Alumni Profiles
Smith receives community theatre award
Moody publishes alum's debut novel
Litton shares life story
Smith receives community theatre award
By Deborah Lilly
For more than 25 years, Vanita Rae Smith BA ’67 has produced and directed shows at the nation’s largest community theatre. In July, the American Association of Community Theatre recognized Smith with the David C. Bryant Outstanding Service Award for her significant, valuable, and lasting service to community theatre in America. She received the award at Sardi’s in New York City, where theatre casts and crew have been hanging out for 82 years. Smith was, of course, honored by the celebration, but as she explains, she’s just been fulfilling God’s calling on her life for more than 40 years.
Smith grew up in Lebanon, Mo., with very strong ties to the Church of God. “My father was killed in World War II, and without the church, mother and I would have never made it,” says Smith. She explains that she was always very animated and very outgoing, so in high school, theatre was a natural fit for her. “And once the bug bites you, it’s usually for life.”
In college, Smith transferred to Anderson University from Southwest Missouri State University and began studying theatre under Malcolm Gressman. She earned extra money designing and building sets. When she graduated, Gressman and his wife, Treva Mae, were so confident in not only Smith’s ability to design sets but also act and direct that they offered to finance her way to New York City. “But New York never had a calling for me,” says Smith. She remembered her father and told Gressman, “I want to entertain the troops.”
It was the height of the Vietnam War, and the Army was recruiting civilians for the Army Entertainment Program. Smith was accepted as a civil servant and launched her career at Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo. She took a four-year tour in Hawaii, where she accompanied celebrities to the military hospital and put together shows to be taken over to Vietnam. “They wouldn’t let women in the Entertainment Program go to Vietnam,” she explains, so all she could do was plan from the States. She was sent next to Ft. Knox, Ky., where she created a dinner theatre and built the Glenn Miller Performing Arts Center. She returned to Hawaii in 1982, moved from a 125-seat theatre to the 808-seat Richardson Theatre at Ft. Shafter, and founded a nonprofit foundation to provide additional support for the program. She oversees 100 volunteers and staff, and produces four musicals and four plays a year. Richardson Theatre, under Smith’s direction, was the first community theatre to get permission to stage Miss Saigon and Cats.
Every summer, she also produces the Independence Day celebration at the base, which attracts 40,000 to 50,000 people. She’s worked with many celebrities, including Sandi Patty, Billy Ray Cyrus, Willie Nelson, and, of course, the late Bob Hope.
“The exciting part of the career has been to feel like it is such a service,” says Smith. “And it’s not like most careers where you can get burnt out. Every three months I’m changing shows. All of the cast and crew are different.”
While providing entertainment for the service men and women and their families has been a big part of Smith’s career, just as important has been her encouragement of men and women, young and old, to pursue their dreams in theatre. She can list by name the former members of her troupe who have gone on to the mainland to seek a career in theatre.
On top of her work at Ft. Shafter, Smith has also finished a movie script and is working with a movie broker to get it filmed and released. The movie is called Copperheads, and it retells the story of her parents in the 1940s.
Moody publishes alum's debut novel
By Deborah Lilly
To be able to spend her days with her young children, Debbie Fuller Thomas ’76 opened a day care in her California home. A friend, who had found some success writing, suggested that Thomas use her downtime during the day to write. Thomas took the advice. When the children napped, she wrote. Vital Christianity bought the first article she ever sent out. Unfortunately, the magazine folded before publishing the article, but Thomas says, “At least I knew that someone thought it was good enough to publish. That really encouraged me.”
Thomas has been writing ever since, and in June, Moody Publishers published her debut novel, Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon. The story focuses on a family whose daughter was mistakenly switched at birth. Thirteen years later, Marty has lost the daughter she raised to a rare genetic disease. Discovering the mistake, and learning the other set of parents have died in a hotel fire, Marty fights for custody of Andie. The novel chronicles that first uneasy year of trying to make the family whole again.
It has been a long road from Thomas’ first article to first published novel, during which time her two children have grown. She actually wrote a novel while still running the day care but put it away in a drawer when it was finished rather than market it. “It taught me that I was able to finish a novel,” she explains. “I learned to develop characters and outline stories.”
Thomas began writing Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon while working as a preschool teacher. She wrote in the early morning and again in the evenings. She also began attending the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference on the West Coast, meeting other writers, editors, and agents. When she felt Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon was ready, she began showing it around.
Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon started out as a juvenile fiction piece, revealing only Andie’s side of the story. But at the writers conference, Thomas learned that the Christian juvenile market was saturated. An editor suggested that Thomas add Marty’s perspective and write for the adult market. She did, and once she had the interest of editors, she was able to land an agent who took the book to Moody.
Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon earned a favorable review from Publishers Weekly. It has also been well received by librarian organizations. Thomas has posted discussion questions on her Web site (www.debbiefullerthomas.com) for book clubs. She will send one free copy of the book to any book club that chooses Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon as a reading selection.
“I am working toward the time I can stay home and write full time,” says Thomas. In the meantime, her second novel, Raising Rain, is due out in September 2009.
Litton shares life story
By Heather Lowhorn
Growing up in Texas during the Great Depression, his name was James Litton BS ’52. But when he came to Anderson College, his baseball teammate, basketball great Johnny Wilson, gave Litton the nickname “Tex.” The name stuck for the rest of his life.
Not only did his name change at Anderson, the course of his life changed. He chose not to pursue a possible career playing professional baseball, instead opting to be a family man. He and his wife, Jean (Longton) Litton ’47, met at Anderson and have been married more than 60 years.
It was the chance to play sports that brought Litton from Texas to Anderson, where he was taken off guard by the much colder winters. “I didn’t have any winter clothes,” says Litton. “At the time, I wore the only pair of pajamas that I had under my pants. They were thin and didn’t help much. Many times I was freezing and miserable.”
Litton, however, had not been unaccustomed to hard times before college. He went to work at age 14, a not-uncommon necessity during the Depression, and paid his mother $10 a week in rent. Despite working all through school, he was able to graduate from high school and excel in sports. He had careers in the banking and insurance industries, which included civil and criminal investigating.
At the age of 76, Litton set out to write his autobiography. In 2006 he published They Call Me Tex. The book tells about the hard times of growing up during the 1930s, serving during World War II, playing baseball at Anderson University, and the lessons he learned throughout his life. He wrote the book at his wife’s urging and said that he found the experience of writing it to be difficult but enjoyable. The book has been called “ … a charming account of life during America’s golden age and beyond from a member of the Greatest Generation.”
The book also discusses some of Litton’s favorite travels and his love of golf. He has played more than 100 different golf courses throughout the United States. He now is a public speaker, entertaining audiences with his humorous and interesting stories, and at age 81 shows little sign of slowing down.
