John Henry Oren “Parker” Turner, 89, of Ulm was brought into this world on September 03, 1931 by his father, Henry Oren Turner, in the town of New Hope, Arkansas. He was the third of seven children born to Henry Oren and Nancy Jannie Sharp Turner.
Oren remembers his childhood as one of hard work, but surrounded by lots of family, friends, and love. He could tell wonderful memories of growing up in the Grandfield community, living for a time in his grandparents thirteen room house, working in their store, and helping care for his blind grandmother by leading her around by hand. He had some hilarious memories that included the huge barn on their property that may, or may not, have included” Bull Durham” tobacco and family made “moonshine”.
The suppressed 1951 film version of Richard Wright’s 1940 novel
Native Son was released in virtual cinemas recently in a restoration presented by Kino Lorber in association with the Library of Congress, Fernando Martín Peña, and Argentina Sono Film. The film was also aired by Turner Classic Movies (TCM) this past weekend.
Shot primarily in Buenos Aires, Argentina with some exterior location shots done in Chicago, the movie was directed and co-written by Pierre Chenal, a Belgian-born director associated with French poetic realism.
Richard Wright in Native Son (1951)
In addition to co-adapting his own novel for the screen, Richard Wright performed the lead role as the ill-fated Bigger Thomas, a poor young black man in Chicago. Deeply oppressed and driven by intense fear, Bigger quickly becomes ensnared in a true American tragedy.
In the month of July 1893, just nine days and 700 miles apart, two medical surgeries of remarkable, historical significance occurred. More than a century later, they are as fascinating as ever one noted for who performed the operation and the other for who the patient was.
James Cornish entered Provident Hospital in Chicago on the night of July 9, suffering from a stab wound to the heart. Overnight, his condition worsened. With Cornish’s life at stake, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams determined the next morning that he would perform open heart surgery to repair the wound, immediately.
The prevailing view in the medical community in 1893 was that the living, beating human heart was not to be meddled with. In 1891, 46-year-old Dr. Henry Dalton in St. Louis performed the first procedure on the pericardium (the membrane that envelopes the heart) but no one had yet fixed a wound on the heart itself.