Bob Curlee said he got an unexpected message from Tommy Ellison on Father’s Day.
“He said he thought of me as being his father in drama,” Curlee said. “I never realized those plays meant so much to the people in it.”
“Those plays” are three musicals Curlee wrote more than 50 years ago, right in the beginnings of the Jesus Movement, a major revival among the nation’s young people in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
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Ellison, now a member of The Baptist Church at McAdory in McCalla, said he was playing football at Samford and attending Ensley Baptist Church when Curlee — then Ensley’s pastor — approached him about being in one of those plays.
“He said, ‘I’ve got you in mind for the cast of Daniel in the Lions’ Den,’” Ellison said.
Though it was obviously a nod to the Bible story, the play followed the story of a peewee football player named Daniel who needed advice on how to avoid the “lions’ den” of drug and alcohol abuse.
“What Bob had done, he had gotten in his mind a play about substance abuse, which was mainly marijuana and beer back then,” Ellison said.
Summer tour
Curlee and singer-songwriter Ken Flowers already had one musical that had been having a successful run at Panama City Beach, Florida — a biblical musical comedy called Jonah and the Whale. He got in touch with Alabama Citizens Action Program, the Baptist watchdog organization that fought against substance abuse, and they sponsored Daniel and the Lions’ Den.
“We started doing the play in youth rallies and bean suppers around the state, and then Bob approached the Gatlinburg ministerial association to bring the play up there,” Ellison said.
They said yes and helped fix up an old amphitheater in the Tennessee vacation destination, creating a stage out of an old house.
“That was the beginning of the journey,” Ellison said.
That summer, he and four other cast members put on two shows a night, five nights a week, in front of 450 to 600 people.
“One of the most fun parts of the play was about 5 o’clock every afternoon, Rick Carpenter (another Samford student and major contributor to the songwriting of the Daniel show) and I would grab our guitars and do a restaurant run,” he said. “We would do a 90-second spot, and the restaurants were all for it because there were lines waiting for a table, and that kept the peace for a little while. It was a good advertisement for the play.”
Daniel and the Lions’ Den was free, and for families with kids, it was an easy yes, Ellison said. “It was an audience that appreciated good, clean humor and a good Bible story on top of that. I gave my testimony right before the invitation and invited people to come up and talk more about it, and there were those who made professions of faith.”
After the school year was over, Ellison and the cast traveled on Sunday nights to do the show at youth rallies.
“We would race to get home before curfew at Samford,” he said.
That season of his life was short lived, as college experiences often are — he soon took on a role as youth director at Vestavia Hills Baptist Church and couldn’t travel like he used to.
“But it gave me an opportunity to blossom not only as a Christian but as a musician too,” he said.
At that time, Jonah and Daniel were both running, as was Noah and the Ark in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
Used as a vessel
Curlee, who became pastor of Centercrest Baptist Church in Center Point in 1972, said he was grateful that both Centercrest and Ensley Baptist were supportive of this ministry. He said he was also thankful for the songwriters who helped him with the music, the talented cast who came from the churches and the doors that opened along the way.
“God did it, and He was only using me as a vessel,” Curlee said. “I never could’ve opened all the doors He would open for these things — miracle after miracle.”
All in all, over the course of his ministry, he wrote 12 plays, all modern-day versions of Bible stories.
Recently, Curlee, now 90, reunited in Birmingham with Ellison and others from the cast of those three early ’70s plays for the first time in about 50 years.
Ellison said as he looked around the room, he was “struck by how God had continued to use each person present.”
“Many went on to careers in ministry, music and education, carrying forward the passion for sharing Christ that those early productions had ignited,” Ellison said. “The seeds planted during those summer nights of outdoor performances had indeed borne fruit across decades.”
‘Impact lives for decades’
He said as they talked, they realized how those three productions were part of something bigger than they understood at the time.
“We were unknowingly participating in the Jesus Movement that was transforming American Christianity,” Ellison said. “Our simple musical comedies, performed with guitars and youthful enthusiasm on makeshift stages, were part of the same spiritual awakening that brought Billy Graham to Birmingham’s Legion Field in 1972 and sent thousands of young people to Dallas for Explo ’72.”
He said as he looks back, he’s amazed at how God used Curlee’s vision and their obedience to create something that “would impact lives for decades.”
And he said that he realizes “that the real miracle wasn’t just the productions themselves, but the lifelong friendships and faith that grew from them.”
“The music may have ended, but the ministry continues in each of our lives,” Ellison said.
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