If These Walls Could Talk: Leslie Orndoff

If These Walls Could Talk

by Leslie Orndoff

The sun mercifully broke through the clouds one recent morning in mid-May, enough that I needed to lower the sun visor as I pulled my car into a parking spot. Easton had been seeing only smatterings of the warming rays through periods of gray drizzle and pelting rain for a week.

But that morning, the air was warmer, and the day held promise to be a good one. I got out of the car and felt the dewy air surround me as I walked to the historic Avalon Theater. I was there to record the memories and musings of a diverse group of people, all of whom hold important parts in the theater’s long and storied history.

They sat on the stage in a row, and the conversation flowed easily, like old friends coming home. There was Ryan Finch, Jessica Bellis, Al Bond, Suzy Moore, Ellen Vatne, and Robert Karge. Each had their own unique story of how their personal history intertwined with that of the theater.

Robert began steering the conversation back to 1988, when he was Easton’s financial administrator. “Many of the checks that

Suzy Moore

went out for the initial renovation of this place had my signature on them,” he remembered. “I stayed involved in the theater from then until 2016.”

Suzy chimed in that she graduated in 1988. She remembers well the theater before the renovation:. “I went on my first official date in 1985 when it was a movie theater,” she explained. “I can’t remember the movie, but I recall my date doing the classic yawn stretch and putting his arm around my shoulder.”

Suzy has worked at the theater since 2002 and has witnessed both renovations and innumerable performances during her tenure. When asked about her favorite performance, Suzy had a hard time picking just one. “I always love any show that Alejandro Escovedo presents,” she said. She also loved the energy in the house when Graham Nash took the stage and everyone in the venue was singing

“Our House” together.

That sense of family togetherness and community was threaded throughout the discussion. Ellen talked about her time in education and how she thought the best way to draw people to the newly renovated theater was to educate them on what a valuable resource the building, which was then 75 years old, could be to the community.

“I poured my heart, soul and energy into educating them,” Ellen explained. “I tried all kinds of different things: bringing organizations in, bringing music in to get the community inside so they could celebrate themselves.

Because when a community celebrates itself, it can see its potential.

And when it sees its potential, the magic happens.”

Jessica, who is Ellen’s daughter, spent her formative teenage years watching her mother bring the Avalon back from the brink.

Though she had little interest in joining her mother in her hefty endeavor, the pull of community led

Jessica in her 20s to Easton and the Avalon.

Jessica’s two boys have grown up in the theater. Much like her as a teen, they have no interest in the Avalon. But she is heartened to think that her kids have grown up 126

with a sense of duty to the community, “There is a real call to help in the community and to help make it better,” she explained.

Ellen and Jessica were not the only ones on the stage with a family lineage attached to the theater. Robert’s family involvement goes back to the 1940s. “My father was a projectionist; he ran all the movies during that time,” he began. “By the time he died, he could recite the words to every movie on Turner Classic Movies because he’d seen them all so many times.”

He continued, “And then imagine, 45 years later, I’m standing on the stage with my wife in our band. Ellen Vatne

And then, 20 years after that, I’m playing in a band with my son. So that’s a long lineage right there.”

The talk drifts from family and

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Jessica Bellis and Al Bond

community to music and the various artists that have stepped on that stage. “I’m not someone who gets easily starstruck,” Jessica said, “but we’ve met a lot of incredibly infl uential people ~ especially from that Woodstock era.”

Not only artists from the Woodstock era have graced the stage. Acts like Joan Rivers, the Avett Brothers and Boys II Men have played there. Each performance has its own story, and each one brings a fun or fraught memory to the reminiscing members.

“The Avett Brothers played here in 2005,” Jessica said. “When we booked them, no one knew who they were. By the time they played here, their music was blowing up.” The show ended up selling out. “I had to run downstairs during the show,” she went on to say. “I looked up, and the fl oor was fl exing under the weight of all the people enjoying the show.”

The group then turns the discussion to Joan Rivers. “She had this crazy rider,” Al explained. “She had to have a clock that was two feet wide; she had to have three mirrors, geraniums in pots and three Ficus plants; it went on and on and on.” Their initial impression was that she was a diva, but it turned out that she needed the items for her show. When she performed in venues she was unfamiliar with, she typically had a longer rider. So they discovered she was, in fact, a consummate performer.

Through these 100 years, the Avalon has grown and changed as a person would grow and change. Her formative years were fl ashy and fast, her midlife was muddled and unsure and now, with the wisdom that years of life bring, she is coming into her own.

“Garrison Keillor once said that a building like this could survive 100 years only because people cared about it all the way along. I think it’s important to recognize those who made important, lasting decisions that we are all benefi ciaries of now,” Al said. “So many things happen in this building. What’s important to me is the folks that were there when it was hard and made the right decisions, and that’s why we all get to enjoy this into the future.”