This Yellow Springs ‘babysitter’ got a big shout out on 'The Tonight Show’

Yellow Springs, Ohio made the Tonight Show.

In case you missed it, actor John Lithgow mentioned part of his upbringing in  Yellow Springs while playing "Two Truths and a Lie" with Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon as week.

The part about Yellow Springs begins around the 1 minute, ten seconds mark. 

Coretta Scott babysat Lithgow and his sibling in the Greene County village years before she married civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and became the civil rights icon Coretta Scott King.

“She remembered me very fondly,” Lithgow said of meeting Scott King later as an adult. “Apparently I was not that hard to take care of.”

>> MORE: 6 things you didn't know about MLK's ties to Dayton

Lithgow's father Arthur was a classically-trained actor and college professor at Antioch College. An Antioch grad himself, Arthur Lithgow founded the Antioch Shakespeare Festival, later called Shakespeare Under the Stars.

>> MORE: 3 ways the Dayton area kicked butt at the Golden Globes

Coretta Scott King is among Antioch College’s most accomplished alumni.

She enrolled at the Yellow Springs college in 1945 as part of the college’s Interracial Scholarship program.

Though she left Antioch in 1949, she returned in 1967 to receive the degree she should have received in 1951.

>> MORE: Coretta Scott King Center director speaks out

John Lithgow walked on the stage for the first time in 1947 at age 2 as an urchin in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in Yellow Springs. At age 6, he was in “Henry VI, Part 3.”

>> MORE: Bradley Cooper, Sheryl Crow, Tom Hanks and more than 12 other stars spotted in Dayton area

Lithgow currently stars in the NBC crime documentary spoof “Trial & Error.”

Perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated performances in “The World According to Garp” and “Terms of Endearment” as well as the sitcom “3rd Rock from the Sun,” Lithgow was nominated for a Golden Globe for his recent portrayal of Winston Churchill in the Netflix series “The Crown.”

>> MORE: 5 things to do in Yellow Springs

About the Author