Feature Stories Campus Events All Stories

Alum Heads Fitzgerald Museum

Novelist and Jazz-Age chronicler F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, are sparkling figures in the current Woody Allen movie “Midnight in Paris.” They also star in an Alabama museum that’s headed by a Washington and Lee alum, Will Thompson.

In the early 1930s, the Fitzgeralds and their daughter, Scottie, spent just six months living in Montgomery, Ala. That house is the only one of their residences still standing, and so it is fitting that some concerned citizens in Montgomery saved it from destruction in 1986 and turned it into the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum. It’s also fitting that English major Will, of the Class of 2004, runs the place.

Will started his post at the museum this past April. One of the first events he oversaw was a July 23 celebration of Zelda’s birthday. (She would have been 111.) Of his new job, Will told the Montgomery Advertiser, “I saw something that would feather in very nice with my passion for writing and litera­ture, and also something that would feather in with my loca­tion.” Location is everything: Will lives right across the street.

You can read the article here.

If you know any W&L alumni who would be great profile subjects, tell us about them! Nominate them for a web profile.