This year, SCAD and Paula Wallace inducted five new women into the Savannah Women of Vision, a program that celebrates key female figures whose ideas, leadership and service have shaped the community of Savannah. This weekly column will attempt to share a little more of the stories behind each of the fifteen women whose gold portraits hang on either side of the Arnold Hall Theater.
When dramatic writing alumna Allison Hirsch honored Miriam Center at the 2018 Savannah Women of Vision Ceremony, she noted that, “when we look at Miriam Center’s life, stories seem to pour forth like a natural spring.”
Miriam was born in 1926 in Savannah to immigrants from Belarus. Throughout her childhood, but especially during her time at Savannah High School, she was ostracized for being Jewish. She told a reporter from Connect Savannah that she didn’t care. “I was popular with the boys, and that was all that mattered.”
After the end of World War II, she immersed herself in volunteer work, helping to relocate survivors from concentration camps.
In the 1950s, she married alderman Leo Center and gave birth to three sons. However, she refused to accept the conventional role of a Southern mother, sitting around drinking and playing cards. She started her own real estate business and served as the chair of the opening of the Savannah Civic Center in 1974.
After her 15-year-old son, Henry, died of a brain tumor, her marriage began to crumble. She waited until her other sons, Tony and Scott, were grown and then divorced Leo, bought a convertible and drove west until she found herself on the beaches of Malibu.
In California, Miriam had a spiritual awakening which took the initial form of a white-robed cult, grew into transcendental mediation and finally landed her at the University of Santa Monica where she earned a degree in spiritual psychology. She also founded the Daughters of Destiny, a group that has brought focus and strength to women through spirituality.
When Miriam found herself back in Savannah in the 1990s, she became the first female director of the Metropolitan Planning Commission and ran for city council twice. In her second attempt in 1999, she was defeated by fellow Woman of Vision, Edna Jackson.
Around this time, Miriam began to tell stories of her own. She wrote “Scarlett O’Hara Can Go to Hell,” a semi-autobiographical novel that describes itself as “a mesmerizing tale of one woman’s determination to re-write southern society’s definition of what her life should or can be.”
She also began work on her musical, “Johnny Mercer and Me,” which uses 16 of Mercer’s tunes to detail her friendship with the Academy Award-winning composer. She had first met Mercer when in 1963 when she sat on his lap at a party. Apparently, Mercer responded by singing his song “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” adding”but baby you got a fat ass.”
However, their relationship grew deeper when Mercer moved back to Savannah from Hollywood in order to care for his sick mother. Miriam had only just lost Henry to a brain tumor when Johnny was diagnosed as terminally ill with the same condition, which strengthened their profound relationship which continued until Mercer’s death in 1976.
The Lucas Theater put on a production of the musical in 2012 which Miriam produced and revived it again in 2016. Since then, Miriam, now 91, has busied herself by writing articles for Savannah Now and captivating admirers with her trademark charm, wit and gleeful swearing.
In the same Connect Savannah interview, she shared that the secret to her vitality is to avoid “all those damn medications they’re always trying to shove down old people’s throats. That, and good sex.”
Elena Burnett is the Editor-in-Chief of District. She’s a writing major who will graduate in 2019.
