This essay is a sequel to "Joe Patten's Fox Theatre Apartment" which I wrote ten years ago as one of the many primary source posts in my Fox Theatre Archives. In reading this sequel, please keep in mind that the Fox Theatre is a public charity with a 501 (c) (3) tax exemption and assets in 2023 of $109,165, 234.
2010
When Joe was 83, the Fox Theatre attempted unsuccessfully to terminate Joe's lifetime apartment lease, raising such fury against the Fox Theatre and Board Chairman Woody White that the story made the pages of the New York Times.
Ten thousand "Save Joe" supporter flocked to Facebook one AJC letter to the editor written by Atlanta theatre veteran Steve Cucich went so far as characterize Fox Board President Woody White as the devil incarnate.
FIX THIS The three-month eviction attempt, described and documented in great detail further down, ended in a court-ordered victory for Joe, the story was far from over. No stranger to cruelty, Fox attorney Ensor had won a 2006 case against three wheelchair-bound Fox patrons, one a 55-year-old polio victim against whom he "fought tooth and nail." Below, Ensor in-a-hurry telling CBS reporters "We didn't settle."
2011
Eight months later a final court settlement was reached, the confidential agreement stipulating that Joe's 1979 lifetime lease would remain in place; extracting a promise from the Fox that they wouldn't try it again; and requiring the Fox to pay Joe's legal bills totaling $135,000. But in return, Joe had to return to the Fox "all keys to the Fox Theatre," the keying system designed by Joe and ace locksmith Breck Camp to ward off evil-doers and intruders.
In an abrupt December letter to my father, Fox General Manager Allan Vella mistakenly ejected Joe from the Board of Trustees a full year ahead of schedule and thus henceforth denied Joe "access to the theatre and elevators [unless] he chooses to purchase tickets and attend a performance." "Mr. Patten will no longer have access to the theatre or its office, which meant that Joe could no longer use the handicap elevator (which he he had installed in 1989) because one had to pass through the offices to get to the elevator in Bay 9, shown below.
The lack of "cc's" on Vella's letter begs the question, "why not?" Was it a mistake? The inevitable was postponed for a year after Vella received my father's reply, copied to Joe's attorney, which began, "I believe you will find to be incorrect your view that [Joe's] term has expired."
At the only Fox Theatre event Joe Patten attended between 2010 and his death in 2016 was the Atlanta American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS) Convention, where he was to honored. At the theatre's front door, Joe, now confined to a wheelchair, suffered the indignity of being stopped because he didn't have a ticket. A location pass had to be written up while he waited.
After the climb, my father (left) and Joe posed with their ATOS awards as "pioneers for their work in saving the great pipe organ and the Fox," a venue they could no longer visit without buying a ticket.
2016
On April 18, five stressful years since the eviction attempt, Joe passed away and received a half-page obituary in the New York Times. The Fox produced no memorial service for Joe, despite assurances to the Patten family to the contrary and despite manager Allan Vella's assurances to the Times that "Although Joe is not family, he feels like family at times."
But the lack of a memorial service for Joe paled in contrast with the treatment received by Fox House Organist Larry Embury, whose lifeless body laid unclaimed at the county morgue for a month until volunteers paid to have him buried. On Larry's first day in the morgue, Vella said, "he was definitely part of the family."
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Despite the Fox' non-profit status, Lexus cars were permanently garaged in the Arcade (below), the Marquee club was "Sponsored by Lexus," and, as the only tax-exempt car dealership in town, one may buy a Lexus on the Fox website (below, bottom).
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Schlueter went so far as to describe the original hand-crafted parts as "obsolete."
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According to the IRS, Fox Inc. is a "public charity" which in 2023 had assets of $110 million dollars but, according to Vella in the 2016 promotional film, "we run the theatre like a business."
Could any one of these people look Joe Patten in the eye after what they've done?
THE EVICTION.
What follows is the complete story of the eviction fiasco, meticulously documented.
