Port Huron Town Hall
2008-2009 Series
Welcome to the 54th season of the Town Hall Series. Each year, Town Hall presents a series of five programs on Monday mornings at 10:30 am at the McMorran Place Theatre. The celebrity performances cover a range of topics of interest to the community. In conjunction, Town Hall also offers a Luncheon Series available to those holding lecture tickets. The luncheons offer an up close and personal visit with the celebrity and an opportunity to have your questions answered as well as obtain an autograph or photograph.
Port Huron Town Hall, a non-profit corporation, was founded in 1955 with the object of presenting lectures and entertainment for cultural, educational, and charitable purposes. Town Hall has presented 239 programs and has given a total of $153,500 to designated non-profit organizations dedicated to St. Clair County. Port Huron Town Hall is an independent corporation operated by a board of 23 directors elected by it's active membership. The Board is responsible for all Town Hall activities and funds. It's members serve on a volunteer basis.
We encourage you to experience Town Hall by purchasing a series ticket through the McMorran Box Office. 1-800-858-6166 or (810) 985-6166.
Season Performance Ticket Price Main Floor or Mezzanine Seat $90.00 US Funds Main or Mezzanine w/Luncheon $200.00 US Funds Balcony Seat $75.00 US Funds Blacony Seat w/ Luncheon $185.00 US Funds
Tickets are being sold through the McMorran Box office only. Tickets orders are processes in the order received. A $3.00 processing fee will be added to each series ticket sold. Credit cards are accepted. The Box Office phone number is 985-6166
Individual lecture and/or luncheon tickets are sold at the door, subject to availability. individual tickets are $35.00 each. Individual luncheon tickets are $22.00 each.
Doris Roberts
Oct. 6th, 2008
Roberts's acting career began in 1952 with a role on the TV series Studio One. She also appeared on such programs as The Naked City (1958-63), Ben Casey (1963), and The Defenders (1962 - 1963). In 1961, she made her film debut in Something Wild (1961) starring Carroll Baker. In 1968, she appeared in A Lovely Way to Die and No Way to Treat a Lady.
She also appeared in the 1970 cult film The Honeymoon Killers starring Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco. In 1971, Roberts appeared in three films, Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends, Alan Arkin's Little Murders, and A New Leaf. She acted in a Walter Matthau vehicle again in 1974's urban thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. In 1978, she starred in a film about John F. Kennedy's assassination, Ruby and Oswald, in which she played Jack Ruby's sister. She also appeared very briefly in The Rose, as the mother of the title character (played by Bette Midler).
Since then, she has usually been cast as a mother or mother-in-law. An example of this was when she played newsstand owner, Theresa Falco, mother of Donna Pescow on Angie. After Angie was cancelled, she appeared as "Mildred Krebs" on Remington Steele, which starred Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist. After that show's cancellation, she starred in the TV movie remake of If It's Tuesday, It Still Must Be Belgium (1987) and the National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) with Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo. She also appeared on Alice, playing the mother of title character (played by former Broadway co-star Linda Lavin), as well as Danny Tanner's mother on Full House.
Roberts has become best-known and achieved national fame for her role as the nosy, insufferable, manipulative Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond. She reportedly beat out 100 other actresses for the role,[4] For her work on the series, she has been nominated for seven Emmy Awards (and won four times) for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She also won an Emmy for a guest role on St. Elsewhere as a homeless woman, and was nominated once for Remington Steele. She was also nominated for appearances on the ABC sitcom Perfect Strangers and a PBS special called The Sunset Gang. In 2003, she made a guest appearance as Gordo's grandmother in the Disney series, Lizzie McGuire. The same year, Roberts received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2006, Roberts starred in the Adam Sandler-produced comedy Grandma's Boy alongside such other veteran actresses as Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight. In 2007, she made a guest appearance on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Stage career
Roberts' stage career began in the 1950s on Broadway. Roberts has appeared in numerous Broadway shows including the original productions of The Desk Set with Shirley Booth, Neil Simon's The Last of the Red Hot Lovers with James Coco and Linda Lavin as well as Terrence McNally's Bad Habits.
