Published 5:00 am Saturday, June 1, 2024 By Heath Harrison Following Sunday, May 26, night’s “A Conversation with Rita Moreno” event at Ohio University Southern, the guest of honor said she had wondered if the severe thunderstorm that hit the city just as doors were set to open would hamper turnout. “But they were here and Ironton came out in full force,” the Academy, Emmy, Tony and Grammy-winning singer and actress remarked. Upon taking the stage, Moreno joked about the weather.
“I had a bad experience once with rain and shrinkage,” she said. “And this could be a little girl’s dress before the day is out..
..and I ain’t no little girl.
” The event, sponsored and organized by the Ironton Rotary Club, drew a packed house for the discussion of Moreno’s more than seven-decade-long career. Moreno, 92, a Puerto Rican-born actress who has also been the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of the Arts, may have seemed an unlikely visitor to the city, but she has a major tie to Ironton in the form of her good friend, John Ferguson, of the Ironton Rotary Club. Ferguson recently moved back to Ironton from California, where he owned a contracting company that worked on Moreno’s house.
It was through that relationship that he became friends with the actress and her late husband, Leonard Gordon, eventually becoming her manager and guiding her through a decade that has seen a resurgence in her popularity. Fe.
