remembering Lonne Elder, III, mentor

Years ago, I asked the writer, Lonne Elder, III, what it was like to start on a blank page. This is the sort of thing that one writer would ask another writer.

He said,

"It is like being caught, at high noon, in the store front window of Bloomingdales, making love to my mother..."

I worked for Lonne in the early years of my career. He isn't a household name for the masses, but within the national Black community that grew out of the sixties, he was a lion, revered by the Black intelligentsia. He is most famous for his movie, Sounder, for which he was one of the first two African Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award and for his brilliant play, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, which was nominated for a Pulitzer. He was one of the founding members of the Negro Ensemble Company where the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne, and Lou Gossett, Jr. began their careers. He championed of a whole generation of black performers who broke through into mainstream entertainment during the sixties and the seventies.

Lonne Elder, III

I met him one day when someone sent me over to his house to help him with some typing. I was 23, bouncy and very white. He met me at the door with his signature Swisher drooping out of the side of his mouth, grunted then turned around and walked back into the house. Since he didn't slam the door in my face, I assumed that I was supposed to follow him. He was built like a small bear and he lumbered more than walked. He showed me a desk and a typewriter, gave me some blank paper and a manuscript. When he finished explaining whatever it was that he wanted done, I realized that I had not understood a single word he'd said. This was the beginning of my ebonics education, long before that term was ever coined.

It was a test. Would this skinny, white girl tough it out until the eloquent Lonne emerged?