Roanoke native Jae McCadden and Salem baseball legend Billy Sample have been working on a project they hope will make it to the silver screen and touch some lives, and baseball is a part of it.
McCadden began his professional career in sports working for the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League front offices in sales. He grew up around sports, as he’s the son of long time Roanoke politician and social activist Delvis “Mac” McCadden. Mac was a professional baseball umpire, including a stint in the Carolina League, and Jae was a fixture around Salem Municipal Field, which is ironically enough now named for Sample.
Jae showed a knack for forming partnerships with companies to invest in major sports teams and in 2010 he turned his interest to financing independent films. Now living in New York City, he formed TubbyTownFilms in 2017 and has structured financing with major banks and film productions for independent films.
McCadden optioned the script, “Love for An Iron Horse” a couple of years ago. It was introduced to him by Ann Champion, a Glenvar graduate, about a decade ago.
“At that time I wasn’t in a position to impact from behind the camera as I was just a film financier on smaller movies,” said McCadden. “I always thought the story was relatable and could see the appeal from not only the commercial standpoint but also something that could resonate with everyone.”
The story is not really about baseball, but dreams.
“No matter how much money you have or accolades you’ve collected over the years, we all still have them,” said Jae. “A couple of years ago while walking around New York City I was on the phone with Ann, frustrated that a major film opportunity had fallen apart, and she encouraged me to pick up ‘Iron Horse’ again. I remember I was on the corner of 59th and Central Park. Anyway, I went home and read it again and found it to be a message that I needed at the time. I said to myself, maybe I should give Jim a buzz, and the rest is history.”
“Jim” is Jim Meredith, a longtime educator in the Lynchburg School system and a Glenvar graduate as well. He wrote the script for “Love for an Iron Horse” over 30 years ago on a typewriter, and it’s visually based on his memories of growing up on the Roanoke River in Salem.
“He would ride his bike to town from Antrim Street, down Mill Lane across the Low Water Bridge, across two sets of railroad tracks all the way to Academy Street where his paper route began,” said McCadden. “In the screenplay, 12 year old African-American boy William lives on a river which separates the Black community from the White community. This was not the case in Salem, but William’s bridge becomes the passageway to uncertainty and adventure.”
The river separates two cultures that have more in common than they think. William’s railroad is on the main line somewhere between New York City and St. Petersburg, Florida, where the New York Yankees have spring training.
“If you know that the great Yankees’ player Lou Gehrig was known as the Iron Horse you’ll likely start to imagine the story for yourself,” said McCadden. “William loves baseball but his only point of reference is what he has heard on his Aunt Rachel’s radio and a few baseball cards. While on an errand to town for Aunt Rachel, William sees White Boys playing baseball and he’s captivated. But, in a southern town in the 1930’s, the two races did not mix.”
In this story a white boy, named Charlie, befriends William but their growing friendship creates a series of racial incidents. The name of the project, still a working title, is a play off the great Lou Gehrig and the train that runs through this Virginia town.
“After executing a deal with Jim(Meredith), I assembled a team starting with Susan Michels of SWE Films,” said McCadden. “She produced Spike Lee’s 2020 film ‘Son of the South.’ She agreed that the message in this script was something the world needed at the time as well.
“We thought this story could use a little bit more of something, and what better time to add former Salem-Roanoke Baseball Hall of Famer and Billy Sample? Even though he played a little over a year with the New York Yankees, it made sense to bring him on.”
Sample, who played in the big leagues nine years with the Rangers, Yankees and Braves, has dipped his toe into the film industry as well with his “Reunion 108” several years back. Billy read Meredith’s script and was eager to get involved.
“Everyone knows Mac McCadden, but actually I had met Jae in New York City when he and my oldest son, Ian, were working on a project,” said Sample. “Ian has produced some small works and even wrote a script with and involving Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. of the Fifth Dimension, which has yet to be green-lighted.
“After understanding the theme and reading the script, I think that this will be a feel good movie, but with some hard twists and turns. I felt a tug of sentiment knowing that screenwriter Jim Meredith, a white man, had to deal with racism from whites while going to Glenvar because he has the same name as renown civil rights leader James Meredith.”
Sample opened up his Major League Baseball contacts to Jae to continue to make the movie a reality. Billy will also serve as a baseball consultant for the project.
“I try to make sure that the movie is as accurate as possible to the time setting of the movie,” said Sample. “The other producers are probably tired of me already, but I can’t have a broadcaster from the late 1950s calling his name on the radio when it’s in the late 1930s.
“I was an advisor for the Showtime movie, ‘Joe Torre, Curveballs Along the Way’ and I had to eat the editing mistakes. The producer, who wasn’t allowed on set because he went over the budget with his actors hires, relied on me for evidently more than I could cover. At the premiere of the movie, I held my breath until the end, but just before I could exhale there was one horrible glitch because the director didn’t shoot enough footage to cover the scene. This won’t happen with this picture, as I’ll be in close communication with the editors, if not there in person. I’ll be on set otherwise.”
Meredith suggested that McCadden reach out to Leigh Anna Fry, a Salem High School and University of Virginia graduate. She had been familiar with the script for many years through her mother, the late Freda Crosswhite Fry, who taught both Jim and Anna at Glenvar High School and knew Billy Sample when he was at Andrew Lewis High in the early ‘70s.
“Leigh Anna is currently an actor residing in Los Angeles, and is no stranger to sports nostalgia films,” said McCadden. “ She appeared in the 2015 film ‘Coach of the Year,’ based on a true story about a Richmond swim team trying to win a state championship without a pool to practice in.”
Sample saw a lot of himself in the script. Growing up in Salem when segregation was still an issue, Billy had to deal with racism as an everyday fact of life. His athletic prowess made him a popular figure, starring in baseball and playing receiver on some outstanding Andrew Lewis High School football teams, but that only went so far.
“This film reminds me a bit of meeting Ronnie Galliher, who only lived a couple of short blocks away in the segregated part of downtown Salem,” said Sample. “We played against each other in football, he wearing the green and white of the American League team, and me wearing the Halloween black and orange colors of the Baby Eagles.”
The “Baby Eagles” were named after the G.W. Carver High School Eagles. Carver was the school for black children in Roanoke County and located in Salem. It still stands and is now an integrated elementary school.
“Ronnie invited me to come out for his little league team,” remembers Sample. “I wasn’t getting much playing time with the neighborhood team, so I ended up playing for Dr. Pepper, coached by the tough taskmaster, Junior Epperly, where I derived some significant self-esteem from playing baseball.”
McCadden is considering filming some of the scenes in the Roanoke Valley. It’s still a work in progress, but he has high hopes it will become a reality in the near future.
“Since acquiring the script, the project has attracted interest from some big talent and a couple of Hollywood Studios,” he said. “The team looks to begin principal of photography soon.”
Sample feels it has a lot to offer. While the plight of minorities is improving, there’s still a long way to go.
“It seems to me just when I think racism is waning, and believe me I don’t look under rocks for it, something happens to slap me back to reality,” he said. “I had a couple of incidents in the last few years that had me asking, ‘really?’ And the Utah women’s basketball team’s receiving racial taunts gave me another slap, unfortunately, in a perverse way.
“It makes this script still very relevant.”
