I've accumulated a few postings on this topic, so it's time for a list!
Look What They're Doing to Old Bryce Hospital
I've accumulated a few postings on this topic, so it's time for a list!
Look What They're Doing to Old Bryce Hospital
I've done several posts on this blog about Old Bryce Hospital, the state's former giant mental hospital in Tuscaloosa that opened in 1861. One described a quick visit made to the site with several family members in 2014 just before it closed. Others take a look at older photos related to the facility, an aerial view in 1943, and 1916 photos of sewing and other activities by residents. This post shares some photos I took on another quick visit with son Amos in January 2023.
Several years ago the University of Alabama purchased the closed hospital, and it is now undergoing extensive renovation for a welcome center, the theater and dance school and a mental health museum. You can read a recent newspaper article about the present status here. More history of Bryce can be found in this article. The renovated building is expected to open in late 2023.
A few more comments are below.
As the downsizing of my book collection continues, I'm even letting go of volumes that have Alabama connections. Can you believe it? This post is about such a book and its author.
Strode was born in Cairo, Illinois, on Halloween, 1892. His father Thomas was a native of Huntsville, Alabama. Because Thomas suffered from tuberculosis, the family soon moved to Denver but Thomas died in 1896. By the time Strode was 12 his mother Hope had remarried, and the family had moved to Demopolis.
He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1913 and received a master's in English at Columbia University. Hudson Strode taught English and creative writing at the University of Alabama from 1916 until retirement in 1963 with various time outs for travel, breakdowns and service at the Pensacola Naval Air Station during World War II. In 1975 he published The Eleventh House, a memoir that covered events in his life until the start of World War II. Strode died on September 22, 1976. The New York Times noted his passing.
Many of Strode's books relate to his travels to places such as Cuba, Bermuda, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Asia and India and Mexico. He also published a three volume biography of Jefferson Davis and edited Spring Harvest: A Collection of Stories from Alabama. I hope to do a blog post on that anthology at some point soon.
Strode's greatest legacy is the long list of former students who published more than 50 novels and 100 short stories. Borden Deal alone published more than 20 novels and a number of stories. I've put together this listing from various sources and have included links and a representative--or in some cases only--novel or other publication. Many of these authors were prolific novelists, short story writers, and poets; others published a single book. As far as I know, all of these individuals are deceased except Nancy Huddleston Packer.
John Mayo Goss, one of his students, won First Prize in the 1946 O. Henry Memorial Award contest given to the best story published in the previous year. Strode was one of three judges that year; stories by Truman Capote, Patricia Highsmith, Eudora Welty and others did not win. This tale has been dissected on the Passing Tramp mystery blog. Two years later Goss published a novel, This Magnificent World.
STUDENTS [probably incomplete]
Links are given to entries at the Encyclopedia of Alabama or other sources.
Douglas Fields Bailey, Devil Make a Third [1948]
Babs Deal, The Walls Came Tumbling Down [1968]
Borden Deal, Bluegrass [1976]
Lonnie Coleman, Beulah Land [1973]
John Finlay, Mind and Blood: Collected Poems [1992]
Robert Faucet Gibbons, Bright as the Morning [1943]
John Mayo Goss, This Magnificent World [1948]
Winston Groom, Forrest Gump [1986, also many other books!]
Harriet Hassell, Rachel's Children [1938]
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird [1960]
Helen Norris, Something More Than Earth [1940]
Nancy Huddleston Packer, Old Ladies [2012]
Thomas Hal Phillips, The Bitterweed Path [1950]
Catherine Rodgers [McLain], The Towers Inheritance [1958]
Elise Sanguinetti, The Last of the Whitfields [1962]
Carlyle Tillery, Red Bone Woman [1950]
Ann Waldron, The Princeton Murders [2003]
Alabama author Alina Stefanescu wrote a blog post in 2009 about Strode's Tuscaloosa home and his life and career. That post includes a partial list of Strode's students with some comments.
The photos below should give you some idea about the book, published in 1947. I've made comments below a couple of them.
Full disclosure: no, I haven't read it, and since I'm not likely to, I'm letting it go.
Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama
Literature is filled with examples of "one hit wonders", first novels often very successful that are never followed by another work, at least not in the author's lifetime. One of American literature's examples is Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. A youthful novella was published long after her death; manuscripts of some other works were apparently destroyed. Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s Raintree County was the only novel he wrote; just as it became a best seller he committed suicide early in 1948. A film version with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift was released in 1957. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is another notable American example. Anna Sewall's Black Beauty and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights are two well known titles from England.
An Alabama example is Red Bone Woman, the only novel published by Carlyle Tillery. Thomas Carlyle Tillery was born in Greenburg, Louisiana, on December 6, 1904. In 1928 he received a B.S. degree from Mississippi State University. For the next decade or more he worked as a statistical clerk in agricultural economics and spent two years as a timekeeper on a Central American banana plantation.
During World War II he served in the U.S. Army and his draft card, filled out on October 16, 1940, tells us a bit more about him. At the time he was living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and working for the Guaranty Income Life, Inc. company. He listed his weight as 160, complexion light, eyes blue, hair red and his height as 5' 6.5". He was apparently not married at this time, since he listed his sister as the person "who will always know your address." I found his card via Ancestry.com; you can see it below.
After his service in the military, Tillery next appears in Tuscaloosa, where he studied for three years under famed University of Alabama English and creative writing professor Hudson Strode. Did he come to Tuscaloosa to take Strode's classes? I have found no information about Tillery writing or publishing before or after his one published novel. Tillery apparently did not graduate from UA; I did not find him listed in a 2008 directory of university alumni.
On July 10, 1949, the following article appeared in the Tuscaloosa News [page 8]: "TUSCALOOSA STORE CLERK SIGNS CONTRACT FOR NOVEL: Carlyle Tillery Is Author Of 21st Book from Strode Class." The article noted Tillery as, "a kindly, quiet man, fortyish ,with rather sparse red hair, a freckled face, and glasses that hit a little farther down his nose than usual. On week days he ambles busily but unobtrusively up and down the aisles of Jitney Jungle Super Market No. 1 where he is employed in the stock room."
The Hoole Special Collections at the University of Alabama Libraries has some material on Tillery "most notably" the galley proofs of his novel. I am indebted to their online description for some of the information above.
At the time of his death Tillery was married to Ruby Wilson Tillery; you can see her photo below. I did not find marriage info for Ruby and Carlyle. I did find a reference to a Thomas C. Carlyle getting married on June 15, 1952 in Tuscaloosa County. Perhaps that is the date.
Ruby earned a nursing PhD in 1981. She was the author of "Differences in Perceived Relationships of Selected Components of Curriculum Implementation Prior to and Following Graduate Study by Louisiana Nurse Teachers Funded for Master's Level Study" which was her dissertation at the University of Alabama.
Carlyle Tillery died on January 23, 1988 in Tuscaloosa. An obituary published the next day in the Tuscaloosa News listed among his survivors wife Ruby, daughter Sarah and son Edward. Ruby died January 10, 2007, also in Tuscaloosa. She was 84, having been born November 23, 1922, in Woodville, Jackson County, Alabama. Memorial services for both were held at Forest Lake United Methodist Church, where they were presumably members.
As you can read below in the blurbs on the back of the paperback edition, Tillery's one novel received good notices. The "Literary Guidepost" review by W.G. Rogers [also below] declares, "Tillery is a name to add to the large list of distinguished southern writers."
So what happened? Where did Tillery's literary impulse come from and where did it go after publication of Red Bone Woman? Did he continue to work at Jitney Jungle until retirement? Perhaps one day a descendent will enlighten us.