Deep into a story from Indian Country Today about an Oklahoma film company acquiring the rights to a novel about major-league baseball’s first American Indian player is this:
Mike (Marshall) has been involved in Oklahoma television for more than 20 years as a production manager and field producer. He has produced more than 200 hours of educational programming for broadcast and has co-produced a number of documentary projects. He is currently supervising production on the River Rock productions, “Soldiers of Misfortune: The Sultana Disaster” and “Driving Force: Cyrus Avery and the Creation of Route 66.”
I’d heard from longtime roadie Marian Clark that a film was being made about Cyrus “Father of Route 66” Avery, but she had few other details. I’m glad the Avery film has been essentially confirmed.
Avery is credited with creating the basic route for U.S. Highway 66 and the federal highway system in 1926, then pushed to form the U.S. Highway 66 Association. Avery is buried in Tulsa, his longtime place of residence.
The company behind the film is River Rock Entertainment, which according to its Web site is based in Enid, Okla. The site hasn’t been updated in a while, however, and has no details about the Avery film. One of the partners of River Rock is Mark Marshall, who was a longtime production assistant for a certain Steven Spielberg.
That’s great news! A few other people for whom I’d like to see documentaries include: Will Rogers, Angel Delgadillo, and Lucille Hammons.
I’m sure there are some good stories about them.
I wonder why we never hear much about Mr. Avery’s Chinese family. The descendants of Cyrus Avery and his Chinese wife have an annual Gathering every year, usually somewhere on the West Coast. For some reason this chapter of Cyrus Avery’s life is not well known except among the family.