Calendar Big Oscars Issue : Gumpville, U.S.A. : Forrest Gump wasn’t born in Hollywood. He was Winston Groom’s creation in Point Clear, Ala. So guess who the townsfolk are rooting for Monday night?

“Birthplace of Forrest Gump.” Those are the words Robbie and Cissy Bacon plan to engrave on the plaque they will attach to the side of the little gray cottage that stands on the grounds of their grand old four-acre beachfront estate.

“Forrest was born in that cabin,” Robbie Bacon says as he points through the tall glass windows of his breakfast room. “That’s where Winston Groom started writing the book. In fact, I was privileged enough for Winston to give me copies of the rough draft while he was writing it. He used me as a sounding board.”

Bacon and Groom had known each other at University Military School, the private high school they attended in nearby Mobile. They lost touch during the years Groom was living in Washington and New York. When Groom returned to Alabama and wanted a quiet place to write, Bacon offered him the cottage that had been servants quarters at one time but had not been occupied for years. It was refurbished and Groom moved in.

“I’d see him sitting at the window, looking out toward the ocean and writing into his word processor,” Bacon says. In only six weeks, “Forrest Gump” was done.

In the book, Groom describes Gump as a tall, heavy, lumbering sort of fellow, and that’s the way Bacon envisioned him. He says, however, that there’s no doubt that Tom Hanks successfully became the embodiment of Forrest Gump in the movie. The fact that the story is easy for people to identify with is one of the things that makes the movie so popular.

“The different little emotional vignettes, as you may call them, as Forrest grows up, seem to apply so accurately to today’s society,” Bacon says. “There was Jenny dying of AIDS, his mother with cancer, him being a little slow-witted.”

The Bacons will be tuned to Monday’s Academy Awards telecast, and they’re hoping for a clean sweep of 13 Oscars for the movie based on their friend’s story.

“I’d love to see Winston up on the stage,” Bacon says. “But what would they give him an award for? He didn’t write the screenplay. There should be some award he’d be eligible for.”

For his part, Winston Groom, with his wife, Anne Clinton, is now living quietly in a rented house near his childhood friend Bacon while waiting for their new neoclassical style home to be finished.

Groom remembers the time he spent in Bacon’s comfortable cottage, and particularly the afternoon his father visited him there and told him the story that planted the seed that became Forrest Gump. Over lunch his father recalled a boy who had lived in his neighborhood. This child was not as bright as the other children but was a gifted pianist. His father’s story, coupled with a television segment Groom had seen about similar children--so-called idiot savants--stuck in Groom’s mind.

“It occurred to me this might be an interesting character in some book somewhere later down the road,” he says. “I never intended to make it a book in itself. I sat down to make some notes, and all of a sudden I got the voice. By that night I had most of the first chapter of the book written.”

Groom’s new book, “Shrouds of Glory,” a history of the last battle of the Civil War, will be published this week. A sequel to “Forrest Gump” is in progress.

Groom and his wife are excited about the kudos the movie is winning and look forward to attending the Oscars ceremonies Monday.

“They were very kind to ask me,” Groom says. “I think it is their time to shine, not mine, but it will be interesting to see what happens. I’ve never been to any kind of Academy Awards before.”

Another longtime pal of Groom’s, Jimbo Meador, shares his friend’s high spirits about the Oscars. Meador is one of two friends Groom dedicated his book to when it was published in 1986.

The fact that there is a similarity to Meador’s slow drawl and that of Gump may not be a coincidence.

“Before they made the movie somebody from Paramount called me and said she was a dialect coach, and she wanted to talk to me,” Meador says. “She taped a conversation with me supposedly for Tom Hanks to listen to. Now whether he did or not, I don’t know.”

Meador, a traveling representative for a sporting goods company, says he doesn’t know where he’ll be on Monday evening, but wherever he is he’ll be watching the Oscars presentation and cheering for a “Forrest Gump” win.

“I’m really proud of Winston and happy the ways things have turned out,” Meador says. “There are people who get so involved with movies they want to live them out. We’d be a lot better off if they decided to live out ‘Forrest Gump’ than one of those killer deals.”

Suzy Ahart, a waitress in the Birdcage Lounge at the Grand Hotel, a Point Clear landmark, says she and her husband will be watching the Academy Awards.

“I wouldn’t miss the Oscars,” Ahart says. “My husband and I have seen ‘Forrest Gump’ three times. I’m hoping the movie wins every last one of the awards. . . .

“When I saw Forrest as a child and he had braces on his legs and the children were teasing him and chasing after him, and he was defenseless, it really touched me,” she says. “His friend Jenny gave him the confidence in himself that he could run. That was like a miracle.

“And then, his mother always showed so much love for him. She didn’t want Forrest to be a wimp. The movie just showed that love helps people achieve their goals.”

A few miles north of Point Clear in the small, picturesque town of Fairhope, many of the residents know Groom. He has autographed his novels at the local bookstore. He met his future wife at the Judge Roy Bean tavern there. The Grooms drive there from Point Clear to shop.

Tricia Thompson, who owns a fabric shop on the main street of Fairhope, plans to watch the Academy Awards telecast and hopes for a glimpse of Groom and his wife. She proudly announces that Anne Clinton Groom will be dressed in an outfit made from cloth she bought at Thompson’s shop, Tricia’s.

Thompson’s father, Ed Dorgan, visiting Fairhope from his home in Gulf Shores, Ala., says he thinks the reason “Forrest Gump” was so popular is that “everyone loves to pull for the underdog.”

“Here is somebody who was unfortunate who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made a success of everything he did. Mental illness is not usually dealt with in a happy sort of way. The movie took a serious subject and turned it into something happy,” says Dorgan, who liked the movie’s Alabama background, especially the parts about Coach Bear Bryant and the University of Alabama.

There are those who saw the movie and believed that Forrest Gump was a real football player.

At the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa, 255 miles north of this coastal area, Larry White, the school’s sports information director, says he received a flurry of phone calls from across the country after the movie was released last summer.

“People were wanting to know what year Gump lettered, what his stats were and did we have a photograph of him,” White recalls.

A creative Alabama student found an old, worn manila file folder. He labeled it “Gump, Forrest” and put it in the sports department’s archives.

White says they had to suppress giggles whenever anyone came in and wanted to see the file. As the folder was opened all that lay inside was one note. It said simply, “Gotcha!”*