In Memoriam:
A Sit Down with the Sundance Kid
Regina Scruggs’76
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| Regina Scruggs’76 interviewed Robert Redford, left, and Eric Mayer for KUHF-FM Houston Public Radio last March. Scruggs started her radio career on WBCR at Beloit. |
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After growing up in New York City, living in Los Angeles, and working more than 30 years in radio, Regina Scruggs’76 is not in the habit of coming undone when she runs into celebrities. But sitting across the table from actor and director Robert Redford in Houston last March, well, that was a different story.
Scruggs can date the beginning of her “40-year crush” on Redford to 1967, when she first saw Barefoot in the Park. With a longstanding and avid interest in film, she’s been an admirer of his work as an actor, director, and producer ever since. So Scruggs was nothing short of elated when she had the chance to interview Redford one-on-one for KUHF-FM Houston Public Radio when he came to town to promote the documentary Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars.
Redford narrates the film, which tells the story of a successful grassroots effort to stop construction of a spate of coal-fired power plants across the state of Texas. The activists who opposed the plants were an unusual collective of ordinary citizens, ranchers, environmentalists, CEOs, lawyers, and mayors of several major Texas cities. In his interview with Scruggs, Redford explained the importance of the film in illustrating the power people have when they come together for a common purpose. The Redford Center at Sundance Preserve commissioned the film.
Scruggs’ taped interview with Redford and attorney Eric Mayer, who assisted in the fight against the coal plants, lasted about 15 minutes and aired on KUHF’s arts magazine show The Front Row, preceding the film’s special debut in Houston. The broadcast operations coordinator for KUHF, Scruggs produces and hosts a number of radio programs, including one called Music From the Movies, which airs on Friday nights at 7.
Scruggs says Redford was friendly and talkative well after the formal taping ended, and she easily convinced him to record a testimonial for the station that she had written just moments before, after recognizing a singular opportunity to get the star’s voice on a promotional spot.
Scruggs started her radio career on Beloit’s WBCR. She continued in college radio at Northwestern University while she completed a master’s degree in music theory. She joined KUHF in 1990.
Scruggs’ other celebrity radio interviews include actor and director Edward Burns (The Brothers McMullen, Saving Private Ryan, 27 Dresses), actor Bobby Cannavale (Third Watch, Will & Grace), and film composers John Williams (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Rachel Portman (Emma, The Cider House Rules). Next up is a one-on-one interview with Debra Winger when the actress visits Houston this summer to promote her recently published memoir.
Scruggs says her only regret in talking with Redford was the brevity of it all. “I did get a hug, though,” she says, “along with some pictures, and a too-short, yet memorable time with my new pal, Bob.”
— S.K.
| Raymond Hamlin |
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Michael Anthony Williams’82
As a young actor, Michael Anthony Williams’82 quickly realized that pursuing a life in the theatre would require talent, opportunity, and dogged persistence. For nearly two decades, he juggled a series of short-term day jobs while working at his craft. Combining a regular job with performing is easier now that he holds a full-time teaching position in the department of theatre arts at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va. “Other than performing, teaching is the only place for me,” he says.
Williams’ passion for acting goes beyond the joy he feels onstage. He sees performing as a means of changing the way African American males are perceived. “I’m very careful with the roles I do for television and film now,” he explains. “I have started writing more, trying to create roles for myself that stretch the imagination of the viewing public.”
A desire to influence others was nurtured by Williams’ youthful involvement in church productions and school outreach programs in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended a progressive private school but often mentored children of color from public schools. “I was helping my peers, but peers who didn’t have the opportunities I had,” he recalls. In high school, he was cast as the lead in Around the World in 80 Days. “I knew then that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
After studying sociology and theatre arts at Beloit, Williams moved to the East Coast, where he worked for non-profit organizations by day and dabbled in the theatre at night. In 1989, he jump-started his acting career with a move back to the Midwest. He rented an apartment across the street from Chicago’s legendary Second City Theatre and auditioned for its comedy troupe. He was turned down.
Undaunted, Williams started working with other theatre groups while taking improvisation classes at Second City. There, he caught the eye of cast regular Steve Carell, who recommended him for a position in the troupe’s national touring company.
Following a year and a half on the road, Williams began acting with theatre groups in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., while also filling positions in federal and disaster relief agencies. A tall man, Williams has inhabited a range of stage personas. “My work in plays by August Wilson found me as a reserved father-figure type,” he reflects. “But my work in Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Venus presented totally different, very edgy types of characters. I love roles where the character gets humbled in the course of the piece … it keeps me reminded!”
He also landed the occasional television role, appearing in HBO’s The Wire and NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street. Small parts in the films Losing Isaiah (1995), Contact (1997), The Replacements (2000), Unbreakable (2000),and The Brave One (2007) introduced him to directors Jonathan Demme, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Neil Jordan, and M. Night Shyamalan.
Williams was starring in Jitney at the historic Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., when he was approached by the head of Virginia Tech’s theatre department about taking a lead role in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. He accepted it and found the school to be very welcoming. While performing at Virginia Tech, Williams also taught several master classes. An offer to join the faculty soon followed.
His new gig is a dream come true for Williams, who will direct two main stage productions for the university’s summer arts festival. He has also been encouraged by his new colleagues to act in film and television during the academic year and in theatre productions during summer breaks. “Doing so will allow me to work with amazing artists and then bring them—or their spirit—back here,” he says. “I hope to have a steady stream of peers and colleagues coming into Blacksburg.”
Teaching remains at the forefront of his concerns. “My goal is to equip students with the confidence to step out on their own and execute successful careers,” he says.
— N. Marie Dries’92
In Memoriam:
William Keefer,
Life Trustee,
Retired Industrialist
William Keefer, former chairman of the Beloit College board of trustees, died on April 7 in Rockton, Ill., at the age of 83. Keefer was remembered at a campus memorial service in April for his extraordinary gifts of time, talent, and resources, which he shared with both the city and the College. A straight shooter, he was known for his penetrating questions that had the best interests of the College at heart and kept half of the College’s 10 presidents on their toes. He helped lead Beloit through one of its toughest financial periods in the 1970s, and with his wife, Gayle, “adopted” many of Beloit’s international students over the years. Keefer was “one of the most important figures in the history of Beloit College in the 20th century,” said the College’s tenth president, John Burris.
Keefer, a retired industrial executive, and his wife created the Gayle and William Keefer Chair in the Humanities in 1984. It was the College’s first fully endowed professorship. In succeeding years, they established funds to attract and support junior faculty, to support the endowment, and to help create the new Center for the Sciences.
Keefer first connected with Beloit College in 1963, when he started teaching accounting for several years. In 1970, working with former President Miller Upton, he formed the Upton-Keefer Committee to stimulate economic development and community improvement. He joined the board of trustees in 1976 and chaired numerous committees before becoming chairman of the board in 1986, a post he held for eight years. When he stepped down in 1994, he was honored with an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. In 1996, he was elected a life trustee of the College.
A Chicago native, Keefer graduated from the University of Chicago and did graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined Warner Electric Brake & Clutch Company in 1957 and was elected vice president in 1960, president in 1967, and chairman and chief executive officer in 1984.
Bill Keefer married Gayle Kamen in 1951. She survives, as do two children, Kirsten and Keith, a daughter-in-law, Marcia, and two grandchildren, Jillian and Derek. Over the years, the Keefers also opened their home and hearts to many Beloit College students from around the world, whom they treated like their own children.
