Otterblog

It’s easy to reduce Larry Leon Hamlin, who died yesterday, to a caricature of himself: a flamboyant, purple-wearing, dramatist. But that misses the point. He found success in what on the surface appears to be an unlikely area: making Winston-Salem THE home of black theatre in America. Unconventional people are difficult heroes for the rest of us. We’re quick to focus on the flaws, the parts, not the whole. That Hamlin could balance (or is it juggle) the creative and administrative sides of theatre is testament alone to his gifts.

Hamlin was a difficult person for the Journal in many ways. A tough interview. Inscrutable often. Maybe he didn’t trust the reporters (who were mostly white) that interviewed him. Or the difficulty was part of the public image. I don’t know. But his death and sickness were no less inscrutable. Since he became seriously ill about a year ago, there has been an incredible wall of silence about what he had, how he was doing, whether he would recover.

And that continued right up to the end. On Tuesday, his family intimated he was still recovering. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was hope talking, not deceit.

The illnesses of public people are a strange netherworld for journalists. We saw this the other day, where Marc Basnight, the leader of the N.C. Senate took a leave of absence so he could care for a sick family member. Which family member? Basnight’s office initially wouldn’t say. But it was an open secret in Raleigh that his wife was very sick, and so eventually, that was confirmed by colleagues. Hamlin is a private citizen, but in some ways he is a public figure, no less than the mayor or the sheriff. His illness and subsequent death have an impact on a wide range of people. And I’m not sure all the silence for the past year was in everyone’s best interest, including the NBTF. Clearly, we don’t want to bury the dead before they are dead. But I do think that clearer communication of his condition would have been beneficial for everyone.