The screenplay, Dr. Portia, that I co-wrote with Alexia Lucas, Dr. Portia’s great-granddaughter, won Best Screenplay at the Northeast Mountain Film Festival in Dillard, Georgia, on June 15. https://northeastmountainfilmfestival.com/
I had a wonderful time and was so proud to be a part of telling Portia’s story.
Portia McKnight Lubchenco, from Blythewood, South Carolina, was the first female graduate of the North Carolina School of Medicine in 1912. She had applied to the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston, but was rejected because she was a woman.
In 1907, she met Russian agronomist, Alexis Lubchenco, at the railway station in Ridgeway, South Carolina. Portia and her father, Peter, were there to collect the mail that had arrived on the four o’clock train from Columbia. Alexis was in the United States to study cotton hybridization on behalf of Czar Nicholas II, and had missed his train connection to Winnsboro, SC.
Portia and her father offered help to this lonley stranger. That evening, he accompanied them to their home and met the entire McKnight family. The story will continue…