Coronavirus strikes a double blow against culture

When Rollins College announced major budget cuts last month, among the casualties were two important cultural programs. The Winter Park Institute and Winter With the Writers both were eliminated as the college looked to cut costs in the wake of the devastating financial effects of coronavirus.

“I am heartbroken,” said Elizabeth Wimberley Bernbaum, a fan of the Winter Park Institute, which brought notable speakers to the Rollins campus. “When my children were younger, the WPI series allowed me to engage intellectually in a way I didn’t do often as a stay-at-home parent of elementary-school students.”

Since its establishment in 2008, when U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins inaugurated the program, the Winter Park Institute has brought a wide range of speakers to share their insights on culture, social responsibility and our general humanity.

Here are just a few: feminist Gloria Steinem; actor Edward James Olmos; Pulitzer-Prizewinning journalist and author Nicholas Kristof; opera great Jessye Norman; violinist Itzhak Perlman; radio host Garrison Keillor; congresswoman turned gun-control advocate Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly; actor and activist George Takei; “Florida Project” director Sean Baker; and NBA legend Kareem AbdulJabbar.

It was like we had our own version of Barbara Walters’ famed “Most Fascinating People” TV specials in our backyard — live and in person. Or, as Bernbaum put it: “Truly, exceptional programming.”

Bernbaum’s all-time favorite guest was National Geographic photographer Joe Sartore in fall 2016. She and her pre-teen son attended and “learned a lot from the evening,” she said. “What an incredible night in Winter Park.”

The Winter With the Writers festival was an even longer tradition at Rollins, where authors began visiting campus in 1927 to bring essays and stories to life in an annual reading series called “Animated Magazine.” That tradition, which hosted noted writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ogden Nash and Carl Sandburg, eventually evolved into Winter With the Writers.

Karen Russell, whose Floridaset novel “Swamplandia!” was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, appeared one year and described the Winter With the Writers experience as receiving a “behind-the-scenes, director’s cut” version of books and the process of writing.

Guests included poets as well as novelists and often incorporated contemporary issues.

In 2015, author Elliot Ackerman gave a campus reading of “Green on Blue,” his fictional tale about an Afghan boy caught up with a U.S.-funded militia in the war-torn country. A Marine, Ackerman had served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

That same year, demonstrating the sort of partnerships the series could generate, Hillary Jordan was part of the festival. The film adaptation of her award-winning “Mudbound” was screened at Enzian Theater.

A partnership with the National Book Awards meant finalists for the prestigious prize regularly appeared.

Former director Philip Deaver explained the festival’s appeal to the Sentinel in 2008 by saying usually readers “get to know the writers only through the page. And then there’s this spellbinding moment when they actually step on the stage and you see them in 3D. You get a chance to hear this inner voice that whispers up off the page.”

Winter Park Institute also provided a chance to hear people’s inner voices. In one legendary event, Paul McCartney shared his songwriting process before performing an acoustic rendition of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.”

I wasn’t there — McCartney’s appearance was kept hush-hush until mere hours before the event and then tickets were only available via lottery for Rollins students and faculty. But I was lucky enough to be inspired by others, such as artist Candy Chang who described the power of human connection in relation to her “Before I Die” art installations.

I can still recall Takei, the well-known “Star Trek” actor, striking a hopeful note about America in a packed and hushed hall.

“In a democracy, you never give up,” he said in his 2017 address. “You keep on keeping on.”

This, from a man who recited the Pledge of Allegiance as child from behind the barbed wire of a U.S. internment camp just because his parents were from Japan.

Bernbaum remembers being moved by 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee, an African who, as leader of Women of Liberia Mass Action and Peace, brought Christian and Muslim women together in a nonviolent movement that helped end Liberia’s civil war.

“I am very grateful to Rollins for bringing this resource to us,” said Bernbaum, of Maitland. “I will hold out hope that Rollins will bring back a speaker series someday.”

I’m hopeful, too. We will always need to hear the voices of those who make us think, challenge our beliefs, spur us to action — and inspire us to make the world a better place.