Sandra Miles and Olivia Swinton are volunteers for the National Black Theatre Festival.
They were working the hospitality desk in the lobby of the Winston-Salem Marriott on Sunday when actress Barbara Montgomery arrived with one shoe wrapped in a plastic bag.
The other shoe was missing.
Miles and Swinton immediately sprang into action.
“We had a call put in to the airport,” Miles said. “Somehow the airline let one of her shoes fall out of her bag.”
It turned out that the shoe was going around and around on the luggage conveyor belt, unclaimed amid all the baggage. After finding the shoe, volunteers working in transportation made the next move. A volunteer who was going to the airport to pick up someone else’s baggage also retrieved Montgomery’s shoe and brought it to Winston-Salem. “We just left it over at the desk,” Swinton said.
Montgomery—known for her role in the sitcom Amen—thanked the volunteers with a bowl of candy for their desk.
It takes about 2,000 volunteers to make the festival work, organizers said. The volunteers move people back and forth, sell merchandise, serve as ushers for performances, handle tickets and take on a variety of other jobs.
“I like the arts,” said volunteer Diane Sockwell, who is helping out at the festival for the eighth time. “I think it is good for the city so they don’t have to pay the people. They can put money back into the performances. I like a crowd, and we don’t get much action in Winston-Salem.”
On Monday, Sockwell was driving a 15-person van and waiting for instructions on where to go and whom to pick up. Soon, she and volunteer Joe Bailey were on the way to the Charlotte airport to bring someone to Winston-Salem for the festival.
A lot of volunteers get their pictures taken with celebrities they encounter. Sockwell said she makes up a photo album each year that includes the celebrities she has posed with.
Volunteers have to attend meetings to learn their duties. They fill out signup sheets so that organizers know who will be available and when.
For Miles, it’s her first time as a volunteer. She said it is a lot of fun to see the celebrities come and go. “They have all been very friendly,” she said. “They have come in just like family.”
Actress Ella Joyce, who is putting on a one-woman show in tribute to Rosa Parks, called the volunteers vital to the festival. “This festival couldn’t operate without them,” she said. “They treat us like royalty. They drive us anywhere we want to go, they feed us, and they treat us with love and warmth. Some of them I have gotten to know through the years, and watched their kids grow up.”
■ Wesley Young can be reached at 727-7369 or at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).