When I was fifteen-year-old apprentice at Theatre Under the Stars in 1967, I was first introduced to Joe Patten, and a year later I brought my dad-- Robert L. Foreman, Jr.-- down to the Fox to meet Joe and hear the organ being rehearsed Saturday and Sunday mornings before the noon house-opening for the movies. Joe and my father, a real estate attorney, became unlikely best friends and when the Fox was in danger of being demolished in 1974, my father conceived the land-swap deal with Southern Bell which saved the building. I was one of Joe's three first-hires at the Fox in 1975 and the first Production Manager. In this 1976 confidential fund-raising pitch to Woodruff (Coca-Cola) Foundation head Boisfeuillet Jones, Joe and my father, along with Pat Connell and Bob Van Camp, are credited with the creation of Atlanta Landmarks, Inc. XXXX clip Below, Joe and my dad, Loge center, 1995.
I first met Joe at the Fox in 1967 and a year later introduced him to my father, Robert L. Foreman, Jr., who was transfixed by the theatre organ and soon became Joe's best friend.
In 2010, a majority of the Fox Theatre Board of Trustees, with the full support of the staff, attempted to evict Joe Patten from his apartment. Here is that story-- and the aftermath. Below, Joe in 2009, Kristi Casey Sanders photo.
The Board resolution Joe received upon his retirement in 2001 was glowing. To view the complete resolution click here. XXX.
Joe never fully retired; besides being a Board member, care and feeding of the Moller organ remained his exclusive domain. "Joe saved the Fox so he'd have a place to put the organ," according to my dad. (Michael Portman photo).
Joe never trusted anyone with the key to the five organ chambers, as evidenced in this memo written five years after he retired. Sent from Joe and my dad, who was chairman of the Board's Pipe Organ Committee to assistant manager Adina who had her fingers in everything.
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Photographs included a view from the bridge above the orchestra pit.
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The same year, school kids got their first chance to visit the Phantom's lair.
In 2004, it was mentioned that Joe had sprinkled the ashes of former Fox organist Bob Van Camp over the organ chambers back in 1990.
Van Camp was not only the house organist, but the morning drive disc jockey on top-rated WSB, where listeners awoke to his mellifluous voice for thirty years. The only decent photo ever taken of Van Camp, snapped by my dad, below.
Joe preparing to sprinkle, 1990.
Van Camp himself sprinkled a few ashes as chain-smoking house organist, and he had his own console ashtray, lower right. Many of us still chain-smoke.
This 2004 AJC feature XXX showed the location of his apartment (green star).
The article pointed out that Joe was offered the apartment "in appreciation."
Joe was also featured in the December, 2004 Fox-produced GPS documentary, voiced by Hal Holbrook. Here is a one minute clip. XXX
The same year Joe was presented with an award from the American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS). In the shadows left is my dad; on Joe's right is Ken Double, house-organist-in-waiting.
In March, 2006, it was announced that Allan Vella would become General Manager of the Fox. XXX Enlarge. The AJC would later describe Vella as "diminutive." XXX 2008
But Vella wasn't in Detroit when Woody found him. Rather, he was stuck in Beaumont Texas, "a place that his industry colleagues think he should get out of." Vella was only at the Detroit Fox four years, and the Board Summary XXX suggested that Vella had no experience "with Boards of Trustees, preservation issues, and the so-called 'fine arts' (ballet, symphony, opera). "
Unlike Atlanta, the Detroit house was a "commercial facility," owned by the Ilitch family who had made their fortune from Little Caesar's Pizza.
The theatre was booked not by Vella, but by an outside company, according to this article. XXX The article describes how, in 1989, the Detroit Fox had converted the shallow Entresol balcony to dining suites, connected directly to a parking deck, the model for his Atlanta Marquee Club, more about which later.
HAS BEEN SAID Vella explained that he was not a theatre person, but a restaurant person "by nature."
If Vella hadn't heard of Joe Patten In Beaumont, he couldn't help but miss the next Phantom spread XXX of November, 2007, a year and a half after he (Vella) took office.
"I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather live," Joe told reporters, "[except maybe] the Biltmore House in Asheville. It has a pipe organ in it." The article showed for the first time house the Phantom got from his apartment to the auditorium gallery, moving faster than the camera's shutter.
In that year, Joe was drawing a pension of $17,500 against former manager Ed Gneiss, at $96,442. According to this memo, XXX Joe was making $45,200 two years before he retired.
