Famed playwright August Wilson’s romantic letters to a Cherry Hill woman really moved me | Jenice Armstrong
“She knew at the time he was a struggling writer" Faye Coleman said of her mother, Patricia. August Wilson "always said, ‘I write. That’s my goal.’..He would take odd jobs because he wanted to write."
Faye Coleman of Cherry Hill was chatting with her mother when she mentioned an August Wilson play she wanted to see.
Her mother responded, "Oh, you mean Auggie?”
Coleman asked, “Do you know him?” Her mother, the late Patricia Louise Coleman, responded affirmatively and added, “Matter of fact, I think I have a couple of letters from him.” She retrieved them. Coleman opened one. What she discovered made her eyes bug out — a beautifully written missive signed by none other than Wilson himself.
It turns out that the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning, critically acclaimed playwright had dated her mother during the mid-1960s when they both lived in Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District. Wilson used to be a regular for breakfast at Eddie’s Restaurant, where Pat, as he called her, worked as a waitress to support her young daughter. Wilson would take her to the legendary Crawford Grill, a jazz spot where luminaries such as John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, and Miles Davis performed.
When Coleman learned about her mother’s relationship with Wilson, one of the greatest playwrights in American history, she said, "It is 2007 and this is the first time that you thought to mention that you have love letters from a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright!”
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Her mother allowed her to take the letters. Life was busy. An engineer by profession, Faye was focused on climbing the ranks in business management. Her two children were still young. Her marriage was in trouble. Doctors diagnosed Faye with breast cancer. The letters slipped her mind until her mother’s passing in 2009, when she decided to read one during the funeral service.
“At the end, I told who it was from,” she recalled. “Everybody gasped."
Still, it took a few more years for Coleman to decide to share them more widely.
First, she had the six letters professionally authenticated by James Spence Authentication. Then, in October, Coleman began writing an unpublished manuscript called, “August with Love.” Coleman will read an excerpt from it at a free event at 7 p.m. on Friday at 1776, a shared workspace at Cherry Hill Mall on the second floor near Nordstrom.
At the time he wrote the letters, Wilson was channeling his energy into poetry; the lyrical notes he hand-wrote to Coleman’s mother reflect that.
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“I’ve read all of these at least 10 times and I’ve asked my mom for some definitions around a few of them but it’s hard to decipher,” she warned before reading one letter aloud. (She asked that I not share any of the letters in their entirety.)
“ … Breakfast with honey girl smiling. Fish with rice and two breasts. But damn where are you? You love this where I look for you. Always yes. It is where I have known you to be with funny nose serving coffee … " he writes in a letter dated April 4, 1966, and signed, August with love.
Whew!
My jaw hung after she finished reading. Suitors have sent me my share of love letters but never anything on this level. But then again, none of them were poets.
Intrigued, I pressed for every little detail about their love affair.
“She knew at the time he was a struggling writer," Coleman recalled. "He always said, ‘I write. That’s my goal.’ She would say, ‘Shut up Auggie, eat your breakfast.’ "
“He could barely afford breakfast. He would take odd jobs because he wanted to write. She said, ‘I can’t settle down with someone who won’t settle down. I have a child to raise. Your goal is to pursue your writing. My goal is to raise a productive God-fearing child.’ ”
Eventually, their lives went in different directions.
Wilson cofounded the Black Horizon Theater in 1968 and in 1969, married his first wife, Brenda Burton, a nurse, and went on to great literary acclaim, including writing Fences, the 1980s-era play adapted to a 2016 film produced and directed by Denzel Washington. He died in 2005 of liver cancer in Seattle, Wash. Faye’s mother, who never married, moved to Cherry Hill in 1999 to be close to family.
"They were two trains running but eventually in the opposite direction,” Coleman pointed out.
That’s a poetic ending in and of itself.