Personal life
Roberts' first husband was Michael Cannata; they divorced in 1962. Their son, Michael Cannata, Jr. is Roberts' manager, and is the father of her three grandchildren: Kelsey, Andrew, and Devon. Her second husband was writer William Goyen. She was married to Goyen from 1963 until his death from leukemia on August 30, 1983 in Los Angeles.[5]
On September 4, 2002, she testified before a U.S. Congressional panel that age discrimination is prevalent in Hollywood, advocating that such discrimination be treated on par with biases against race and gender.
As an avid cook, she wrote a book in 2005 titled Are You Hungry, Dear? Life, Laughs, and Lasagna, written with Danelle Morton and published by St. Martin's Press. She says of her book, "It's about sharing things I’ve learned that have changed my life". In May of 2005, she received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the University of South Carolina.
An animal lover and advocate, she has worked with a group called "Puppies Behind Bars" that works with inmates in training guide dogs and assistance dogs for the physically disabled and elderly, as well as dogs trained in explosives detection to be used by the ATF and other law enforcement agencies. She also is active with the Children with AIDS Foundation, of which she has served as the chairwoman.
She currently lives in Los Angeles in a house once owned by screen legend James Dean.
Ted Fishman
Nov. 10th, 2008
Ted C. Fishman is a veteran journalist and former commodities trader who has emerged as a leading expert on the People's Republic of China and its development as a world power. In his writing, Fishman is noted for taking seemingly complex topics - particularly how global economic trends influence people's everyday experiences - and making them understandable and meaningful for a general audience.
In his bestselling book, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, Fishman describes the effects of China's recent emergence as a world power on the lives and businesses of people across the globe. China, Inc. is an international best-seller and has been translated and published in twenty-five languages.
Fishman's essays and reports appear in many of the world's most prominent journals, including The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, INC, , Esquire, USA Today, GQ, and The Times of London. He has been featured on ABC, NBC, CNBC, CNN, the BBC and NPR, among many others. Fishman also frequently consults local, state, and federal leaders concerned about how to navigate China's economic rise. A former floor trader and member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, he ran his own trading firm until 1992. This year, he is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center on Longevity. Fishman is also a director of a program for global executives run by Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business in Shanghai.
Ted Fishman is an accomplished public speaker who has addressed gatherings worldwide. His talks reflect the intelligence and wit readers find in his writing and have most recently focused on the emergence of China and its impact on the lives of Americans as consumers, workers, managers, and citizens. Fishman's presentations combine engaging storytelling with a wide ranging knowledge about the world economy, putting his audiences' top concerns into context and exploring how they relate to big, global economic trends. His style is lively and stimulating, and question and answer periods are inevitably engaging.
Mr. Fishman has lived and worked in Japan and Indonesia. He is a graduate of Princeton University and currently lives in Chicago.
Bill Geist
Dec. 8th, 2008
Bill Geist has been a correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning since he joined CBS News in 1987. He chronicles some of the quirkiest people and places in America for the broadcast.
Geist has received two Emmy Awards for his work on Sunday Morning: one in 2005 for his profile of Fred Carl, who started the Viking Range company in Greenwood, Miss., and completely revitalized this small, impoverished town, and one in 1992 for his report on the 66th anniversary of America's famed Route 66. He received the 2007 Marist College Lowell Thomas Award that recognizes individuals whose work “reflects the imagination, courage, ambition and humanity” of Thomas, the renowned author, traveler and broadcaster. Geist also has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Cincinnati and the University of Illinois.
He has contributed his humor, observations and storytelling to many CBS News broadcasts, as well as various CBS Sports productions, including the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Olympic Winter Games, the World Series, the Super Bowl and the NCAA Division I basketball tournament. Geist contributed bi-weekly essays to 60 Minutes II(2003-04).
