The Clarksville Arts & Heritage Council will honor three community leaders with Lifetime Achievement Awards in Art and in Heritage at our 19th annual membership gathering on Monday, Dec. 2.
Sally Welch will receive the Lifetime Achievement in Art award for her work as an actor, director—and even set designer in a pinch. Phyllis Smith and Arthur Nicholson will receive the Lifetime Achievement in Heritage Award for their work with Mount Olive Cemetery Historical Preservation Society.
Ms. Welch has acted in or directed more theatrical productions than she cares to count. As an English and theatre teacher at Northwest High School from 1965 to 1997 and while working with community and professional theatre projects, she estimates she may have directed close to 50 plays.
She directed Everyman, The Second Shepherd’s Play, and Murder at the Cathedral at Trinity Episcopal Church and has been involved with plays as an actor or director at the Roxy Regional Theatre and as an adjunct professor in Austin Peay State University’s theatre program. She was in an Off Off Broadway production of Medea in New York, where she was studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
She directed West Side Story at Brockinghurst College in Brockinghurst, Hampshire, England as part of a Fulbright Scholarship.
She says probably her favorite role as an actor is Amanda in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, a role she has played four times over her career.
As an actor, she says she strives for perfection but knows she can never reach it. As a director, she appreciates the strong performances she can get from good actors. As a teacher, she enjoys seeing students strive to improve. She notes she loves theatre because it encompasses all the arts.
Arthur “Nick” Nicholson is an inspirational speaker and author, who served more than 39 years in the enlisted and officer ranks of the U.S. Air Force, Air Force Reserves and 33 years as a civil servant.
A Clarksville native, Col. Nicholson moved back to the family farm in Montgomery County when he retired.
He immediately became involved in Clarksville’s civic life and currently serves as the executive director and president of the Mt. Olive Cemetery Historical Preservation Society. In this capacity, he successfully steered the nomination of Mt Olive Cemetery to the National Register of Historic Places.
He also serves as treasurer of the Clarksville Arts and Heritage Council and on the Council’s Civil Rights Monument advisory committee.
Col. Nicholson is the President and CEO of SIE Global Enterprises LLC, a Contract-Consulting firm, SIE Global Publishing LLC, and Nicholson Farms LLC. All three companies are grounded in service, integrity, and excellence.
Phyllis Smith has served as historian for the Mount Olive Cemetery Historical Preservation Society for the last ten years. In that capacity, she researches the history of the cemetery, discovers the life stories of those interred in the cemetery and works on finding the names of interred individuals in unmarked graves.
In addition to her work with Mount Olive, Ms. Smith has co-edited three books of local history with Minoa Uffelman and Ellen Kanervo—The Civil War Letters of Sarah Kennedy: Life under Occupation in the Upper South, The Diary of Serepta Jordan: A Southern Woman’s Struggle with War and Family, 1857-1864, and The Diary of Nannie Haskins Williams: A Southern Woman’s Story of Rebellion and Reconstruction, 1863-1890—all published by the University of Tennessee Press.
She contributed a chapter in Following the Faith: A Bicentennial History of First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville 1822-2022, a book that won the 2022 American Association of State and Local History national award for small press books.
In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Awards Ceremony, APSU alumni, David Alford, Paul Binkley, Jenny Littleton, and Erin Ramsey Brinkley will present “A Southern Christmas Sampler” of holiday tunes and stories. Their performance begins at 5:30 p.m. in the APSU Trahern Theatre. Tickets are available at http://www.artsandheritage.us/get-involved/membership/