August Wilson's nephew recounts being raised by the great playwright from the Hill District

Yahoo

01-03-2025

The story of August Wilson is one of unlikely and impressive success. He grew up poor, born to a black mother and white father, in Pittsburgh's Hill District in the 1940s. He dropped out of high school and managed to become one of America's biggest and most famous playwrights.
'This room was the bedroom, the living room. It was everything,' Paul Ellis Jr. said. He is one of Wilson's nephews. Ellis' mom and Wilson were among six siblings who grew up in a two-room apartment at 1727 Bedford Avenue in the Hill District, a building that now bears Wilson's name.
Wilson was raising by Daisy Wilson, also known as Daisy Kittle. She worked as a custodian at the same courthouse where Ellis now works as an attorney.
'My grandmother was a very, very hard worker,' Ellis said. 'And she was strict about family values and family tradition.'
Some of her strict rules pertain to the family always sitting down for dinner together, and education was very important in her household.
August Wilson secretly dropped out of high school but would spend long days at the library educating himself.
Despite never receiving formal theatre training, he has since been called 'the theatre's poet of Black America.'
'If he had a story and you were willing to listen to it, he could just tell stories all day,' Ellis said. 'And he was a phenomenal storyteller, as we know.'
Wilson wrote a cycle of ten plays which covered every decade of the 20th century. They chronicle the African-American experience and are almost exclusively set in the Hill District.
Fences and The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize.
Both, along with Ma' Rainey's Black Bottom were adopted into movies with star-studded casts. Among them are actors like Samuel L. Jackson, Viola Davis and Denzel Washington.
Washington was there in January when Wilson was honored with his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
For Ellis, he is in awe of his uncle for all his contributions to the arts but cherishes even more the special family moments he shared with his 'Uncle Freddy.'
'When I lost my father, he stepped in to help my mother raise me,' Ellis said. 'I know the world doesn't know him like that, but we just – we called him Uncle Freddy.'
He says his uncle was authentic, humorous and had good morals. He also said Wilson would bounce story lines and character development off the family during gatherings at loved ones' homes.
'We would be listening to my uncle tell stories about plays that he was working on. And then a year later, we'd be on Broadway watching those same plays,' Ellis said.
He credits his love and appreciation for the arts to his uncle and says he picked up some other lessons from him along the way, too.
'I was the only one who stayed up late at night with him, listening to his stories,' Ellis said. 'He also taught me how to play dominoes, you know. If I had a beer, he wouldn't say anything,' he said with a big grin.
Ellis bought the apartment his uncle was raised in, as well as the entire building. It is now known as the August Wilson House and is designated as a historic landmark.
'He might not have thought about a fancy theater on Broadway or a National Historic Landmark in The Hill District of Pittsburgh, but he would appreciate deeply what they represent, which is progress and opportunity, and fulfilling dreams of others,' Ellis said.
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