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Thursday, November 21, 2019

MY CHILDHOOD HOME ONCE A CONFERDERATE POST IS NOW A MOVIE STUDIO AND OWNED BY AN AFRICAN AMERICAN--IRONIC, NO?

My dad was stationed at Fort McPherson, Georgia outside of East Point, Georgia adjacent to Atlanta. We lived there from 1956 to 1960.

The army closed this post a few years back. It was a shock. It was a small post, but like a country club. Originally it was a Confederate Post.

It has wonderful antebellum homes and architecture. The centerpiece was/is a golf course.

In the video below, Tyler Perry gives a wonderful tour of his new movie and television shows studio which encompasses the former post which Tyler purchased.

It is amazing to me how he has transformed this post but honored the antebellum nature of the post by actively preserving these elements.

We went to the post almost everyday and our front door opened to the post and its golf course. My earliest recollections of my Catholic childhood are at the post chapel and the bus the armY provided for us to get to Catholic school. There is a brief clip of a historic chapel that offered at one time both Catholic Masses and Protestant Services.

You will see a field in front of some of the antebellum homes where we watched my father march and I played.

You will see the Post Theater where my mom took us to the movies and where I remember seeing Oklahoma and hearing "O What a Beautiful Morning."

This is wild for me:






4 comments:

Fort Mac Native said...

I was born at Fort McPherson, GA and baptized at the post chapel. If I ever want to go back and see my birthplace or where I was initiated into the Church, I’ll have to take the Tyler Perry Studio tour. I guess that’s “progress”.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

COOL FORT MAC NATIVE!!!!! What year were you born and how long was your family stationed there and where did you live. We lived just outside a secondary gate off of Stanton Road, 1836 Patton Drive, an apartment complex that looked like a project.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Also in the late 50's we attended Cantonment Chapal, the only exclusively Catholic chapel. However, briefly we attended Catholic Mass in the more historic Protestant chapel which Perry highlight in his video. Not sure why, maybe work was being done on the Catholic chapel.

Fort Mac Native said...

My memories of Fort McPherson are not as vivid as yours Father, as I was born there in 1954 and we moved to Germany in early 1955. My parents were both single and in the Army when they arrived in 1952. My father lived in the BOQ and my mother in the nurses’s quarters. They met in April 1953 and were married at the Post Chapel in October 1953. I’m not quite sure where we lived at the time, as I’ve only seen interior pictures of the dwelling. I assume it was either an apartment or duplex as my father was a captain then. I’m pretty sure I was baptized at the Post Chapel, since my parents pointed it out when we visited Fort McPherson in the 1970s.

Perhaps one day we can do the Tyler Perry Studio tour together.