Remembering Dr. Franklin B. Ashley

In 1986, I burned with desire but didn’t know if I could be a writer. Without feedback on my adolescent attempts at storytelling, I was shouting into a well.

And while I dreamed of being a great novelist, I was also obsessed with movies, and thought it might be easier to become a screenwriter than the next Steinbeck or Vonnegut or any of my other literary heroes.

Chuckle.

Dr. Franklin B. Ashley, tinkling the ivories back in the day—what a time it was.

The day I turned in my first scene in Franklin Ashley’s screenwriting class in the Media Arts program at the University of South Carolina, I felt terrified. My high school writing mentors like Liz Simon and Gray Vincent had always encouraged me, but here was a Ph.D. This was college. Something finally seemed at stake with my writing.

In the next class meeting there in the basement of the Carolina Coliseum, our erudite professor came into the room in his gray suit and colorful tie. He placed the stack of student work on the lectern.

Dr. Ashley swept his eyes around to everyone’s but mine. “I want y’all to hear something,” he began. “‘Interior, college dorm room, day…”

As he read through the next few words, a description of the dorm and the two characters, I realized it was my scene.

Your hero in August 1986, wearing an ALIENS t-shirt and surrounded by my beloved collection of VHS-borne movies.

Panic—was I being held up as an exemplar of what not to do? A trickle of sweat rolled down a throbbing temple.

But then he finished reading and said to the rest of the scriptwriting students, “Now that’s how you begin a scene.” He finally turned to me. “Mr. McCallister, this is obviously not your first piece of screenwriting,” or words to that effect. “See me after class.”

He was right. I had been writing scripts and stories and the first two pages of novels since the age of 13, but here, at last, was validation. And that moment, my friends, is part of the reason I became the writer I am now. A mentor saw value in my work and told me so. Simple as that. Sauce for the goose, fuel for the engine, a glimmer of self-confidence where before there had been only uncertainty.

And yet, something about his approbation also frightened me—I wasn’t familiar with inklings that dreams might come true. But today I have grown into a man who walks the path of dreams, in part thanks to Franklin Ashley’s encouragement that morning, and on many more similar occasions to come.

Not only all that, but this dear man also took me and the other scriptwriting students to New York for the first time, another childhood fantasy come true. Walking behind him in his topcoat down 42nd Street while snowflakes fell—the image is burned into my memory, one of dozens of indelible moments I’ll never repeat.

Hell, that trip, and my time in media arts, meant so much to me I would go on to write a novel AND a novella of linked stories inspired by it. Earlier this year, that novel, Reconstruction of the Fables, was a finalist in the prestigious Faulkner-Wisdom Competition. Perhaps needless to say, the character “Max de Lisle,” like the man who inspired him, remains one of my favorites. Both volumes (the bonus edition of related stories is called Fables of the Reconstruction—REM fans will get it) will be published simultaneously by my imprint Mind Harvest Press in 2020.

Seeing this obituary today is another indelible moment. I’ve lost many important people and loved ones in my life, and Dr. Ashley represents another—a major one. I mourn him today, and send my eternal gratitude up into the ether, where I hope his spirit receives it with the enormous love and respect I feel for him.

So, bless you, FBA. Now you are one of the angels for real, but you always were to me right here on earth. ‘Heartbreak’ seems inadequate—maybe I’ll find the right word later, after my cheeks dry.

Here’s the link to Dr. Ashley’s obituary. Blessings and light to his wife Dottie, family, friends, and loved ones.

Jenn McCallister, yours truly, and filmmaking cohort Robert Thomas, c. Fall 1987