On July 10, 1997, the headline above his photograph on the front page of the Montgomery Advertiser read, "Local man to star in feature film."  That is the day fate plucked John Franklin Sawyer from life as a retired U.S. postal service worker and favored him with national celebrity status. John Sawyer's celebrity stems from a movie.

The 84-year-old Mr. Sawyer played a 99-year-old former slave in the title role in Shadrach, a major motion picture based on a short story by famed author, William Styron. In the movie, Shadrach walks from Alabama to Virginia so he can die and be buried on the same plantation on which he was born.

A New York Times article by Paul Delaney, a well-known journalist and friend of John Sawyer, moved me to ponder how my 84-year-old friend manages his celebrity status. So, I called and invited him to lunch.

After a leisurely lunch at the NCO Club and a trip along the river with a stop at the base golf course driving range, I knew the answer. This octogenarian copes with his celebrity status the way he lived his life: with charm, dignity and humility.

During our lunch at the club, Sawyer charmed the waitresses with a dialogue that rewarded him with a young women's attentive service.

When we drove by the driving range at the golf course, he asked me to stop, saying he would like to hit a couple of golf balls. He approached a couple who were hitting practice balls. Learning they were from France, he initiated a conversation in French. He had studied French in school 70 years earlier. When offered a club, he accepted it and hit a very long drive.

Born the grandson of North Carolina slaves, Sawyer came to Montgomery as a young man in a preacher's family. Imbued with an unshakable faith in God and armed with a college education, John Sawyer started on his journey in the 1920s as a teacher.

Later he began his 30-plus-year career as a Montgomery mail carrier, interrupted only by time spent in the Navy during World War I as a seaman.

Fast forward through the bus boycott, the freedom rider riots, the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march, the church bombings and that entire era of Negro Civil Rights struggle. On this visit, Sawyer didn't talk about it, and I didn't bring it up. That discussion can wait for another day. This discussion was about celebrity.

Tonea Stewart, head of the Department of Theater at Alabama State University helped Sawyer land the Shadrach role. Stewart, a successful working actress, played a regular character in the television program In the Heat of the Night and starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson in the film A Time to Kill.

She first cast Sawyer in her production of slave narratives for the Smithsonian Institution's Slaves No More. I watched his excellent performance in Slaves No More at Roots and Wings: I expect no less in Shadrach, an internationally-awaited film.

I regret that I was not able to be at the Capri Theater in Old Cloverdale when Shadrach premiered. I am certain that John Sawyer wore his celebrity with his well-practiced charm, dignity and humility.

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