s: Long hair, granny glasses and a grand piano.

While we knew Eric was a talented pianist, we soon learned he had other skills. In fact, he was a magician. Within a matter of months, he’d landed a huge grant that made it possible to hire a whole raft of artists: A dancer, a dramatist, a weaver, a potter, a photographer and more.

Suddenly, the organization not only had an employee, it had a staff.

But like those collegiate performances, the quality of the staff was a little uneven.

You see, under the terms of the grant, Eric was required to hire virtually anyone with a pulse who met the basic qualifications. That led to some surprises.

It was a couple months later when Eric noticed that some guy stopped by to talk with the photographer on a very regular basis. Finally, after one visit, the guy decided to identify himself: He was the photographer’s parole officer.

It seems that that particular member of the staff had served time in federal prison for counterfeiting.

But it was an amazing couple of years. And what strikes me is how many things took flight in that brief period: The arts organization was re-energized with a new name and a broader mission, the performance series — which is now top quality — was launched, Arts in the Parks was born and so was Jay County Civic Theatre. 

All of them are going strong today, and that was worth raising a glass for a toast Saturday night.