B. S. Tibbits built this theatre for operas for wealthy travelers in 1882, when Coldwater's main intersection was the crossroads of the main highways between Michigan's capital and Indiana's and between Chicago and Detroit, and I saw movies in it for twelve cents in 1952. It closed before my adolescence when Interstate highways bypassed Coldwater, but it reopened when another rich man came to Coldwater and organized a civic project to restore it as an opera house, and I became the first volunteer for the project by befriending the Tibbits' first reconstruction director when I was a high school senior in 1964. That director, Vaughn Lowther, literally taught me the ropes, by showing me how to operate the theatres 1882 fly, raising and lowering the battons from which hung the backdrops, before he moved on from Coldwater, but remained my friend. Vaughn was Assistant Stage Manager for the New York City Opera before a tenant of his in Chicago emptied a pistol into his head before he developed his current night club hypnotist act in Las Vegas. The rich guy who organized the Tibbits reconstruction project recruited him when he was Stage Manager for the Ft. Wayne Civic Theatre and on probation for forging checks. That the Tibbits again calls itself an opera house without having staged an opera since before it was a movie theatre is a kind of forgery. But, at least, the theatre and Vaughn are alive. read more