In March, 2008, my father asked the Board XXX to extend the period Joe's heirs would have to clear out his apartment, following his death, from three to six months, the "First Amendment to Indenture of Lease" shown below.
Copies were sent to Vella for his "permanent file" and to the Fox attorney, Steve Ensor. Ensor was a junior member of Alston & Bird, the law firm from which my father had retired in 1992, but where he was "of counsel" and still had an office.
The reason for the lease extension was because Joe's closest relative, Patti Patten Carlen, resided in DeLand, Florida. Below, Patti and Joe.
Board minutes of 2008 reveal the existence of a condition in Joe's "separation agreement" of July 21, 2001 giving Fox management control of the use of keys to Joe's apartment.
Keys were contentious because anyone with access to Joe's apartment also had access to the theatre. Doors from his apartment connected directly into the Grand Salon.
The Grand Salon (below) connected to the theatre's Mezzanine Foyer as well as to the Egyptian Ballroom. The Ballroom was equipped with an elevator which Joe had had constructed to meet ADA requirements in 1989, and which Joe routinely used instead of climbing 39 steps.
The article described Joe's climbing ability.
A shot of Joe climbing the straight ladder to the stage left chambers in 1972.
Vella was also described.
In April, 2008, I had begun working as a union stagehand at the Fox, returning after a 32-year absence from 1975-76 when I was Production Manager and Engineer. On September 9, 2008 I noticed that the "O" on the Fox vertical sign had not lighted for at least three weeks, so I took a picture and mailed it to Vella.
Vella replied that "the damage was not as extensive as the photo indicated." What could he mean? Was he denying that the condition shown in the photo existed? Or was denial of facts business as usual at the Fox?
That marquee repairs had fallen under the unlikely jurisdiction of stage production concerned me, because I had observed queer goings-on in that operation. Production Manager Andrew Nielsen's desk wasn't located with his two assistants in the stage level production office, but all alone on the distant seventh floor, where he had reportedly been banished after a display of unrequited affection toward a female stagehand who prefers to remain anonymous. "I remember her crying about Andrew, that he had done something to her, then he moved upstairs," reported a fellow hand. Below, the former Broadcast Studio Control Room, now Andrew's queer Isolation Booth.
In January, 2009, Woody White, the man who guided Vella's selection, was named President of Atlanta Landmarks, the non-profit which owned the Fox. With an MBA from Dartmouth, White was a career man at the Cecil B. Day Investment Company, named for founder of Day's Inns who passed away in 1978. White promoted himself as a Christian, as President of the Cecil B. Day Foundation, which gives "Grants to Christian churches, especially Baptist churches, for evangelism, missions, and discipleships." It's likely that Woody got on the board through my dad, who was Day's attorney. One minute video clip of Woody's past. XXX
In mid-2009, a $75 Fox-produced coffee table book, "The Fabulous Fox" appeared and gave over a ten page chapter XXX to Joe and the organ.
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A shot of visitors in Joe's kitchen was included.
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While Joe was recuperating from a mild stroke at Wesley Woods in August, 2010, Atlanta Landmarks Trustees including Board President Edward L. White (alias Woody White, below) visited and, out of the blue, informed Joe that they didn't want him to return to his apartment. Instead, the Board insisted that Joe move directly into "an assisted living facility." (Source.) XXX\
DATE??? While Mr. Patten was recuperating at Wesley Woods, representatives of the Board of Trustees, including Woody White paid Mr. Patten several visits, often in pairs. They told Mr. Patten that, because of concerns about his health condition, the Board did not want him to return to his home in the Fox," according the the complaint XXX filed by Joe's attorneys when he was forced to sue the Fox two months later.
Woody's partner in crime was Beauchamp Carr, landed gentry founding Board member, ostensibly a friend of Joe's, and third cousin to my father by marriage. At the time, Beauchamp was head fundraiser for the Woodruff Arts Center, where the Symphony had a deficit of $20 million dollars. Source. XXX 2012
Beauchamp was also one of the handful of 29 Board members who opposed Joe's apartment back in 1979. XXX Joining him was Joe Myers who authored the slim 2004 book below, who was the Fox' first attorney, and whose son Board member Jay Myers voted to terminate Joe's lease, according to my dad's tally.
