WILLIAMSVILLE-Theresa "Tego" Maggio has been at it again. Following her homage-driven heart, she's recently created another documentary.
Bills Lumber, about the last days of the Bills family's antique sawmill in Wardsboro and the lives of those who ran it, premieres this Saturday at the Williamsville Hall.
A filmmaker by avocation for some 25 years, Maggio's latest project dials in on the family and on the divesting of their family business and its 433 adjoining acres.
"It's basically about the destruction of the mill," Maggio said in a recent interview with The Commons.
In 1966, Melbourne Bills had transferred the business, established in 1936, to three of his sons, Milton, Everett, and Alan. When Milton died in 2009, his brothers became co-owners of the enterprise.
But with changing times and safety concerns, the mill finally had to close and be dismantled in summer of 2023.
Around that time, Maggio had occasion to meet Mark Bills, supervisor of the Brookline road crew.
"I said, 'Is Melbourne Bills your father?' And he said, 'No, he was my grandfather. He passed away.' And then he said, 'You know, my uncle and my father are selling the sawmill.' And as soon as he said that, I knew I had to [make the documentary]."
In brief segments laced with anecdotes and yarns, we hear the history recounted primarily by Alan Bills with input from Everett, now in their 80s. They tell not only of the mill and the many experiences it yielded - from happy to hair raising - but also about what life was like growing up on "Bills Hill," the family compound.
With wry wit and in the now-rarely-heard rural Vermont cadence and twang, we learn not only about the family business and the many-branched family itself, but also of local history through accounts of floods, fires, near mishaps, and harrowing accidents.
The mill served many locals and employed many others. Thus, there's a sentimental core to the story that captures Maggio, who says, "I'm very empathetic."
"The first half of the movie," Maggio explains, "is the guys telling stories about what it was like growing up and running the mill with their dad and then on their own. In the first half of the film, I wanted to let people know what they were losing."
We hear Alan Bills musing, "It is the end of an era," and Williamsville blacksmith and animal rescuer Fred Homer echoes that same line in an interview woven into Maggio's homage.
Filmed after having just visited the Bills at the end of the destruction of the mill that had sourced lumber for several of his projects, Homer tells Maggio: "The end of an era died today."
It is, in part, a sad story, Maggio notes: "It was like they had to kill their own beloved dog. That's what it was like. I left every day crying."
Yet for every poignant account and scene, the film counters with comic relief, witty tales, and stories of happy endings to potentially tragic moments, all of which the brothers and kin seemed to take with grace.
Simply shot - no frills or violins - it's an exposé of rural grit. The only music heard is in several clips of Alan Bills playing his trumpet, as he's been known to do often in church, in the Wardsboro Fourth of July Parade, in company, outdoors - even at his wife's funeral several years ago.
"These are amazingly resilient people," says Maggio in a recent press release. "I feel lucky to know them."
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Maggio, born in Carlstadt, New Jersey, first came to Vermont for love of horses at age 9. "My dad owned a gas station; he pumped gas and fixed cars," she says. "He had this one customer [Bradley Cohn] who was a patent lawyer and a vice president at Texaco."
Cohn and Maggio's father became friends and soon the executive learned of Maggio's passion: "I loved horses and read everything about horses."
Cohn, she recalls, said "I have a horse."
"He flew me up to Vermont, to West River Lodge, where he and his wife had been guests for years. [...] I got out of the car after flying up, and I put my foot on the ground and I saw horses in a pasture with their heads down and a storm coming from the northwest, green grass, trees. I said, 'I'm going to live here.'"
The Cohns eventually bought the Lodge and Maggio started to spend much of each summer there.
"By the time I was 13, I was working for them," she says. "I wanted the barn job, but I had to work for that."
Eventually becoming the riding coach's assistant, Maggio recalls, was "the best job of my life."
At 17, she became an emancipated minor and established residence at West River Lodge. "I have lived in California. I've lived in Italy. But this is home."
Maggio later earned a master's degree at Columbia School of Journalism. Locally, she was a reporter at the Brattleboro Reformer: "They gave me two beats. Yankee Nuclear and courts and cops."
"I was always looking for interesting people in the valley, though," she recalls, and through various channels would connect with some of the older folks from long-established area families to yield material for her work.
Maggio first engaged in documentary making a couple of decades ago when, on one of her many trips to Sicily, she attended the three-day Feast of St. Agatha. "I'm fascinated by ritual and human behavior. [...] And I wanted to make a documentary about it: it was so beautiful."
She bought a camera and went to a two-week video production program. Since then, gratefully and for years, she's been using the facilities at Brattleboro Community Television (BCTV) for editing and production work - and often for loan of equipment.
"If you ever have a question, there's always someone there to show you how to do it," she says.
Maggio, primarily a writer with two published nonfiction titles to her credit, has done documentaries on many topics, including goat milking, a teenage artist, a Wardsboro hooked-rug maker; on area non-profits; and on the Gilfeather turnip.
"And I did another movie about how it's better for older people to get out of the country and move into town to be closer to services," she says.
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Back in the early 1990s, when she worked for the Reformer, "I had always passed that Bills Lumber sign on a plow [off Route 100 in Wardsboro] and wondered what the heck was up there," Maggio recalls. "Well, I went up to the house," she said. She ended up writing a story about Melbourne Bills and his wife, Mabel.
So, in July 2023, when she heard that Bills Lumber had been sold to entrepreneur Mike Heffernan, "I knew I had to tell the story," she recalls. "It was a world fading."
On screen, we hear Alan Bills say "selling the mill is like dying: I know it's going to happen, but I don't look forward to it." Now that it's done, he says he can relax and enjoy the many projects that'd been back-burnered in order to run a good business.
While the film will eventually be viewable on BCTV, Maggio hopes people will come to the free premiere of the 45-minute film at the accessible Williamsville Hall, 35 Dover Rd., on Saturday, Jan. 4 at 7 p.m.
"Because I want it to be a community event," she says. "They're not coming to see a movie because I made it. They're coming to celebrate the Bills family."
There might even be an opportunity at the event for people to tell their own stories about Bills Lumber - "working there or getting their stuff milled there."
Alan Bills will be there to happily answer questions following the screening. Hoping other elder Bills will make it, Maggio says, "Who knows? They're in their late 80s. I'm hoping to God there's no ice on the road that day."
In fact, the forecast looks clear.
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For more about Maggio, visit theresamaggio.com.
Annie Landenberger is an arts writer and columnist for The Commons. She also is one half of the musical duo Bard Owl, with partner T. Breeze Verdant.
This Arts column by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.