I had the great good fortune to work and converse frequently with Jim Ostrander, the famously kind, and gifted actor for whom the Memphis theater awards are named. But no conversation was more moving than the one and only time when he and I sat down for a formal interview shortly before his life and career were cruelly abbreviated by cancer of the jaw.
“I’ve had 33 years of doing something that I was really good at,” he said. “I was wholly realized as an artist, in full possession of my powers And I used them with full knowledge of what I was doing. You can’t ask for more than that. You can’t ask for that to go on forever.”
Of course he was right, you can’t ask for that to go on forever. But there are a lot of people who loved Jim and want his memory, not just his name, to live on. So I suppose this was inevitable. There is now a Facebook page for friends of Jim Ostrander with lots of pictures archived there for fans to pore over. So if you do the FB thing, and you loved Jim, drop by, sign up, and share what you’ve got.