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As is explained in this excerpt XXX from Myer's book, my father would have been named the original Fox attorney except for a conflict of interest-- his firm represented Mrs. Lucas who owned a quarter of the Fox. As a child, I accompanied my dad to the Peachtree Street residence of Mrs. Lucas, "the house the Fox built," below. Joe Myers, who worked at another firm, was selected by Daddy and "mentored" through the complex process of actualizing my father's land-swap inspiration which resulted in the saving of the Fox.
After the Fox was purchased from Mrs. Lucas, et al. in 1978, my father was free to go on the Board where he served for 35 years and for his firm, Alston & Bird, to represent the Fox. Posed in the upper Ladies Lounge in 1988, L to R, Joe Patten, my father Robert L. Foreman, Jr, Beachamp Carr, and Joe Myers.
In 2010, Daddy was faced with a far more unpleasant legal obstacle. Joe needed a lawyer in a bad way, but my father couldn't represent Joe because Daddy's firm-- Alston & Bird-- represented the Fox. Daddy was thrown into the unfortunate position of having to go into battle against his own firm, where he had worked-- in 2010-- for sixty years. To vanquish his own firm-- and the theatre he loved-- Daddy suggested the eminent Emmet Bondurant, below, who was engaged even before Joe left Wesley Woods.An angry and bewildered Joe hired the excellent attorney Emmet Bondurant (and his fine associate Mike Caplan), and they put the story in the papers, despite the fact that the Fox wanted the matter kept secret. Woody White blamed Joe for "making this a contentious issue." (Source.) XXX
Joe's sister Patti Patten continues the story.
Woody and Beauchamp handed Joe a letter, which is the first of seven documents crucial to an understanding of the eviction attempt. While I attempt to summarize them below, the documents may be perused in full at the links provided. From the first letter to a final settlement took ten months.
This letter Woody handed Joe XXX had been intended for delivery while he was still at Wesley Woods.
First, as the condition for returning home, Woody insisted that he be allowed to speak directly to Joe's doctor, and in fact, argue with him. The tone of the letter was not at all what one would expect from the President of the Cecil Day Foundation; rather it was patronizing, heartless, and dictatorial.
Two days later after Joe received Woody's letter, his attorney Emmet Bondurant shot back a letter XXX which corrected the false predicate that Joe was obligated to provide security; stated that "Mr. Patten's health is a personal matter between Mr. Patten and his physician;" and asked that he and Joe be "given the opportunity to appear before the Board to oppose any proposal to terminate his lease." The letter was cc'd. to my dad, and the battle lines were drawn.
No Fox employee, past or present, or their immediate families were allowed to visit Joe with written consent from the Fox.
If Joe had any idea about installing an elevator or stair climber, that option was nipped in the bud and the theatre "retained the right to regulate the access of [Joe] and any invitees of [Joe], including permitted occupants."
The Fox retained control of who could have keys to Joe's apartment, without their written consent, and those who had received written consent also had to sign the proposed lease.
Arriving for the Monday, August 30, 2010 emergency board meeting, and the beginning of what would be an eventful week, Bondurant told reporters, "I would be shocked of two-thirds of the Board will vote to kick Joe out of what has been his home for thirty years."
Joe, his friend Lucienne Grime, my father, and Patti Patten en route to the meeting Monday afternoon. On August 30, 2010, the Board voted to terminate Joe's lifetime lease, giving him until December first to vacate. Among those shown below en route to the meeting is Joe's sister Patti, who said that after the vote, "I stayed with Joe for some time and I saw the decline. Joe had tears in his eyes and he said to me, "They don't want me." I will NEVER forget it. Joe was not the kind of person to cry, but that broke him."
I knew Adina and she knew me because, in a meeting two years before when I was the IATSE stage union steward, she had backed up production manager Andrew Nielsen (the guy with the 7th floor office) when he altered payroll numbers to win an official union grievance.
Vella also publicly confirmed that the Fox had wanted to keep the whole thing a secret.
That evening, Joe's nephew Greg Patterson, posted on the Fox Theatre's Facebook site, a lengthy description XXX of the preceding eight weeks of bullying by the Fox. Greg mentions that Woody's letter to Joe (as well as Woody's list of ten recommended nursing homes) had been posted on Facebook.
