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November 6, 2009

History Channel visits Dalton for series on immigration

Charles Oliver

Dalton’s Dave Whittle says he gained a new respect for people who work in television after a crew from the History Channel followed him around for three days last week.

“We started at 7:30 in the morning and finished at 8 at night,” he said.

The channel is producing a series on immigration and chose Dalton as one of five communities it focused on, said Whittle, including Los Angeles and a small town in Kansas. The producers declined a request for an interview.

The producers asked to follow Whittle around because he makes deliveries for his family’s firm Whitco Produce.

“About three months ago they called the Dalton-Whitfield Chamber of Commerce and said they needed someone who was going in the backdoors of restaurants and stores,” he said. “The chamber gave them Whitco’s number. They asked if anyone was interested and I volunteered.”

He got in touch with the producers and they began corresponding through e-mail and talking over the telephone about the project.

“They had me make a list of about 10 different businesses, stores and restaurants that I deliver to. They contacted them to get permission and narrowed it down to five places, the Oakwood, the Dalton Depot, Los Pablos, La Providencia and Miller Brothers,” he said. “They filmed me bringing produce into all these places and talking to the workers in all the restaurants. They tried to make it as natural as possible.”

But there’s natural, and then there’s natural.

“We’d do a scene 10 times before we got it perfect,” he said.

Whittle says he normally spends about five minutes at any of the places he makes deliveries to. He spent several hours each at the places he went to while he was being filmed.

“I had a huge fear of being on camera, but I had to get over it pretty quick,” he said.

The filmmakers arrived on Wednesday, met Whittle and mapped out their plans. The filming started on Thursday.

“The first day they were in a van and I was in my truck,” he said. “But on Friday we met at 7:45 in the morning and they mounted cameras on the windshield in my truck with suction cups. One person sat beside me, and the producer sat in the back on the passenger’s side and interviewed as I drove around.”

He says the producers talked to him about the impact the large influx of Hispanic immigrants has had on the area and on his thoughts about it.

“One of their questions was ‘Do you feel like Dalton is being taken from you?’ I told them ‘No, I don’t. If I can get biblical, the Bible says love your brothers and sisters. It doesn’t say love your white brothers,’” he said.

Whittle said producers told him the film will be shown at a museum on Ellis Island near the Statue of Liberty, which was for more than 60 years the main entry point for immigrants to the United States. It will likely premiere some time next year, and he said the producers have invited him there to the event.

“I didn’t know what to expect, but this was a big learning experience,” he said.







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