Issue date: 10/12/04 Section: Aggielife

Charles Gordone overlooks the Rio Grande Gorge in Taos, N.M. during his fellowship at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch in July 1987.(Photo by Susan Gordone)

Down a country road and around a dusty bend, John Walker spends his days in a shed behind his house, where he shapes scrap metal into works of art. Walker, a 60-something former Texas A&M architecture professor, doesn't get many visitors these days, but lately, he's connected with an old friend who left a lasting impression on him more than nine years ago.

To Walker, his friend, Charles Gordone, was the kind of man that you meet once in a lifetime. Gordone, who taught theater at A&M from 1987 to 1994 and won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for his first play, "No Place to Be Somebody," was the first playwright to integrate blacks and whites on the same stage. The friendship between Walker, a white man, and Gordone, a man of three races - black, white and Native American - happened almost instantaneously.

A companionship between two men who grew up in such different cultures was an unlikely one. Walker grew up in the segregated south on a cotton farm in Georgia and was raised almost entirely by two black women (whom he calls his "surrogate mothers") who worked on his parents' farm. Charles spent his childhood in Elkart, Ind., where his mother fed him a steady diet of culture and poetry. But, the two men were inextricably bound by one thing: their belief in an American culture that couldn't be divided by race or ethnicity.

"Charles did not believe in black power," Walker said. "He believed in people power."

Tonight, Gordone's vision for a unified America will be brought to A&M by local artists and his widow, Susan, through readings, music and art. The campus, Susan said, has come a long way since her husband began his struggle toward an inclusive America in the 1960s.

Just four decades ago, A&M was only beginning to open its doors to women and minorities. The racial tensions of the 60s were something Charles, who was living in New York, sought to end on the stage, Susan said. His play, "No Place to Be Somebody," described his struggle of living in a white vs. black America.

"Charles said throughout his life that there was one culture: the American culture, to which many ethnic groups contribute," Susan said. "His play was born out of necessity and urgency for a play that gave substantial roles to actors of all races. He brought blacks and whites into the theater, and they were all laughing at the same human truths."

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