Coincidences Connected to The Wizard of Oz

In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, a tornado sweeps the main character and her dog away to the Land of Oz, whose capital is the Emerald City. Two characters in the film are named Hickory and Uncle Henry. In relation to my coincidence: (1) Hickory is the name of my hometown, and its high school has the Red Tornadoes as its mascot; (2) I have an uncle whose first name is Henry; and (3) I have family members, including both uncles and one of two cousins, who currently live or once lived in Emerald Isle, North Carolina; Greenville, North Carolina, sometimes referred to as the Emerald City; and/or a suburb of Seattle, Washington, which is also known as the Emerald City.

For many years, I have received unsolicited emails from the official team of Kristin Chenoweth, with “Kristin Chenoweth” listed as the sender. As an actress, Chenoweth is perhaps best known for playing Glinda the Good Witch in the musical Wicked, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz.

I share the same uncommon last name, and for part of the year the same age, as an actor who, among other roles, played a character from The Wizard of Oz on a television show. A different person with that actor’s same first and last name played football at the same college from which I had earlier graduated. That football player is from the same hometown as a housemate of mine while I attended that college, and that hometown is located in a different state from the college.

A former co-worker of mine once said, if I recall correctly, that Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, once spoke at her school when my former co-worker was a child.