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David Brock Memorial Library opens
By Sally Boswell
Published December 7, 2009
Paris Community Theatre fondly — and with much laughter — remembered one of its most active and influential charter members Saturday with the dedication of the David Brock Memorial Library, inside PCT’s new Children and Teens Theatre Center, 115 Clarksville St.
Approximately 40 people attended the late afternoon event, including Brock’s wife, Linda; son Drew Brock and his wife, Lisha, and their children, Jackson and Leyna; daughter Karyn Maynard and her son, Grayson; and daughter Laura King and her husband, Kasey, and their children, Konnor and Khloe.
“It is because of our founding fathers — those like David who had a vision for what Paris Community Theatre could become — that we are here today,” said Laura Hutchings, PCT member and teacher of theater arts at North Lamar High School.
David Brock was born in Terre Haute, Ind., graduated from Greenville High School in Greenville, Ill., and attended Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., where he received his Bachelor of Science in Zoology in 1963. After completing medical school and his residency, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, serving overseas, and was honorably discharged as a major in 1973. In the summer of 1973, he moved his family to Paris, where he established a pediatric practice.
In 1975, Brock was cast in the lead role of John Adams in a Paris Junior College production of “1776.” It was his first role in Paris, but certainly not his last. He was among the first members of the newly-formed Paris Community Theatre, and for more than 30 years, he acted in 36 plays with a leading role in 21 of them. He designed sets for 42 productions and directed three performances. He also earned a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre from East Texas State University in 1986, with his thesis examining personalities and involvement in community theater. He retired from medicine in 1996.
Brock died Dec. 13, 2007, in the same hospital where he provided care to thousands of area children.
“Within a few months of David’s death, the idea for this library was proposed,” said current PCT president April Inmon. “But we wanted to wait until we had a space suitable for it. It’s been in the works all this time.”
As part of his passion for the theater, Brock amassed a collection of hundreds of plays and books related to the subject, as well as detailed records of the running of the theater and of three decades of productions staged at PCT, such as cast and crew lists. The collection also included playbills, photographs, scrapbooks, letters and props.
“No forefather of today’s Paris Community Theatre had a more integral part in the success of PCT than David Brock,” said Spencer O’Connor, another long-time PCT member and friend of David Brock. “In those formative years we were few in number and events on more than one occasion could have struck a death knell, but there was stubborn determination present. It was never a question of ‘if,’ only ‘how,’ and no one personified that refusal to fail more than David. His energy, his abilities, his inspiration were both boundless and infectious.”
“We’ve all said many times ‘you had to have been there,’” O’Connor continued, recalling his many years of working with Brock on early productions at PCT. “When it comes to David Brock and his legacy to PCT, believe me, those of us who were there can attest that this dedication is both fitting and proper as a remembrance of someone who always gave fully of himself — and God help you if you didn’t as well.”
“His greatest love was for family and medicine,” son Drew Brock said at the ceremony Saturday, “but that left much more energy and Dad drew a dead bead on the theatre.”
The younger Brock shared his reminiscences of the origin of his father’s collection, when it was stored in a closet in the family home.
“That 22 square foot space — and yes, I measured it — was where it all happened, where dad pursued his passions for science, and astronomy, mathematics, architecture, literature, the arts,” Drew Brock said. “After my graduation, what had been my bedroom began to metamorphasize. The David Brock Memorial Library realized a major upgrade.”
“The shelves of that new study would hold the hundred of plays you see before you, organized, catalogued, sorted and labeled,” Drew continued. “The labeling is still there.”
“There is no other place for these things but this place,” he said. “They belong with this theater, this lifeblood of inspiration of my father. From cramped closet to converted bedroom to dedicated library, I hope that his collection, these resources, will inspire others to pursue their dreams and keep the memory of my father alive and embodied in the theater.”
Among the other speakers who offered their recollections of David Brock was former Lamar County judge Brady Fisher, who compared Brock’s influence as a founder of PCT to the founding fathers of America.
“James Madison, our fourth president, is called the father of the Constitution, not because he was president of the convention or because he made the most eloquent argument or raised the most funds,” Fisher said. “It was because he kept the records. To this day we know everything that happened with the founding of the U.S. Constitution because James Madison kept the records. That is what we are celebrating today — someone kept the records. We know the full history of this organization because David Brock kept the records.”
At the end of the formal ceremony, those in attendance were served champagne and a selection of fine chocolates, and invited to visit with the family, spend time perusing the collection and sharing their memories of Brock.
“David would have loved this,” said Hutchings, laughing.
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