WEST POINT, Miss. (AP) - Bern Nadette Stanis remembers herself being upset one night. No one at the school would play with her, she recalled, no matter how hard she tried.
That’s when her mother sat down next to her and grabbed her hands.
“(My mother) said, ’Bern Nadette, one day, the whole world is going to know your name,” Stanis said. “”But she didn’t tell me it was gonna be ’Thelma.”’”
Stanis, better known as “Thelma” from the 1970s TV show “Good Times,” shared her life stories with a roomful of guests at Northside Christian Church’s second annual African American History Banquet at the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) Union Hall in West Point Saturday (Feb. 8) night. The actress played the first African-American female teenage character in a TV show, one that would later resonate with many African Americans.
Growing up, Stanis wasn’t always confident about herself. After preparing for a summer beauty pageant contest for weeks, she tried to talk herself out of the competition by faking an asthma attack.
“I moved like a snail,” Stanis recalled of her sluggish attitude when her mother dragged her to the contest. “”I was hoping the pageant would be over when I got there””
Stanis did not end up winning the pageant. But, she said, through that experience, she won something else. That pageant led her to an audition for “Good Times,” through which she eventually shined as a star.
“Sometimes in life when something good is about to happen … you get afraid and you don’t want to do it,” Stanis said.
“But I did learn this,” she said. “Don’t let the fear stop you from walking into your destiny.”
For Stanis, life after winning the part as Thelma was bittersweet. She developed nodules on her vocal cords, which prevented her from speaking for months. But she saw it as a sign given by God.
“He had to quiet me down,” she said. “In that, I learned something. I became more sensitive to certain things and I became a writer.”
Stanis started writing poetry, short stories and eventually books, she said. She drew inspiration from conversations with friends about romantic relationships as well as her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Her mother loved watching “Good Times,” Stanis said, and sometimes mother and daughter would watch it together.
“She would just stare at that show,” Stanis said. “And Mama looked at (Thelma), and she looked at me, and she said: ’You know, that’s a cute little girl.’
“That was like a knife in my heart,” she said. “And I realized how devastating this monster of the mind really is. This thing is no joke. And I said to Mommy, ’Yeah, Mom, yeah, she’s cute.’”
Through the experience, Stanis became an advocate for caring for those with Alzheimer’s and is now a national spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Association. She detailed her mother’s struggle with the disease and her love for her mom in her book “The Last Night: A Caregiver’s Journey Through Transition and Beyond.”
‘I LOVE THELMA’
It became clear many in the audience knew Thelma — and “Good Times.” When WCBI anchor Aundrea Self, program guide of the event, asked what Florida Evans in “Good Times” said when she was cleaning the kitchen after learning of her husband’s death, they immediately had the answer.
“Damn, damn, damn!” the audience responded loudly.
Carolyn Cook, who attended the event and watched “Good Times” growing up, had recognized Stanis as soon as she walked in the door. Stanis’ performance, she said, made her see what’s possible for an African American.
“I loved Thelma,” Cook said. “It was like, ’Wow, maybe one day I could be on TV.’”
For Vivian Cooperwood, seeing Stanis in real life was exciting.
When the show first aired in the 1970s, Cooperwood missed a lot of it working night shifts as a train operator. Now that she’s retired, she watches the show every day, over and over again.
“I know what’s going to happen (on the show), but I just like it,” Cooperwood said.
The show, which was the first TV series about the everyday life of an African-American family, she said, reminded her of her own childhood.
“On the show, (the Evans’) were a poor family. … We were poor,” she said. “A lot of this stuff, it’s home.”
Also at Saturday’s event, three honorees were recognized as Difference Makers. They are: Johnnie Harris, an assistant women’s basketball coach at Mississippi State University; Willene Jefferson, who helped her community for decades, and former NBA player Travis Outlaw, who is a Starkville native.
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