“I opened my eyes and saw the dark in all its original color.” 

 —James Dickey (Deliverance) 

The Gazebo on Whitefield Square 

Over 50-years ago, National Book Award-winning southern poet James Dickey wrote Deliverance, his gruesome story about Atlanta businessmen on a canoe adventure in Georgia’s Appalachian region. The Modern Library considers his novel to be among the one-hundred best 20th Century novels.  

In 1972, Dickey’s novel became an iconic movie, filmed in Georgia and starring Burt Reynolds. In 1975, Reynold would return to film Gator, his directorial debut movie, right here in Savannah. Soon after, as a special ‘thank you’ gift to the city, Burt Reynolds had this Gazebo built on Whitefield Square. 

This beautiful Gazebo virtually painted itself. I painted it en Plein air on an early spring-like day in late-February. There are frustrating scenes that take an artist forever to capture on canvass; nothing goes right, and everything appears dark and ugly. And then there are times when a scene splashes itself onto your canvass, as if in a dream, where everything works and the colors arrange themselves perfectly. 

On the day John Wesley returned to England from Savannah, a confident 24-year-old man named George Whitefield was preparing to leave London for Georgia to replace Wesley as minister to Savannah. In May 1738, Whitefield stepped ashore on Tybee Island, just down the Savannah River. 

Whitefield Square was named for George Whitefield, who arrived in Savannah with a grand plan to build an orphan house deeply entrenched in his mind. He wrote to a friend: “God, I believe, is laying a foundation for great things in Georgia.” He named his orphanage Bethesda, meaning House of Mercy, and James Oglethorpe granted Bethesda a 500-acre plantation located just outside Savannah. 

Whitefield would quickly move on to ignite a religious firestorm in the American colonies called the Great Awakening. By the age of only 25, evangelist George Whitefield was preaching alongside Jonathan Edwards.  Boston-area crowds numbering up to twenty-thousand people would gather to hear him preach God’s word — this, at a time when the total population of Boston counted only 13,000 souls. 

Because of his extraordinary and magnetic evangelical preaching skills — as recorded in Thomas Kidd’s biography: George Whitefield: American’s Spiritual Founding Father — by 1740, George Whitefield was the most famous man in the American colonies. He was out to convert every colonialist he could save. 

At that time, George Washington was eight years old, John Adams was four, and both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were not yet born. Benjamin Franklin, a printer in Philadelphia, became Whitefield’s publisher. And it was Franklin’s fame that grew as a result of publishing the celebrated evangelist’s work, not the other way around. The business relationship between the two men lasted over 30-years. 

General James Oglethorpe’s invasion of Spanish-Florida would fail in 1740. By 1742, with the city nearly abandoned, Savannah residents were expecting a Spanish invasion. In June, a massive Spanish armada had been spotted off the Georgia coast. Whitefield’s Bethesda and spiritual legacy hung in the balance.  

General James Oglethorpe and his men beat back the Spanish invasion at Bloody Marsh. Whitefield claimed this military victory to be a sign of God’s Deliverance.’ His missionary work to care for the orphans at Bethesda had only begun. It would soon submerge his soul into the darkness of slavery.