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Happy Days? Director Ron Howard visits Oklahoma birthplace

December 12, 2018 GMT

FILE - In this Sept. 16, 2018, file photo, filmmaker Ron Howard poses at a private cocktail party to celebrate the FX network's Emmy nominations in Los Angeles. The Oscar-winning director and actor returned to his home state of Oklahoma and the now-closed hospital where he was born and Howard's Instagram site this week featured a photo of him outside the shuttered building in Duncan, 75 miles (120.7 kilometers) southwest of Oklahoma City. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

DUNCAN, Okla. (AP) — Oscar-winning movie director Ron Howard says he still feels connected to the Oklahoma town where he was born but never lived, after visiting the now-shuttered hospital of his birth.

Howard this week posted a photo of himself on Instagram posing outside the boarded-up building in Duncan, 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Oklahoma City.

Howard says his family lived in Biloxi, Mississippi, but that his mother wanted to give birth in Duncan, her hometown. Howard says he never lived there but feels “a connection to the town & people.”

The family later moved to California where Howard’s father, Rance Howard, was an actor. His mother, Jean Speegle Howard, also acted. Both appeared in their son’s movies “Cocoon” and “Apollo 13.”

Jean Howard died in 2000. Rance Howard died in 2017.