At a conclusion of a busy day, Fox spokesman Kristen Delaney (inset) issued another statement, XXX leading off with the libelous assertion that "Joe had been misinformed by his advisors."
The article went on to say that "Vella and the Board never expected the public outcry that surrounded Monday's meeting. Emails, protests, and Facebook posts all have decried [the Fox'] action, saying the Board is essentially trying to throw out the man credited with saving the place twice." Like Claude Rains in Casablanca, Vella was shocked.
The second shock of the day came when the Fox Facebook site, overwhelmed by anti-Fox comments, had shut down the ability for people to post on their wall-- and they warned of banning those who attacked them. "It was never the intention of the Fox to have our Facebook turn into an open forum of such intense debate," wrote FB administrator Russ, the latest Fox employee to get thrown to the lions on Woody's behalf.
The first letters to the editor appeared Thursday, pro-Fox (left) and pro-Joe (right.) Who would believe that the Fox could lie? The Fox had suddenly split into two opposing entities: the great building itself and the people who were running it.
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Fanning the flames was Friday's Intown Writer's blog XXX in which the author quoted Allan Vella as giving Joe 180 days to vacate. "The Fox has now issued a formal notice that contradicts directly the Fox's statements to the media at Tuesday's press conference." Intown Writer knew this because attorney Emmet Bondurant was making public Woody White's decrees as fast as he could make them.
"Although Joe is not family," Vella informed the Times, "he feels like family." This was probably not one of those times-- unless of course Vella had involuntarily committed his own brood to old folks' homes.
The news had become international, at least in the Canadian Italian Daily News, with Joe cast as "Fantasma dell'opera."
The day after the Times piece ran, September 13, 2010, protesting Pixies picketed yet another Board meeting. My dad is lower left.
Dressed for St. Patrick's Day, Manager Vella watched the Pixies from the sidelines with fierce apprehension.
The next day, December 14, Emmet Bondurant replied XXX to Woody's letter of December 2, writing to Steve Ensor, primary attorney for the Fox from my Dad's firm.
Bondurant made two key points: first that Woody's actions, based on Joe's "perceived disability," violated both Georgia and federal Fair Housing Acts.
And contrary to Kristen Delaney's assertion of two weeks before that the 1979 lease "never contemplated the issues relating to aging and assisted living," Bondurant revealed that the lease contained language explicitly covering that subject in detail.
In other words, Woody had simply ignored the provision in the lease relating to aging and led the Board to terminate based on the alternative termination clause, intended to be reserved for a material breach of contract. "Specific provisions control over a general provision," said Bondurant, and he had the citations to prove it.
Bondurant reviewed Woody's visits to Joe at Wesley Woods, and he named the names.
Bondurant gave the Fox sixteen days in which to reverse the terminate or Joe would sue.
Atlanta's Examiner of October 1st reported that protesters would picket the entire run of "9 to 5" and that the "Save Joe" Facebook membership had climbed to 10,000. The FB site had posted the contact info for the entire Board.
The Fox ignored the September 30 deadline set by Joe's attorney, and on October 4th, 2010, "The Phantom of the Fox" sued Woody White and the Fox "for willful, intentional, and deliberate acts of housing discrimination."
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The forty-page lawsuit (or complaint) which can be viewed here XXXX reiterated Bondurant's letter to Ensor in much greater detail, throwing in a few zingers, like when Woody threw Emmet out of the building.
The complaint asked the Court to enjoin the Fox from terminating Joe's lease on a permanent basis and sought general and punitive damages as well as attorney's fees. A court date was set three weeks hence, as reported in the AJC. XXX
Anticipating November's annual full Board meeting, Daddy wrote his fellow trustees XXX that "the 'leadership' of Woody White has caused the Fox Theatre embarrassment, humiliation, and untold loss of patronage... and Mr. White has also led the Board to violate both state and federal laws." To re-elect Woody to any office "would be a violation of your fiduciary duty," warned my father.
Instead, and to my great surprise, on October 19th, 2010, I became the sacrificial lamb when I was fired two hours into a stage call by the new Fox Production Manager Amy Mark, alias Amy Smith, shown below. The official Fox complaint was cc'd. to Adina Alford.
