Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 26, 1993 TAG: 9303260268
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`MASTER OF MACABRE' BRINGS ANTI-DRUG LESSON TO SCHOOL
Edgar Allan Poe. Len Bias. Janis Joplin.What?
Drugs, that's what. They all died from taking too many.
Of course, in 1849, the year Poe turned up in a gutter, nobody knew how much was too much, Mel Harold told a roomful of students Thursday at James Madison Middle School.
They still don't, he said. So don't take them at all.
Harold delivered his morbid message in ghastly garb.
To encourage children to stay away from drugs, he masquerades as Poe - the master of the macabre - and squeezes in a lesson in literature while he's at it.
From the stuffed raven at his side to the black top hat and double-breasted suit, Harold aims for the authentic. He even looks like Poe.
Harold will deliver his hour-long performance again today at Ruffner and Lucy Addison middle schools.
Thursday, he visited Madison and Breckenridge.
Between dramatic excerpts from "The Raven," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "Annabelle Lee," Harold entered into a little teen-age angst.
"Every once in a while, if you are different in school, someone whispers," Harold - or rather Poe - told the children.
"All I wanted to do was belong."
But Poe never did.
Striving for recognition from his friends, his father and his peers, Poe turned to alcohol and later to drugs, in the form of opium.
Popular theory says Poe died after eating too much of the drug. Some scholars, however, dispute that. Other theories suggest Poe died from drinking, was beaten to death or commited suicide.
Harold sticks by the drug overdose theory. Although Poe died 144 years ago, his death differs little from those of several modern-day heroes, he emphasized.
John Belushi. Jimi Hendrix. Elvis Presley.
"They all died in almost exactly the same way," he said.
And none of them had a friend to stop them.
"Do you have the courage to see your friend take a six-pack and walk away?" Harold challenged the crowd of 160 eighth-graders in Madison's cafeteria.
"Do you have the courage to say, `I'm not going to let you?' "
His warning did not go ignored.
"I think it was a very positive message and I don't think kids should take drugs," said Connor Lancaster, 13.
Principal Philip Jepson said teachers would try to weave Harold's work into their classroom discussions. They will also use the anti-drug topic in teacher advisory groups.
Lou Talbutt, guidance supervisor for the city school system, said she brought Harold into the middle schools because "we have such a hard time with the anti-drug message."
"We wanted to get something interesting into the curriculum."
Harold said he has delivered "In Search of Poe" to more than 1,200 schools in seven years.
He got the idea to combine substance abuse with 19th century American literature from a group of teachers who saw him perform an adult version of the act in Massachusetts.
Harold turned to the dark poet after running into hard times in his own life.
He lost his warehouse manager's job of 12 years when the company went bankrupt.
Always an aspiring actor, Harold said he first performed Poe in a cemetery on Halloween.
He developed his current act after a Brockton, Mass., junior high school teacher encouraged him to try it out in her classroom.
"At the beginning, I didn't believe them, I didn't understand what I could do," he said.
Now he supports himself by taking the act to schools all over the country, charging them $225 per show.
Not bad for a guy of - how old is Harold?
"Poe died at 40, so we can keep me in that category," he said.
Forevermore.