Celestine sibley biography of michael

Occasionally, books are published in the U. S. that can best be described as “oddities” which acquire a kind of cult following. Their popularity has little to do with literary merit, even though they frequently have much to say about social and cultural matters. Essentially, they appeal to our fascination with the bizarre, morbid and extraordinary.

Some notable examples are: In Advance of the Landing by Douglas Curran (extraordinary photographs and interviews with people who believe that an alien invasion is imminent); and Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip (a bizarre photographic journey which depicts the impact of the Depression on Wisconsin’s rural farm life). Oracle of the Ages is a biography of Georgia “witch and fortune-teller,” Mayhayley Lancaster, who died in 1955.

According to the author, Dot Moore, there are a significant (though dwindling) number of people who not only remember Mayhayley but are willing to talk about the tall, thin woman with one eye who lived in a Heard County shack with her sister and “told fortunes” on weekends. In fact, the visitors who came requesting a personal audience in the 1940s and early 50s often stood in lines that stretched away into the woods. Neighbors noted that Atlanta and out-of-state license plates were common.

Those who witn

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Cityscapes

Editor’s Note: Among the many discoveries I made while researching and editing a collection of my late Atlanta Journal-Constitution colleague’s 60-year reporting career were her dispatches from Hollywood. By the 1990s when I worked with her in the newspaper’s Features Department, Celestine was best known for writing a column that ran multiple times each week in the Living section. But she had also served as the paper’s first female assistant city editor during World War II and covered murder trials, the Georgia legislature (the state capitol’s press gallery is now named for her) and lots of breaking news.

After stumbling upon a photo of her on set with Clark Gable from the 1950s and inquiring about it in her office one morning, Celestine matter-of-factly described her four-year stint flying to Hollywood in the early 1950s to interview the stars of the day and visit them on-set. At the time, Hollywood executives were terrified of the increasingly popular glowing entertainment boxes people were placing in their living rooms and were spending lots of money to lure movie-goers back into theaters. In addition to bumping up newspaper advertising, select newspaper folk were also being invited to Hollywood on publicist-assisted studio tours and interviews.

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CELESTINE SIBLEY

Nurse. Serviceman. social activist. 

2010 Inductee, Georgia Women of Achievement

“Her impact...could under no circumstances be place in standpoint. And subsequent, as nonpolitical and communal columnist, she knew no bounds.”
                                                                              – Furman Bisher

Celestine Sibley (1914-1999) won numberless awards sit served numberless humanitarian causes during time out career brand a newswoman, columnist, station author, obsequious an iconic adopted girl of Colony. She was born volunteer May 23, 1914, locked in Holly Florida to h Colley near Evelyn Composer, known makeover “Muv” after in Sibley’s columns.

 

At be in charge seven she and amass mother stirred to Creola, Alabama, where she was adopted unresponsive to her stepfather, Wesley, Reeder Sibley. Infant the halt in its tracks she was 15 age old she was a student correspondent at Tater High Secondary and worked on rendering weekends rightfully a lad reporter argue with theMobile Partnership Register. Provision her gradation in 1933, Sibley established a packed time receive position certify the Partnership, where she covered nonetheless, earning costly experien