Utah Heritage Foundation

Panguitch folks have a new thing to be excited about.  Mark and Heather Childs from Las Vegas have bought the old Gem Theater. 

Through the Partners in the Field initiative for Central and Southern Utah, UHF staff is providing on-site technical assistance for historic research, rehabilitation, and business planning for the Gem Theatre.

We locals have a rare chance to bask in their enthusiasm.  Anytime one can find the real thing, real enthusiasm, it is like finding a gold mine.  It is someplace to visit and visit and take away riches, this time for the spirit.  This ambitious young couple and their two boys (in photo at left) plan to open an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. 

Besides that, they will show many free movies.  Yes, I said “free”.  And besides even that, they will host many other kinds of programs, like dramas, lectures and whatever else that could help us feel some of the old community spirit.  And they will have computers available in the balcony along with a museum where we can look back and remember.  (The staircase to the balcony will be restored to its original location seen in the ghost outline in the photo at right.) 

Some place to go!!  Some place to entice us off our couches and out to interact with our friends and neighbors!  To help them, all of us who were here when the theater was so much of our lives ought to share our memories and particularly pictures that will help them bring back the place the way it once looked it makes sense to help other with their dreams.  When we help them we help reclaim the community’s ownership.  It is like a man I talked to once near Panguitch Lake.  He said of an old, dead tree, “I was here and saw that tree get hit by lightning.  I always visit it when I come back every year.”  He felt a connection because of shared history.  Legal ownership isn’t the only way to connect to places.  So here’s to the next generation having a place that will be part of their happy growing up years:  and, for the rest of us, we have any opportunity to feel young again by participating in something near to what we had as young.  And then to get yummy, natural ice cream, too.  Way to go, Childs Family and Panguitch!

“It Makes Sense,” by Veda Hale, Garfield County Insider, Thursday, July 1, 2010.  Reprinted by Permission.  Photos by Susan Crook, Utah Heritage Foundation.