BRATTLEBORO-The public is invited to a screening of Bills Lumber, a 45-minute documentary about the last days of the Bills family's beloved 86-year-old sawmill in Wardsboro. Showtime is 4 p.m. on Sunday, February 16, at the Latchis Theatre. Admission is by donation.
The video follows octogenarian brothers Alan and Everett Bills and their co-owner niece, Debbie Bills Bower, after the mill sold along with 433 adjoining wooded acres, as they prepare to demolish the working sawmill that their late father, Melbourne Bills, had established in 1936. Great storytellers, Alan and Everett talk about what it was like to grow up on "Bills Hill," their family compound on Route 100 in Wardsboro, recounting harrowing tales of fire and flood with equanimity and a good laugh.
"These are amazingly resilient people," said video maker Theresa Maggio. "I feel lucky to know them."
Maggio had interviewed the formidable Melbourne Bills, the sawmill's founder, and his wife, Mabel, in the early 1990s when she was a reporter for the Brattleboro Reformer. Some 30 years later, when she learned from Everett's son that the mill had been sold, "I knew I had to tell the story. Theirs was a world fading away."
Alan and Everett Bills are so popular that its premiere at Williamsville Hall in Newfane was standing-room-only. Many people could not get into the hall. After the premiere, the brothers answered questions and told a few stories.
"The love in the room was palpable," Maggio said. A fan in the audience was moved to lead the crowd in a round of "Auld Lang Syne." A second showing was also standing-room-only. Alan and Everett plan to answer questions after the Latchis screening.
The majority of the video was recorded during the summer and fall of 2023. "I drove back roads a half-hour up to the mill several days a week to capture the demolition and removal of the sawmill, the debarker, and the planer shed," Maggio said. Seeing them having to destroy their father's legacy was so sad that "every day I drove home crying."
But in the end, the Bills's buoyant spirits vanquish all. "I am thrilled to think that these local folk heroes will be seen on the big screen under the Latchis's lapis lazuli ceiling in the very garden of the gods," Maggio said.
After its first two local screenings, audience members wrote to Maggio. Joan Elliott, of Wardsboro, wrote on Facebook, "We will never forget how Everett and Alan helped us after Irene when we lost our bridge. Ever grateful to these wonderful, generous men."
Jan Robinson Hull, of Wardsboro, who grew up with the Bills brothers, wrote: "I know this story is dear to many, many people in the area. You got it! [...] It brought many viewers to tears. [...] We were all very poor, but we didn't know it, we had loving parents and when we got a gift ... it was cherished. To me, you have given us the story of the Bills Mill - it is a gift to all of us."
Laura Wallingford-Bacon of Williamsville wrote that the documentary was "so important to future generations, just as Porter Thayer's photographs are to our generation."
Jill Dean of Wardsboro wrote: "My husband and I got the very last seats in the back row and we were 30 minutes early. [...] What a great movie!"
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.