Carolina Alumni Review - July/August 2008

ARTS
Focusing on
Where We Live

When you ask Gill Holland Jr. ’ 87 what he does for a living, you’ll get a long list.

Holland, who also earned a law degree at UNC in ’ 91, might start with his producer’s credits, his record company, sonaBLAST!, or the art gallery, Gallery NuLu, and the book publishing company, Holland Brown Books, that he has started with his wife, Augusta Brown Holland. Folks from North Carolina will recognize sonaBLAST! artists The Old Ceremony from Chapel Hill and two film projects with North Carolina filmmaker Tim Kirkman, Dear Jesse (1998) and Loggerheads (2005).

Above all is a strong theme: human beings and the planet where they live.

A few years ago, Holland moved from New York to his wife’s hometown, Louisville, Ky. With fond memories of the Appalachians from growing up in North Carolina, Holland flew over the mountains hoping to shoot some wilderness footage. Instead, he found himself recording barren and decapitated mountaintops and valleys filled with mining tailings. He was getting his first eyeful of a coal-mining process called mountaintop removal. “I am a

Holland likes to repeat the old saying that the producer is the “ mayonnaise on the sandwich” — ^whatever ^the ^ingredients,Gill Holland ’ 87 received the Reel the producer brings them Current Prize at the Nashville Film

Festival from former Vice President

self-proclaimed, super-well-read person and in touch with the green tide,” Holland said, raising his voice for emphasis,

“and I didn’t know about it! So I said, ‘We have to do a movie!’”

COURTESY OF GILL HOLLAND JR. ’ 87

all together. For this _Al _Gore.movie, the ingredients turned out to include Pittsboro filmmaker Mike O’Connell; start-up production company Haw River Films; a rough cut of a film on coal miners in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley; and an angry grandfather, Ed Wiley.

O’Connell had a one-hour version of a film he was showing locally. Holland found financial backing and linked O’Connell with actor William Mapother (Lost, In the Bedroom) for the narration, as well as filling in other gaps. “Gill knows everyone,” O’Connell says. “He makes things happen.”

In April the finished film, Mountain Top Removal, won the Reel Current Prize at the Nashville Film Festival. Al Gore presented the award, praising the film for drawing down the

big issue of global warming and ecological crisis to the lives of real people.

Speaking after Gore, Wiley
placed his hand on the shoulder of
his granddaughter and brought the
issue home to the audience.
“Every time you turn a light on,”
Wiley said as he flipped a switch,
“boom! You’re blowing up my
backyard! I want you to know
there is no such thing as clean-coal
technology. They dig up this coal,
and they bring the waste and put
it behind my granddaughter’s
school. For every 100 tons of coal
they bring out of the ground, they are
extracting 15 pounds of lead. The mercury is
over 2,000 times higher than the national
standards.”

This fall, Holland will premiere his latest project, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified restoration of a 108-year-old commercial building in the East Market district of Louisville. A second film project, FLOW: For Love of Water, goes to the Sundance Film Festival in the fall. He also is trying to convince Louisville politicians and planners to replace contaminated brownfields with farms of solar panels and put in green roofs in place of old tar-paper, flat roofs.

Make that list a little bit longer.

SPORTS
Still on the Run

While some 50-somethings might consider joining their parents on an educational tour or a relaxing cruise, Beth Hamilton Gorman ’ 75 was lured into accompanying her father, Jim Tudder Hamilton ’ 48, to the 2007 Huntsman World Senior Games in St. George, Utah.

“I felt like I was going to do well, particularly in the 10K,” Hamilton said. “But I ran even better than I thought I would. I hadn’t run a 65- minute race since I don’t know when.” Hamilton began running as a sport when he was 69 and a bad shoulder forced him off the basketball court. (Hamilton played basketball at UNC “before McGuire,” as he puts it.) “My children were having so much fun

MARK HASKETT/ WESTERN CAROLINA UNVIERSIT Y

Gorman made her father proud when she took a gold medal in the 50-54 age group for the 5-kilometer race. But most of the attention went to Hamilton, who ran away with two records in the 85-89 age group. Hamilton beat the previous 10-kilometer record of 1 hour, 14 minutes, 55 seconds, with a time of 1:05:03.4 (about a 10-minute mile). Two days later, he broke the 5K record of 34: 12, running that race in 32: 34.

Jim Tudder Hamilton ’ 48 took up running
at age 69 and has gone on to set records. ^running ^that ^I ^decidedto try that,” he says.

“This was 1991. We ran in a 5K run during the homecoming celebration in my hometown of Weir, Kan. My age group was 60 and over, and I ran the race in 25: 20.”

Back in North Carolina, Hamilton joined the Cullowhee Running and Social Club. He began training regularly and participating in Senior Games at the local, state and national level. Now Hamilton trains four days a week, averaging 2- to 3.5-mile runs. He says he holds his weight, once settled in at 189 pounds, to 140 pounds or less.

“I keep a low-calorie diet. I don’t pay much attention to anything but the calories,” he says, addressing those who might hope all this running would excuse a little extra dessert. “I do go down and get cookies from the bakery, but I don’t eat more than one every three days.”