From Oakland to Fairhope: How One Wedding Gift Platter Rewove a Family’s Alabama Ties

A ceramic platter, the Fairhope Film Festival and the 50th anniversary of M&F Casuals trace the ties that brought a Selma native home to Fairhope.

By James Bullard

September 22, 2026 · 4:39 am Updated November 7, 2026 6 min read

From Oakland to Fairhope: How One Wedding Gift Platter Rewove a Family's Alabama Ties

Sometimes a single object tells the story of a family’s whole migration. For Susie Maring Cerf, that object is a ceramic platter, crafted by potter Edna Nelson of Bon Secour and shipped to Oakland, California, as a wedding gift more than forty years ago. Today the platter and its owner are both back in Alabama, intact, and the trail they traveled says a great deal about the ties that bind the Eastern Shore to people who grew up far from it.

Cerf, born and raised in Selma, moved to Fairhope a year ago from Oakland, California, returning to her native state after decades away. Her arrival set off a chain of connections that now stretches from the Newcomers of the Eastern Shore luncheon table to the Fairhope Film Festival, from a downtown clothing store’s fiftieth birthday to a growing sorority of what she affectionately calls the Selma Girls.

A Luncheon Full of Stories

The scene of the first connection was the Newcomers Club’s October luncheon at the James P. Nix Center, the Fairhope gathering place named for the city’s longtime former mayor. The October meeting featured catered individual charcuterie boards from Rouxsters, one of the area’s newer kitchen businesses, and a presentation by Mary Riser, executive director of the Fairhope Film Festival.

Riser came with details of the festival’s weekend run in November and a short film to preview. The room’s attention was electric, with more discussion than usual even by the talkative standards of a newcomers club. Among the listeners was Cerf, holding a lovely platter and listening hard. California had nurtured plenty of interest in the film industry, and the presentation hit a nerve.

“You’re a writer? I’ve got a story for you,” Cerf said, and the story that followed ran from a wedding gift to a beautification project to a documentary about the music of Richard Wagner.

The Platter That Came Home

The story began with Edna Nelson, a Bon Secour potter whose work traveled to California decades ago in a box addressed to a new bride. Cerf and the platter both survived the years, and both came back. The path the platter took — from the Eastern Shore to the Bay Area and home again — reads like a catharsis, the object’s owner arriving back in her native state just as the object arrived back in the town where it was made.

Cerf’s family ties to Fairhope run deep. They include Ann Yates Miller of M&F Casuals and her late husband Marc Miller, and Blanche Yates Kennelly, Ann Miller’s sister. All of them were gearing up for a milestone: the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the popular clothing retailer on Fairhope Avenue, held on a Thursday in early November.

Fifty Years on Fairhope Avenue

The anniversary drew a remarkable guest list. Former Fairhope Mayor Jim Nix appeared at the store as a special guest, a fitting honor given his role in the city’s history. Years earlier, after a visit to Carmel, California, Nix returned to Fairhope with plans for a local beautification project, and he and Marc Miller became the community leaders responsible for much of what downtown Fairhope looks like today. It is no exaggeration to say that the walkable, flower-lined Fairhope Avenue of today bears their imprint.

Also appearing at the celebration was Susan W. Brown, the Alabama author and inspirational speaker whose book “One Year of Thankful Thursdays” carried particular meaning for Ann Miller. Fifty years in business in the same town produces a long ledger of things to be grateful for, and Brown’s book about gratitude made a fitting companion to the occasion. Brown signed copies during the event.

Behind the counter, the store’s next generation ran the day: owner Ann Miller’s daughters, Barbara Levitt and Carol Eberlein, who now run things. Fifty years is a long run for any retailer, and it is rarer still on a small-town main street, where national chains and online shopping have hollowed out so much of what used to be the backbone of downtown commerce. M&F Casuals’ longevity is a testament to the Miller and Yates families’ insistence that a store can be a civic institution as much as a business.

The Selma Girls

Cerf’s instinct for connection has a way of turning into institutions. The most joyful of them is her gathering of the Selma Girls, a reunion group of women who all hail from Alabama’s historic river city and now live in Baldwin County. What began as an invitation on a porch has grown with remarkable speed.

“We originally invited twelve gals, and nine came. We met on my porch,” Cerf recalled. The next gathering, six weeks later, drew seventeen. The one after that, twenty-two. On her growing list are forty-seven Selma Girls of Baldwin County, all friends or friends-of-friends bound by a shared history in central Alabama.

The group recently attended a concert at Page and Palette, Fairhope’s beloved bookstore on Section Street, where the band The Selma Boys was performing — a fitting soundtrack for a club built on hometown memory. In a region full of transplants, groups like this one do quiet work: they fold newcomers into community, swap stories of schools and streets that no longer exist, and remind everyone involved that small-town Alabama roots run deep no matter where they end up.

Back to the Film Festival

The thread that started it all — the film festival presentation at the Newcomers luncheon — led Cerf to a friendship with Riser, the festival’s executive director and film scout, who had recently been profiled in a regional magazine. Among the films Riser discussed was one that especially piqued Cerf’s interest: “You Will Not Play Wagner,” a documentary that asks whether Wagner’s music can transcend the anti-Semitic views of its creator.

The film exposes a moral dilemma, and like other films in that year’s lineup, it was built to prompt cultural, political and artistic discussion. Moderator Barry Silverman and author Roy Hoffman were scheduled for a question-and-answer session following the showing, the kind of talkback that has become a festival signature.

The Fairhope Film Festival, established in 2012 out of a film series that began at the University of South Alabama, has since grown into one of the Eastern Shore’s signature cultural events, screening dozens of award-winning independent films each November across multiple venues. Its year-round programming now includes a monthly screening series in a small downtown theater and a 48-hour filmmaking scramble for Alabama creators, all of which keeps the festival’s community engaged well beyond its November dates.

Why Connections Matter

What began as the story of a wedding gift gained momentum and trailed into a range of topics and timely discussions, from downtown history to European cinema. That is how community works on the Eastern Shore, where one person’s enthusiasm for connection tends to benefit everyone around her.

Cerf’s journey from Selma to Oakland and back to Fairhope mirrors the path of many coastal Alabama returnees who spent careers elsewhere and came home to be near family. The platter on her table is more than a keepsake; it is proof that the things we make here — pottery, businesses, friendships, festivals — have a way of calling people back.

For newcomers looking for a way into Fairhope life, the lesson from Cerf’s first year is practical as well as sentimental: join the club, go to the luncheon, listen to the presentation, and talk to the person sitting next to you. The story that follows may start with a platter and end with a film festival, a storefront anniversary and forty-seven new friends.

The Newcomers of the Eastern Shore continue to meet through the year at the James P. Nix Center, and the Fairhope Film Festival’s schedule of films and events can be found through the festival’s downtown Fairhope office. The M&F Casuals anniversary, the Selma Girls gatherings and the Festival’s monthly screenings are all reminders that in Fairhope, the connections between art, family and community are never more than one story apart.