Dream

The setting was a social get-together among old friends from Athens. I was sitting between two of my closest female friends, Laura McMullen Margeson on my left and Dayle Freeman Burns on my right. I had my arm around Laura's waist and was resting my head on Dayle. I thought they might be uncomfortable due to the ambiguity of the signals I was sending but neither one showed negative emotions. I saw a friend who odfly had taken on the exact appearance of a young Rusty Carter, Laura's soul mate who died in a plane crash shortly after high school. As the group was breaking up, I remarked to Roy Bell,  "This may be the last time we see all these people."

In reality, Laura has a recurrence of colon cancer that's probably terminal. 

Remembering Ort

I'm Owen Scott, an Athens old-timer. I was invited by David Finkel to make a video about my long friendship with Ort. I met him back around 1966 when he was Billy Carlton, or to his close friends BC, a friend of my older sister, who hung out at our house regularly. Back then had short hair and a clean shave as did all boys at Athens High School at that time, but his uniquely eccentric personality, Top 40 DJ voice and obscure obsessions were the same as the Ort you later came to know and love. Early on he found out I have 3 first names, William Owen Nixon. From then on, when Ort came over, his loud greeting to me was "He's the one who's really hot, William Owen Nixon Scott!" This still makes me smile. Of course, he meant hot in the old sense of a hot new single hitting the charts. As an aspiring rock musician, I got a kick out of his whimsical endorsement. 

Ort loved to rattle off the designations and locations of tiny radio stations in the middle of nowhere, of which he apparently knew every one in the entire USA. His knowledge of virtually unknown records and artists was similarly encyclopedic and he was especially fond of novelty bands and their crazy singles such as Transfusion by Nervous Norvus (except generally less well known and successful than that wild classic). 

Ort graduated high school ahead of me during which time I was gravitating toward the countercultural art and music scene centered around Jim Herbert's house on Dearing Street. I didn't see Ort regularly but the connection we'd made when I was a middle school kid endured through the years as I grew up and left Athens to become a psychologist. I would drop by Ort's Oldies when I was in town visiting family and friends and I recall letting him have the pick of my 1960s and early 70s vinyl records that included many well worn classics in their original sleeves and covers. I knew they would be cared for with love as they well deserved. 

Many of you had closer associations with Ort over the 50 years or so since I moved away but the strength of our friendship was always evident whenever we met. I posted a photo on my Facebook page of Ort posing with one of my adult daughters during a chance encounter at Trappeze ten years ago. They both were connoisseurs of craft beers and the photo captures a warmth of connection that I will always cherish. 

To me. Ort was at heart a marvelous entertainer, the DJ of a nonstop radio show that only ended with his passing into the mystic. Thanks for the opportunity to honor Ort's memory. He'll always live on in our hearts.