Five People You May Not Know Who Call Texarkana Home

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4. Julie Meadows (born Lidia Lee)Julie MeadowsPornographic Actress. Perhaps more infamous than famous, Meadows was born on February 3, 1974 in Texarkana, Texas. She married at the age of 17 and gave birth to a son just after her first wedding anniversary. Meadows met film director Michael Raven while dancing in Dallas. She moved to Los Angeles six months later where she began working in adult films. Her first film was Dirty Debutantes 94. Meadows was a contract performer for two years before leaving in January 2003. She made 239 adult films and retired from the industry in 2004. She later stated her reason for retiring was that she was no longer interested in making movies.

5. Mac Morgan – (June 25, 1917 – June 12, 2007) Mac Morgan was an American bass-baritone who had an active performance career in concerts and operas from the early 1940s until the mid-1970s. The Boston Globe described him as a singer “known for his rich tone and enviable diction.”

Born in Texarkana, Texas, Morgan moved with his family to Jacksonville, FL, at the age of nine. His father was a lease inspector for federal buildings. His family attended the Main Street Baptist Church in Jacksonville, and it was there that he had his earliest singing experiences, both as a choir member and soloist. While in middle school he began playing the trombone, and at the age of 16 he began taking voice lessons. After finishing high school, he entered the Eastman School of Music in 1936 on the advice of noted baritone John Charles Thomas. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from Eastman in 1940. His voice teacher at Eastman arranged for him to practice with the accompanist Helen Neilly. Morgan and Neilly married in 1941 and remained married 66 years.

After serving in WWII, in the early 1950s, Morgan and his family moved to Stockbridge, Mass., and there heMac Morgan befriended artist Norman Rockwell who did a charcoal drawing of Morgan which the singer used in publicity material. After moving to Massachusetts, he became a regular performer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. With the BSO he performed under conductor Leonard Bernstein on several occasions, including 1955 performances of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Beethoven’s Fidelio. Other engagements with major symphony orchestras soon followed, including performances with conductors Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, and Seiji Ozawa. He was also frequently heard at the Tanglewood Music Festival, making his debut there in 1950 as Don Anchise in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La finta giardiniera with Ray Smolover as Count Belfiore, Julian Patrick as Roberto, Marni Nixon as Serpetta, and Sarah Caldwell conducting.

In 1951 Morgan sang two roles with the New York City Opera: Pantalone in The Love for Three Oranges and Silvio in Pagliacci. Also that year, he sang the role of Leperello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Boris Goldovsky’s New England Opera Theater. He was heard in succeeding years with that company as Figaro in The Barber of Seville (1952–1954, Podesta (1953), the title role in Don Pasquale (1955), and Guglielmo in Così fan tutte (1956). He sang the role of Sharpless in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with the Opera Guild of Greater Miami in 1953 with Licia Albanese in the title role.

In 1982, Morgan retired from Boston University and moved to Georgia, where he taught for 11 years at Emory University.

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