He is the best selling author of seven books: "Fore! Play; The Big Five Oh: Facing, Fearing and Fighting 50;" "Monster Trucks and Hair In A Can - Who Says America Doesn't Make Anything Anymore?;" The New York Times bestseller "Little League Confidential," an account of his experience as a coach of his son’s and daughter's Little League baseball teams; "The Zucchini Plague and Other Tales of Suburbia;" "City Slickers;" and, most recently, "Way Off the Road," a compendium of stories from Sunday Morning on “the peculiar charms of small-town America.” Geist has contributed stories to numerous magazines ranging from New York to Chicago, Rolling Stone to Forbes and Vogue to Esquire.
Prior to joining CBS News, he was a columnist for The New York Times (1980-87), where his "About New York" column appeared twice a week. Before that, he worked for The Chicago Tribune, where he was a reporter and columnist (1972 80). Geist served as a combat photographer with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam (1969).
In addition to the two Emmys, he has won many awards for his work as a humorist, commentator and reporter in television, newspapers and magazines. Geist seems most proud, however, of taking third in the Illinois State Fair Bake Off in 1979.
He was born in Champaign, Ill. Geist was graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1968 with a degree in communications and from the University of Missouri in 1971 with a Master's degree in communications. Geist lives in New York City with his wife. They have two children.
Valerie Hemingway
Feb. 9th, 2009
A chance encounter in Spain in 1959 brought young Irish reporter Valerie Danby-Smith face to face with Ernest Hemingway. The interview was awkward and brief, but before it ended something had clicked into place. For the next two years, she devoted her life to Hemingway and his wife, Mary, traveling with them through beloved old haunts in Spain and France and living with them during the tumultuous final months in Cuba.
Hemingway has evoked the magic and the pathos of Papa Hemingway’s last years in Running with the Bulls, published by Ballentine Books in 2006. The account of what she enjoyed, and what she endured, during her astonishing years of living as a Hemingway, Running with the Bulls fully captures the mystique of one of our greatest authors.
As his secretary in Spain, France, and Cuba, after the author's death, Hemingway worked for the Hemingway Estate in Cuba, Key West, Ketchum, and New York--gathering all of the authors papers and organizing them for presentation to the Kennedy Library.
She came by the Hemingway name by marrying--and later divorcing--Gregory, his youngest son. For two decades she worked in publishing and public relations in New York City, including two years as a fiction reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Her articles have appeared in Saturday Review, The New York Times, and Ski Magazine.
Lori Borgman
March. 9th, 2009
Lori earned a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism where the motto was "succeed or die trying." It was a close call several times, but she made it. She worked as a photojournalist in North Dakota and as a reporter, news editor and photojournalist in Oregon. She also worked as a contract photographer for Getty images. When Lori and her husband started their family, she traded in her camera bag for a diaper bag and ventured into the mysterious world of mothering where women work with pre-verbal creatures that have a habit of exploding at semi-regular intervals. (So, really, it wasn't all that different from covering the explosion of Mt. St. Helen's.)
When her youngest child started school all day, Lori turned to the computer keyboard and began writing.
Lori approached The Indianapolis Star with an idea for a family humor column. They struck a handshake deal and a couple of years later McClatchy-Tribune News Service picked up the column and began distributing it to 325 newspapers in the states and 25 in Canada. In addition, her writing has been read aloud on The Dr. Laura Show, Live with Regis! and the Paul Harvey News and Comment. She is also a regular contributor to www.JewishWorldReview.com and www.crosswalk.com.
Lori's newspaper column led to the publication of several books including, I Was a Better Mother Before I Had Kids (Pocket Books), Pass the Faith Please: Nourishing your child's soul during the everyday moments of life (Waterbrook), and All Stressed Up and No Place To Go (Emmis). Go to the books link for more info.
She is a frequent speaker at Town Hall lecture series, libraries, church and women's groups and groups that help women in crisis pregnancies. She counts two of her greatest privileges to include addressing a Spouses of Congress event at the Capitol and delivering the commencement address to college graduates at the Indiana Women's Prison.
Lori has picked up a few journalism awards along the way, but the honor she values more than any others is having a reader say, "I clipped your column and hung it on the 'fridge." For a columnist, it doesn't get much better than that.
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