The Fox claimed XXX that twice I had attempted "to gain access to their premises without permission," referring to my asking Adina Alford if I could attend the August 31st press conference and on September 25th when a Fox security spied me inside Joe's locked gate. I was leaving some stuff for my dad who had given me the combination to get inside, *1927, the birth year of both Joe and the Fox. The union filed another grievance XXX to get me reinstated, below.
The hearing was held on a warm Wednesday morning, October 27, 2010, Joe (left) and my dad en route to the courthouse.
Everyone was braced for a knock-down drag-out between the parties, including Joe, center, shown between my dad (left) and Emmet Bondurant's associate Mike Caplan.
While Joe's legal team consisted only of Caplan and himself, Fox attorney Steve Ensor (below, left) was accompanied by four or five audio-visual crew associates, busily setting up a projection screen when both parties were summoned into the Judge's chambers for an in camera conference. Had Ensor produced a filmed cartoon depicting Joe Patten as Mister Magoo? We'll never know, because the whole thing was over in twenty minutes.
A jubilant Joe Patten (right) exits the court, followed by his legal team, Emmet Bonurant (left) and Mike Caplan. Caplan "developed the legal theories and deserves most of the credit for the successful outcome," says Emmet Bondurant today.
"Attorneys from the Fox kept walking as CBS Atlanta XXX tried to ask them why they settled on the deal. 'We didn't settle,'" replied Steve Ensor, below.
"CBS Atlanta XXX learned that the Fox called assisted living homes, without Patten's permission."
A write-up XXX in the Passaic, New Jersey paper pictured Joe on his Evita balcony.
On the Sunday following the hearing (Halloween), an intimate victory party for Joe was held at the Varsity, and fittingly, because the owner of the famous drive-in was Fox Board member Nancy Gordy Simms, who had voted in Joe's favor two months before.
Picketers became a permanent fixture outside the Fox offices, seen below on the occasion of Woody White being re-elected Board President in December, 2010.In December, the protesters returned to picket a Board meeting.
Friendly members of the stagehand union, IATSE Local 927, President Peter Cocchiere, and VP Sean Neal, both fine smokers.
My dad on the way to the meeting, where Woody White was re-elected Board President, despite my father's vote. My father on his way to vote against Woody White, writing to the Board, "the 'leadership' of Woody White has caused the Fox Theatre embarrassment, humiliation, and untold loss of patronage... and Mr. White has also led the Board to violate both state and federal laws." (Source). XXX My father's entreaties fell on deaf ears, as if an undercurrent of evil had permeated the place.
In February, 2011, the Fox agreed to rehire me if I signed a "Warning Citation" which was far more detailed than the original Fox complaint and this time cc'd to Adina, Vella, and smiling attorney Steve Ensor. Among the new crimes to which I must admit was leaving a voice mail for a Board member telling him "to FU" [sic], a crime to which I had gleefully admitted on Facebook, where perhaps where the Fox sleuths had learned the news. Board member Walter Huntley was the only one of several token blacks on the Board that I knew personally, having introduced him to my father forty years prior. Since Daddy had put Huntley on the Board, I felt my voice mail to be the only appropriate message.
Acting on the wise advice of IATSE Local 927 Business Agent and and attorney George Dean, I refused to sign anything, despite the fact that the Fox went ahead and paid me $271.51, as if I had signed. After I filed a NLRB charge against Allan Vella and the Fox, they caved and six months after the firing, I went back to work. All correspondence can be found here. XXX
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COVERED IN PT I A year and a half after the settlement, Vella wrote to Joe care of my father, saying that since Joe's term as a Board Member had expired two days before, on November 30, 2012, and "that Patten and his affiliates no longer have access to the theatre, or its offices...
KILL THIS This ruling would mean that Joe could no longer use the Ballroom elevator to get to his apartment, because access to that elevator was through the theatre offices in "Bay Nine" adjacent to Joe's gate.
But incredibly, in his haste to rid the theatre of its nemesis, Vella had jumped the gun and incorrectly ejected Joe from the Board a year head of schedule! Was the mistake an honest error? Could the Fox make honest errors? Or was the error intentional, another way to punish Joe, in direct contravention of the confidential agreement? Either way, it was another nail in Joe Patten's coffin. My father politely and patiently explained the error in the letter below.
