The House That Dr. Calhoun Built
27 February 2001, pp. 18-20

     The Road Leading to Dr. Milburn Calhoun's home in the gated community of English Turn curves past groomed lawns that unroll before one gracious mansion after another. A white house with large white columns in front, topped by a domed cupola looms into view. Its design recalls Tara in Gone With the Wind, in which Vivien Leigh, in the role of Scarlett O'Hara, flounced her hoops through a pearly dream of Southern life.

     Inside the house, just to the left, stands a library, which summons another film reference. It is a replica of the two-story library in My Fair Lady, complete with the spiral staircase on which Rex Harrison, in the role of Professor Henry Higgins, asked the musical question, "Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man?"

     But in this library stands Dr. Calhoun, in the role of Pelican Publishing owner, retired physician, and preserver of Southern heritage and history. He solicitously moves leather-bound books, crumbling with age, from one side of the library table to the other. He is at home.

     "When we designed this house, we started with the library and the cupola, and then built the house around that;' says Calhoun. He figures there are about 6,000 volumes in this room and a few more thousand in other bookcases throughout the house. Calhoun cranes his neck and points to another feature of his library: a work of art he had commissioned for the cupola. At the top of the cathedral-like dome, more than two stories above the center of the room, is a six-paneled stained-glass window. Each panel contains a symbol of some aspect of Calhoun's life that he holds dear. The top three panels depict several books lined up on a library shelf, the Calhoun coat of arms from Scotland with the family name in English and Gaelic, and a Celtic cross with a Bible. The bottom panels show a caduceus with foxglove (the first effective medication for congestive heart failure taken from a recipe concocted by an English witch) and a pelican for the state of Louisiana and the publishing company. "And the last is the Confederate flag for our heritage:' finishes Calhoun.