Back Story

Brian Powers

Sid Ellis Executive Director, Douglass Community Association

Acouple of times Kalamazoo has come very close to losing Sid Ellis, one of its longtime arts advocates and community servants.

In the mid-1980s, the Davenport University graduate had his car packed and ready to drive to Texas, where there was a big boom in jobs. “I was literally putting my suitcase in the car and got a phone call,” he recalls. That call was for a job as an operator at AT&T (then Michigan Bell) in Kalamazoo, which he ultimately took. The second time, he left Kalamazoo for Chicago to begin a career as an extra in television commercials. “I was in the car driving there, and I felt that God was telling me not to. And I turned around and came back,” he says. “That's when I started producing more stage theater. And then I got married, and 27 years and two kids later, I’m still here. Every time I tried to leave Kalamazoo, something great happened.”

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