Published: June 21, 2008 12:42 am            

PEOPLE PROFILE: Step Back in Time players re-create history

Teachers have a flair for drama. Maybe that’s why they make convincing Step Back In Time players.

Niagara County Historical Society will roll out another season of Step Back In Time “living history dramas” July 1 at Erie Canal Discovery Center, in tandem with the launch of daily Flight of Five canal locks walking tours.

At the center, members of the all-volunteer Step Back In Time cast assume the roles of 25 real-life characters who built and plied the Erie Canal or otherwise shaped Lockport’s history. One day you might encounter Gov. DeWitt Clinton and Aunt Edna Smith, and the next day it could be Isabella Sutherland and a canawler.

Acting skill is not required of the SBT players, but some experience commanding an audience helps.

Luckily, Dave Zimmerman and Kay Burgess have plenty of the latter to offer. Both retired social studies teachers, they know improvisation as a clever means of engaging a fickle audience.

Zimmerman didn’t know much about Jesse Hawley before he started re-enacting him three years ago. Some friends of his, Dianne Koplas and Lois Begley, had researched and written profiles of the characters they wanted to see represented in SBT. Zimmerman ran into them in a coffee shop unexpectedly one day and they decided he “was” Hawley.

“I stopped to say hello and they said, ‘hey, Dave ...” Zimmerman recalled, laughing. “I figured, ‘why not?’ It sounded like fun. And it has been.”

Zimmerman researched Hawley’s life beyond the profile supplied to him, and when he fields the question, “who was Jesse Hawley?” there’s real empathy in his answer.

With the canal locks at his back, and suited in full Hawley costume, he begins, “Jesse Hawley was a man, a grain merchant, who was very frustrated, because the marketplace was in New York City. Trying to figure out how to get it there was a great challenge ... .”

The condensed answer? Hawley dreamed up the Erie Canal. When he was in debtor’s prison in Canandaigua, in 1807, he wrote lengthy, impassioned letters to the editor of a local newspaper encouraging construction of a waterway crossing the state, from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. Eventually, state officials including DeWitt Clinton took the idea and ran with it. Once canal construction started in 1817, Hawley landed a job overseeing it and settled in Lockport.

Zimmerman notes, somewhat sadly, that history seems to have relegated Hawley’s story to “just above a footnote” status.

Also obscure to all but local history buffs is Kay Burgess’ character, Dr. Sarah Cushing. Born in 1818 and deceased in 1919, Cushing was a trained physician in Lockport in an age when “proper” women didn’t aspire to do men’s work.

“Her husband and two daughters died ahead of her. That was her inspiration for becoming a doctor,” Burgess said. “She was a very strong woman.”

Like Zimmerman, Burgess personally researched Cushing’s history, searching for cues how to best portray her. From documents kept by the historical society, she interprets the doctor as someone who was both fiery and austere.

Of the basic, Victorian-style dress that she dons on performance days — a dress made by her daughter, a drama teacher at a Pittsburgh college — Burgess says knowingly, “even this is a little fancy for her.”

Burgess also knows her character well enough that on the odd occasion when an audience member might call out a modern detail in the re-enactment, she can ad lib a convincing explanation.

“The only thing I feel bad about is my hair is too short for (Cushing). ... If anybody asks about that, I tell them plague got in the way and I chopped it,” she said. “That works.”

According to Burgess, when Cushing died she willed $20,000 — an astonishing sum at the time — to Lockport City Hospital. The trust was to be used for the care of indigent women.

Burgess has been told that the fund still exists, and she figures if it was maintained properly, it could be worth something fairly astonishing now. Problem is, she’s had no luck getting verification and/or a reliable account of the fund’s impact. Yet.

Perhaps like her character would, Burgess promises, “I’ll keep looking.”

Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245.



‘Time’ players add a walk, bring back ‘Cemetery Tales’

Niagara County Historical Society’s Step Back In Time players, volunteers who portray local notables of yore, are leading a slate of living history programs this summer.

• Starting July 1, a one-hour Flight of Five walking tour will be offered at 10 a.m. every day from Erie Canal Discovery Center, 23 Church St. Tours are guided by a “time traveler” who explains the Flight’s development and impact on local and national history while the group walks the canal towpath to the Flight of Five locks area. The “all downhill” tour ends at Upson Park, where the Lockport Trolley takes over and returns walkers to the center. Character re-enactments begin at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. daily inside the center. The walking tour is free with center admission, $6 per person.

• Cemetery Tales, stories by notables buried at Cold Spring Cemetery, will be told at 2 p.m. July 20 at the cemetery. This production is returning to the History Center lineup after a several-season absence. Admission costs $7.

• Players whose characters are buried at Glenwood Cemetery will take part in the cemetery’s 145th anniversary celebration July 26.

• The first-ever Market Street Walk, a walking tour of one of the city’s oldest streets, will be led by four local notables — Washington and Mary Hunt, Joel McCollum and Dr. Skinner — at 2 p.m. Aug. 10. Admission costs $7.

For reservations or more information, call the Discovery Center at 439-0431.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.