By Gail Isaacson Photos by Bruce Bever

From the June 2008 Issue

Lake Magazine covers the hottest information on the Lake Michigan area.

subscribe today!
lake shop

Jon Vickers is a well-known name in Harbor Country due in part to his popular Vickers Theatre in Three Oaks, Mich. The Vickers Theatre shows films rarely seen at the Metroplex: independent films, foreign films, films that make you think. Renovating the old building was a labor of love for Jon and his wife, Jennifer. In 1994, Jon accepted a job running the Browning Cinema at the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and has recently become managing director of the entire DeBartolo complex (There’s a concert hall, main stage and Black Box theaters and an Organ Hall in addition to the cinema.). Jon is 44 years young.

I moved to Lakeside, Mich., in 1970 when I was 6 years old. Before that, my family lived in Kouts, Ind., about 20 miles south of Valparaiso. My father was a traveling engineer. He had some ideas for patents he wanted to develop, so he bought a small machine shop in Sawyer (Mich.) and we moved here. Growing up in Lakeside in the 1970s was wonderful. We had freedom to do pretty much whatever we wanted. We had the beach a block away and played in the woods frequently. Our yard was the home for “pick up” baseball and football games. Lakeside was a different town then. There were a lot of year-round kids and families at that time.

My dad grew out of the building in Sawyer, so we moved to Three Oaks. I was salutatorian at River Valley High School and went to Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich. I met my wife, Jennifer, a painter, there. I majored in civil engineering (and had) visions of going to California and building highways. But then I came back to visit my dad before I graduated and saw some equipment he had designed from scratch. I thought it was important that I come back and learn from this talented man.

So, I left Lansing and went into my father’s business. Along the way, the building that is now the Vickers Theatre became vacant. It was built as a livery in the 1890s, and in 1911 it was converted by Frank Lee into a movie theater. Two generations of his family ran the business until the1970s. After that, it was used alternately as a theater, office space and storage (facility).

After Jennifer and I were married in 1993, I walked through the old theater building. There was a woman living there with her son. Less than a month later, it was up for sale. It was really chopped up and didn’t resemble a theater at all. Then, completely out of impulse, Jennifer and I made a decision to buy the former theater within a day. We knew nothing about the movie theater business.

We both loved films. I was into the more obscure ones. Jennifer and I had a really naïve, romantic vision. We would open this theater, show interesting films, and put Jennifer’s art on the walls for sale. The studio apartment above the theater would be our home and we would live the artist’s life. Rehabbing the place took two and a half years. Jennifer and I did all of the demolition and a lot of the rehab work ourselves. Before we finished, we had our first child and our second child was on the way. So there went living on a penny, artistic vision.

It’s a very intimate theater with only about 100 seats. I think it has some charm and class with the balconies and the catwalks. It has oak floors that we put in. We wanted it to be a casual place, where people could be comfortable in jeans or dressed up. Jennifer truly is an artist, even though she’s modest. She designed the tile mosaics that are in the bathroom and lobby.

We try to choose quality films, but also films that don’t necessarily make it into the commercial theaters. We follow many directors’ work: Gus Van Sant, John Sayles, Patrice LeConte and the Dardenne Brothers, to name a few. We read film critics such as J. Hoberman, Michael Wilmington, Anthony Lane and Roger Ebert.

Faculty members of the University of Notre Dame have patronized the Vickers Theatre. As the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center was being completed, some faculty approached the original executive director, John Haynes, about the Browning Cinema planned for the center. They told Haynes he should interview me. I remember my exact words to him were that I could successfully open his cinema, due to the experience I had gained with the Vickers Theatre. We have such a passion for what we do at the Vickers Theatre that it must have come across in the interview with John Haynes.

I was hired and started the job in August 2004. It was kind of a weird experience because the Vickers Theater was a hobby business for pure enjoyment. At the Browning Cinema, I was getting paid for doing the same thing. Recently my position was changed to managing director of the entire DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.

My wife is completely supportive of whatever endeavor I’ve done over the years. She claims not to take much responsibility for the birth of the theater, but she was a vital part. We shared a vision. Now she is running that vision. It’s the same with my job at Notre Dame. It’s very demanding as far as time, and she is completely supportive of that.

We have three kids: Max is going on 13, Frankie is 11, and Ava, our beautiful little girl, is 8. Raising them in Three Oaks is beautiful. We feel completely safe in town. The kids can skateboard or walk around town together. We have neat opportunities like Radio Harbor Country, where the kids were doing a radio show for a while, (and) they have been involved in “Music in the Park.” People know our kids at the Vickers Theatre and have conversations with them. We’re loving our experience here.