"Fiduciary responsibility" is not an oft-heard phrase, SHOCK WAVES FIDUCIARYPerhaps as a reward for their loyalty to Woody White in the ongoing Patten smear, in 2011 General Manager Allan Vella and his assistant Adina Alford were granted extraordinary changes of title, with Vella being promoted from GM to "CEO and President" while Alford was re-titled COO. Because there couldn't be two "Presidens" Woody White changed his title to "Chairmna." Between 2011 and 2023, Vella's total compensation rose from $272,000 to $925,000.
But could all this name change rigmarole merely serve to disguise the fact that after 2010, Vella was listed in tax returns as "Principal Officer" in place of Woody White?
Woody White, having irreparably sullied the formerly good name of Atlanta Landmarks, Inc., spearheaded a move to change the non-profit's name to "Fox Theatre Inc."-- as in "Murder, Inc."-- and the new name was state-certified in November of 2012.
The tirhid and fourth changes to the structure of Fox Inc. was the redution in size of the Board from 29 to 16, the composition of the reduced Board XXX presumably tailored to stack the decks against any further errant dissent, and the 1974 chartered purpose of the company was altered to omit the words "maintain" and "restore."
In a 2016 Fox-produced promotional film, Fox Inc. dismissed their official IRS designation as a public charity entirely, as shown below. Yet in the year 2020 alone, the Fox received ten million dollars in "contributions and grants," in the same period that Fox CEO Allan Vella received a bonus of $197,000, on top of his base salary of $333,000. (Source.) XXX
Indemnification clause added in 2001.
What did the Fox Theatre do to Joe Patten, in 500 words or less? How did they treat this 83-year-old man, in the last six years of his life? Behold the dirty laundry list:
1. Ten days after Joe had suffered a mild stroke and was progressing well in rehab, Board members told Joe that he was not welcome to return to his Fox apartment;
2. The Fox contacted assisted living facilities, with neither Joe's knowledge or permission;
3. Used Joe's sister Patti in their attempts to oust Joe;
4. Forced Joe into such a position that he had to hire an attorney;
5. When Joe returned home three weeks later, presented him Joe a letter confirming that the Board did not want him to return to the Fox and threatening to evict him;
6. Falsely claimed that Joe was obligated to provide building security as a condition of his lease;
7. Falsely claimed that Joe's apartment was required for "sorely needed expansion;"
8. Warned in writing Joe's friends on the Board not to attend a "Homecoming Party" in Joe's apartment;
9. Presented Joe's lawyer, at that very party, with a bogus 60-day lease;
10. Voted by two-thirds majority to terminate Joe's lifetime lease, in breach of contract;
11. Served Joe with "formal written notice of the termination of [the lifetime] lease," giving Joe 90 days to vacate and a mere 13 days to sign the bogus lease "because we cannot leave the offer on the table indefinitely;"
12. Told the press that Joe was declining;
13. Told the press Joe had been misinformed by his advisors;
14. Told the press the Board had never used the work "evict;"
15. Admitted to the press that there was no "sorely needed expansion;"
16. Told the New York Times that "Although Joe is not family, he feels like family, at times;"
17. Fought Joe's lawsuit in court and lost;
18. Spent an estimated $500,000 to fight Joe in court, including Joe's legal fees which the court required the Fox to pay;
19. Took away Joe's keys to the theatre;
20. Tried to eject him from the Board a year ahead of schedule, so as to prohibit his access the handicap elevator, three years before his death;
21. Prohibited from sale at their concession stand a book which had been dedicated to Joe;
22. Produced no memorial service for Joe;
23. Eliminated the corporate name "Atlanta Landmarks Inc." which Joe had co-founded;
24. Converted Joe's apartment into construction offices for major alterations to the building which Joe would never approve;
25. And after accepting an award for the pipe organ for being perfectly preserved (by Joe), desecrated the intricate electro-pneumatic organ console by gutting out its hand-hewn inner workings, replacing them with electronics, and even replacing the keys and stop tabs with plastic knockoffs, all the while calling it "restoration."
That's what they did to Joe in 405 words and that's what this article is about.