Cool@Hoole

Writer, publisher, teacher, and poet Anne George was born on this day, December 4th, in 1927. She passed away in 2001, leaving a literary legacy that reaches far beyond her home state of Alabama.

Anne was born Anne Carroll Bell in Montgomery, Alabama. She was raised by her grandparents initially and moved to rural Lowndes County as a young girl. It was in her childhood that she became enamored with the detective stories — from the magazines in her grandparents’ house. Upon graduating high school, she attended Judson College in Marion, Alabama and graduated in 1949 from Samford University with a degree in English and Spanish.

She married and moved to Birmingham, where she taught English for over two decades. During that time she attended graduate school at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, earning an MA in English and Education in 1971. She also pursued a doctoral degree, and during that time founded Druid Press with her fellow student Jerri Beck. After ten years in the publishing business, they sold the press and Anne began writing full time.

She is best known for her Southern Sisters mystery series. This popular series began as a short story based on herself and a cousin. The first book in the series, Murder on a Girls’ Night Out, was accepted for publication less than a week after she sent it to her agent. She eventually published seven books in the series, with such titles as Murder on a Bad Hair Day, and Murder Shoots the Bull. All of her writing is greatly influenced by her surroundings — making Birmingham, Alabama center stage for her mysteries.

She was also a successful poet, publishing two volumes of her work. Though she is gone, she is not forgotten by her legions of fans who identify with and idolize Patricia Anne and Mary Alice, two unlikely sleuths full of Southern charm and humor.

Anne George, as an Alabama author, is included in the Hoole Library’s Alabama Collection.

October 16 marks the birthday of bestselling author and former University of Alabama professor of English, Carl Carmer. Born in 1893 in Cortland, New York, Carmer came to The University of Alabama in 1927 after completing graduate work at Harvard University. His experiences in Alabama led to his best-selling book, Stars Fell on Alabama.

The New York Times review from the period said, “Carmer reveals himself here as a writer of more than ordinary perceptiveness and imagination, with the power of extracting from what he sees, hears, and feels an essence which is fundamentally poetic.”

What he saw, heard, and felt, from experiences all over the state, still stand today as powerful documentation of folkways, and of the racial violence and conflict that existed in Alabama. Carmer became friends with people who took him all over the state, and he experienced first hand everything from foot-washings and shape note singing, to myths and superstitions (like the legendary night in 1833 when “stars fell on Alabama — the Leonid meteor shower), as well as the horror of an actual lynching — and he wrote about it all with great honesty.

Carmer left Alabama in 1933 (coincidently one hundred years after the stars fell…)to serve as the assistant editor at Vanity Fair magazine.

Carmer had a colleague, Clarence Cason — who also wrote honestly about Alabama during this same period. An essay on Carmer and Cason, exploring their work and Cason’s tragic fate was published in 2003 in the journal Southern Cultures, by Dr. Phil Beidler of the UA Department of English. This fascinating essay,Yankee Interloper and Native Son: Carl Carmer and Clarence Cason Unlikely Twins of Alabama Exposé is a very worthy read and gives a great glimpse into these two men and the period in which they wrote.

Carmer went on to write thirty-seven books in all, in addition to his editorial and consultant work, advising on matters of folklore for Walt Disney productions! He also recorded four albums of folk music. His most famous work, Stars fell on Alabama has been in print for many years, most recently reprinted by The University of Alabama Press in 2000, with an introduction by former NY Times editor and Alabama native, Howell Raines. The images above are first editions of the book from the Hoole Library’s Alabama Collection. Carmer died in 1976 at the age of 93. Today is the 115th anniversary of his birth.

Portrait of Carl Carmer from This Goodly Land entry on Carmer

Visit Alabama Authors at http://www.lib.ua.edu/Alabama_Authors/
or Carmer’s entry in This Goodly Land to learn more about him and more about Alabama’s rich literary heritage!

This sweet-faced young man was named Stark Paget. He passed away in 1934 at the young age of 37. He suffered from severe food poisoning, and died at the home of his mother, Mrs. Lucy Paget in Troy, Alabama.

Paget was born in 1897 in Searight, Alabama, the son of J.E. Paget and Lucy Thomas Paget. He spent most of his youth in Andalusia. He came to The University of Alabama in 1923, after serving in the Quartermaster Corps in WWI and attending Auburn University for a short period of time.

Cover, Song of the Crimson Tide by Stark Paget

Though he has been gone a long time, Paget’s legacy remains –a legacy of music. During his short life, he had a career as an auditor and stenographer for several companies, but he also was a pianist, appearing on the Keith Vaudeville Circuit in Alabama and Florida. He was a gifted singer and musician, but also a composer as well. He was very active in the UA Glee Club. And he composed a song that was popular regionally, called “The Kappa Sigma Dream Girl”, which was dedicated to The University of Alabama chapter of his fraternity, Kappa Sigma. He was perhaps best known for composing the then widely known and performed song, “Song of the Crimson Tide”, which was published by the Supe Store in 1930, and performed by Paget and the Glee Club on the opening of their then new location in the Union Building (now known as Reese Pfifer Hall)

Page 1, Song of the Crimson Tide

This song is not as widely known as the 1926 song, Yea Alabama! by Lundy Sykes, perhaps it will make a resurgence….

Cover, Rammer Jammer Magazine, May 1926, announcing the “new official song, Yay, Alabama”

This photograph of Stark Paget, along with his biographical information and this rare piece of sheet music (which the Hoole Library did not have until now!) was donated recently by Mrs. J.W. Hamiter of Andalusia, whose grandmother was Stark Paget’s sister. These were given to us by Janice Fink, editor of the UA Alumni Magazine, who often receives materials like this and they know to pass them on to us. It is a greatly appreciated effort that helps us to preserve and document the history and culture of the University, the community, and beyond. These materials are now part of the Hoole Library’s collections.

Seventy-two years ago today, on August 3, 1936, track and field athlete and native Alabamian Jesse Owens won his first of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany.

Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama in 1913 and moved with his family to Cleveland Ohio when he was nine. He attended Ohio State University and won a record 8 NCAA individual championships, four in 1935 and four in 1936. And in the span of forty-five minutes on 45 minutes on May 25, 1935 at the Big 10 meet at the University of Michigan, he set three world records and tied a fourth.

Despite his international fame and success as an athlete, he faced huge challenges and humiliations because of racial bias and Jim Crow laws in his native country. For example, after being given a ticker-tape parade in New York, he was required to take the freight elevator to his own reception at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. His story, much like the story of fellow Alabamian and stellar athlete Joe Louis is filled with tragedy stemming from racial bias. Both men also share in their contributions to anti-Nazi efforts leading up to the United States’ participation in World War II.

In 1996, The Jesse Owens Memorial Park opened in his hometown of Oakville, Alabama. An poem by Charles Ghigna is inscribed on the plaque dedicating the park, and it reads:

May his light shine forever as a symbol

for all who run for the freedom of sport,

for the spirit of humanity,

for the memory of Jesse Owens.

Jesse Owens was inducted to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 1970. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976, and posthumously given the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990. He is also recognized in Germany, with a street and a school named for him in Berlin. His birthplace in Oakville, Alabama dedicated a park in his honor in 1996, and also brought the Olympic Torch through the community, commemorating his Olympic triumph sixty years earlier. The Ohio State University named their track and field stadium, The Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium.

Much more can be learned about Jesse Owens in Hoole’s Alabama Collection — where books about Owens and other great Alabamians abound. And later this week, if you choose to watch the 2008 Olympics, it is interesting to think about some of the people who helped pave the way — as Americans and world citizens — for those who compete today.