Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401130009
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
Richard Herring is this year's president of Theater Owners of Virginia, part of the National Theater Owners organization. Jan Herring is the 1993 winner of the Ida Schreiber Award, given annually by the National Theater Owners Association for significant philanthropic or humanitarian contributions to her community.
The couple has owned the 65-year-old Millwald Theatre on Wytheville's Main Street since mid-1984, and remodeled it into a three-screen facility.
``About half of all theater screens in the United States and Canada are part of the National Association of Theater Owners,'' Richard Herring said.
When they attend association gatherings wearing their ``NATO'' badges, Jan Herring added, ``we get raised eyebrows'' from people who don't know that acronym can mean something other than North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Richard Herring also serves on the boards of the state and national organizations as well as Mid-Atlantic NATO, including Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. He is on two national committees, Independent Theater Owners and IMAGE (Insuring Movie-goers A Great Experience) which seeks ways to do more for audiences than just projecting movies onto screens.
Richard Herring grew up in the Roanoke area, where his life's work may have been foreshadowed by age 11 when he put up a tent each summer and showed movies to his friends for a nickel on a little 16-millimeter projector his parents had given him for Christmas.
Jan Herring moved to Roanoke at age 13. They still maintain a retreat at Bent Mountain, although they now live in Wytheville.
At one time, they lived inside a movie screen - the one at the Park Drive-In at Pearisburg, which they managed from 1977 to 1984.
They also managed the Pulaski Theater until it closed and the building was donated to Pulaski County. Now a group of county residents called the Friends of the Pulaski Theater is working on turning it into a community and performing arts center, and will launch a fund-raising drive in 1994 to renovate it.
The Herrings have organized local merchants to sponsor all-day shows for children on special occasions like Christmas. Jan Herring still has a poster-size thank-you letter on their office wall, printed with great care, from a group of youngsters who had enjoyed Disney's ``Homeward Bound'' at one of the Millwald's special showings.
They make the theater available both to preschool children in Head Start programs and handicapped adults.
Renovating the Millwald is a never-ending project. The Herrings recently added another interior art-deco light. They have virtually created a new men's rest room. Each seat in the downstairs theater has been scrapped, recovered and repainted.
Jan Herring remembers scraping off 30 to 40 years of accumulated chewing gum stuck onto the seats over the years. ``Oh, it was such fun!''
Her first reaction on getting the news of her national award was that it must be a mistake. It wasn't.
The Herrings are the subject of a lengthy article in the current 1993-94 edition of the NATO Encyclopedia of Exhibition, where Richard gives his views on movies as an important social form.
``Movies have a lot of influence in our society, and I think films can be at the leading edge of social change,'' he said.
``Before we ever really dealt with civil rights matters, the movies were pointing out to us the inequities of our segregation,'' he said. ``We're certainly seeing films that deal with what happens with a breakdown of morality.''
The Herrings' plans for the Millwald are far from complete. Like an old movie serial, people will have to come to the theater practically every week to see their latest venture.
by CNB