Four-time Oscar nominee talks about his Oklahoma ties
Posted 2011. 5. 5. 21:26Four-time Oscar nominee talks about his Oklahoma ties
Actor Ed Harris shares memories of summers in Oklahoma as a child.
WALTERS — The child looked forward to the annual summer migration from New Jersey to his grandparents’ home in Walters.
It wasn’t the miles in the ’55 blue Ford sedan he cherished.
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Those highways, including chunks of Route 66, were just the path to the playground for little Edward Allen Harris.
For two or three weeks, they’d stay with his grandparents, Robert Lee and Annie Harris, and soak up southern Oklahoma.
“We’d go down to the creek, shooting a .22 with my granddad, picking big tomato worms off my grandma’s plants or go in the storm shelter when the twisters were coming,” he said. “We would go into a church with the ceiling fans and the men in their white shirts.
“Every summer we’d do that from the time I was 5 until I was probably 16. It was just part of my life, part of my identity, part of where I felt my roots were.”
Who did that little boy become?
This son of Bob and Margaret Harris became Richard Brown in “The Hours,” Jackson Pollock in “Pollock,” Christof in “The Truman Show” and Gene Kranz in “Apollo 13.” And those are just Ed Harris’ four Oscar-nominated performances. There have been many roles.
Recently, Harris, 60, was back in Oklahoma to serve as master of ceremonies with friend and fellow actor Rex Linn during the 50th Anniversary of the Western Heritage Awards at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
Ties to Walters
Shortly after statehood, Ed’s grandfather moved to Walters and bought into Ed J. Blair’s barbershop in 1908, said Linda Garrison, president of the Cotton County Museum Association.Then in 1913, the business was moved across the street. In 1921, Robert Lee Harris built a new building at 110 N Broadway.
Ed’s grandmother opened her dress shop in March 1938 after working in dry goods and clothing stores for a number of years. Robert Lee Harris married Annie Abernathy in April 1919, and they lived on the east side.
Their son, Bob, who at one point was a member of the Walters Miniature Quartet, later would become a singer with the Fred Waring chorus and the Garry Moore Show, Garrison said.
Margaret, who also had grown up in Oklahoma, moved back here with Bob in 1969.
About that time, Ed was going to school back east but would come out in the summers to be with his parents. After his sophomore year at Columbia University, he stayed in Norman and went to school at the University of Oklahoma for a year to study drama.
He pumped gas, painted houses and was a night watchman at the Willow Cliff Apartments. Then in 1973, “I did a show,” Harris said. The show was “Camelot” at Jewel Box. That fall, Ed went to California to school.
‘ ... always will be’
A lot of summers have passed since those warm afternoons shared between grandson and granddad by the creek.But those days led to a bond between Ed Harris and the state that time hasn’t wedged.
“I love the state, I love the heat, and the humidity doesn’t bother me,” Harris said. “I like the changes in weather.
“Like yesterday, when the wind was howling, I thought it was great. I hadn’t been out here for a while so it was nice to feel like nature was saying hello. Oklahoma has been a very important part of my life, always will be.”
