By Caylie Moore, Features Editor
On Sunday, Sept. 27, renowned Birmingham-based storyteller Dolores Hydock is set to perform a one-woman program at Trinity Presbyterian Church. The program — titled Footprint on the Sky: Voices from Chandler Mountain — will center a “funny and tender” story featuring strong women, Southern hospitality, bonnets, bow-tie quilts, poke salad, folk remedies and all the things that brought the real-life 1970s community together. Admission to this event will be free thanks to Alabama Humanities Alliance, who is presenting this original work in partnership with the church, and its Road Scholars grant.
Features Editor Caylie Moore sat down with Sammye Hill, acting liaison between Hydock and Alabama Humanities Alliance and longtime friend of Hydock, for an interview about the storyteller and her programs.
“For more than fifty years, there has been an international storytelling center in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and [Hydock] and I have both been members as storytellers. So we’ve been friends a long time through [that center], but she is a professional storyteller in that it’s her living, and I’m just a piano player at church,” Hill said with a laugh.
“She’s one of Alabama’s treasures. I know I’m partial because she’s my friend, but [a lot of] people in Alabama don’t realize what a treasure she is.”
While Hill may have been joking around when it came to her own skillset, her admiration for Hydock and her storytelling abilities was no laughing matter. “I find every genre that she goes into very fascinating,” she stated.
While all of Hydock’s stories are family-friendly, Hill warns that most children will not have the life experience necessary to fully understand the meaning behind them — because ultimately, Hydock’s goal is to make you feel the way a certain character felt and use that as a basis to empathize with other people.
“She did a program [on Norman Rockwell’s biography] — and I can read his biography and enjoy it — but somehow, as she was telling this story, I was thinking, ‘Wow, I feel like that.’ I’m not an artist or anything, but I felt like that. She makes you ask: ‘Am I going to make somebody’s day better?’”
Alabama Humanities Alliance’s Road Scholars all have one thing in common — making it a mission to “provide context, build empathy, and make [Alabama] a more vibrant place to live” through the humanities — and Hydock is an exemplar of that.
Hill also explained that this one-of-a-kind experience was only free thanks to the work of that same state organization, adding that it should be taken full advantage of when it comes around. “This Road Scholars program is sponsored by Alabama Humanities Alliance, and Dolores is one of the Road Scholars,” she stated. “There are many in the state, and they go around and do programs about things like Egyptian pottery and [so on]; Dolores has up to about 20 different programs about things like the Statue of Liberty and Greek civilization.”
As for what convinced Hydock to tell this story about Chandler Mountain and its people, Hill’s answer was simple: “She’s doing this about Chandler Mountain because people here are familiar with [it].” And, as Hill would put it, so is Hydock.
“She grew up in Pennsylvania, and part of her college work was to delve into American folklore — Southern folklore. Around that time, in the 1970s, the Foxfire books were coming out, and people loved them.”
Hill further explained that the Foxfire books were a series about the folkways and traditions of the Southern Appalachians and proved to be a driving force behind Hydock’s work.
But she ended up loving far more than just the books, as evidenced by one major decision in her personal life. “So she came to Chandler Mountain to get a taste of Southern folklore, and she met the people, lived [there] and fell in love with the spirit of the South. [The South is full of] hard-working people, so she brings those people out in the story and focuses on how they really changed her life. She never went back to live in Pennsylvania, and she’s been here since the ‘70s,” Hill stated.
As for Hydock’s favorite part of Footprint on the Sky, a program she has performed many times before, Hill knew the answer nearly immediately.
“I think [Hydock] would say that her favorite part is introducing us to the people — they took good care of her, and she was just this young Yankee from Pennsylvania. They welcomed her,” she stated.
“[Hydock loves] those kinds of people — ones we encounter every day, who we don’t really think about. They are so warm and loving and inclusive.”
That warmth, love and inclusion, Hill added, is what Hydock hopes to highlight, as these qualities in the people of Chandler Mountain are what helped guide her when she was a young college student with no real knowledge of the world.
The Sept. 27 program will be presented at Trinity Presbyterian Church on 1003 Albert Rains Blvd. in Gadsden at 2:30 p.m. Those interested in more detailed information about Hydock or the program can contact Sammye Hill at (256) 490-1845 or visit storypower.org. For more information about the organization that made this possible — Alabama Humanities Alliance through its Road Scholars grant — visit alabamahumanities.org.
