By Alana PierAiyana Sultan, co-manager of RetroFit, was among Sidetown workers who witnessed the eclipse from Ouachita Ave. ce
By Alana Pierce
Thank you to the families of Ava and Jake for allowing me to interview them. I would like to thank both Ava Lynn Bryant, age 5, and Jake Myers, age 96, for allowing me to gather short oral histories from them. Stuck squarely in middle age, I wondered during my own viewing of the recent eclipse what that same event might look like to me had I been in kindergarten, witnessing something so big for the first time. And, too, I wondered what else I might see between now and the end of life, which took me to the oldest viewer I could find.
Interview with kindergartner Ava Lynn Bryant, age 5 Park Magnet
What did you learn about the eclipse before you saw it?
“I learned about the eclipse at school. If you don’t wear your glasses it will make you go blind!”
When you wore your glasses, what do you remember seeing?
“I saw Mars and Jupiter! And then I saw the moon and the sun.”
But how could you see planets in the middle of the day?
“Because I saw… because the planets come out when the moon comes out and I saw a lot of planets.”
Give me some words to describe what you felt like during the eclipse?
“I felt warm and it was 70…no no… it was 67 degrees Fahrenheit. But then it was hot.”
What would you say to a little kid who has never seen an eclipse? What should they know?
“Okay. So I’d say ‘Would you like to see the eclipse?’ And then I would tell them they should go to someone’s house. I went to Denise [Little’s] house.”
How old do you think you will be when you see the next eclipse?
“Probably six. And my birthday is on June 5 so I will be six.”
Ava, after this interview, I am going to interview someone really old. He is 96. What do you think he will say about the eclipse?
“The same thing as me! And an interview is where you make a video and you talk about it and it goes to a newspaper.” (She later asked me to make sure the 96-year-old understands what interviews are.)
Interview with Atrium resident Jake Myers, age 96 WWII veteran & Baton Rouge native
You saw the eclipse from here, with others in assisted living. Tell me your thoughts:
“Well, it was just…just interesting. You know, at that distance the sun looks small but you realize how much larger it is than Earth and the moon.”
Mr. Myers, I asked a five-year-old what you might say about seeing the eclipse. If you were five years old today seeing it, what might have gone through your mind?
“So, I would have wondered how they knew it was going to happen. How and where, how they could map it? How many years ahead of time do they know exactly where the sun is going? (He later asked to see a photo of Ava, the five-year-old interviewed above.)
Is there any other event like this in your lifetime that gave you a similar feeling of awe? Personally, I recall Halley’s Comet. What happened in your lifetime that compares to the eclipse?
“Well, my brother was the first one in the family to fly completely around the earth. He was in one of those bombers that the military produced. He was one of the engineers and he flew around [measuring] how much fuel was left in this tank or that…it was just remarkable.”
From the author’s diary
April 22, 2024, age 50
I saw the eclipse just in time. Other Ouachita Ave merchants and employees, outfitted in cardboard glasses, twisted toward the sun which wavered on kissing the moon just above my shop.
We weren’t tourists, but we took just enough time to stand in the empty avenue together watching the two orbs glide across each other seamlessly. Distant shouts echoed between buildings. Cheers and awe, a serene silence never heard downtown, then came a final boisterous applause—the entire city stirring again from the eclipse that had transfixed us. I wondered what my stepfather would have thought about all of this.
“If I can’t see it at the end of a telescope or under a microscope, I question its very existence.” A devout atheist, my stepfather infuriated me; I could not wrap my 8-year-old brain around his worship of science.
As I pen this on my 50th birthday, almost 15 years after his passing, I wish I’d been easier on him. Where I saw beauty in Sunday school and the Heavenly Highway Hymnal, he found it in between the stars. I’ve thought about him quite a bit since witnessing the eclipse. He didn’t believe in Heaven. He told me just to keep looking out there and I’d catch glimpses of him bouncing from one planet to the next.
I can say this: space—at least as he described it to me on those cool nights by the telescope in the early 1980s—can’t be the worst of possible Heavens. As to whether or not I’ll be around the next eclipse, who knows? I’m glad I witnessed this one.
Employees of SQZBX Pizza take a break to view the eclipse.
Captain Alana Pierce is a 19-year veteran on her hometown fire department, the NLRFD. She has resided in Hot Springs since 1991. Her love for Hot Springs history stems from the stories told by her step-aunt, Inez Cline. Writing under pen names, Pierce has been published over 200 times and is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
