Month: February 2022

Johnny Allen and the Aberdeen Nine

When an all-time great wore an “A” on his chest

By Bill Case   

In 1956, at age 7, I fell madly in love with baseball. That summer, and several ensuing ones, I spent an untold number of daylight hours playing both organized and pick-up baseball, as well as the game’s myriad offshoots — pepper, home-run derby, monkey in the middle, etc. After hurrying through dinner, I would often spend another hour hurling a ball at a target painted on the basement wall and fielding the rebound. With an accompanying radio broadcast of a Cleveland Indians (aka the Guardians) game providing grist for my overactive imagination, I would visualize myself playing second base for Cleveland while backhanding countless caroms off the wall.

None of the Indians’ players resided in my hometown of Hudson, Ohio, 26 miles from Cleveland, but the team’s longtime trainer, Wally Bock, did. My parents, Bea and Weldon Case, knew Wally and his wife, and asked them over for dinner. I could not have been more excited if Cleveland’s Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller had been invited.

When the Bocks arrived at our home, Wally tossed me a ball (which I still have) autographed by all the ’56 Tribe players. But, too soon, Mom and Dad ordered me upstairs to my room. While lying restlessly in bed, I hatched what in retrospect was a ridiculous plan: Wouldn’t it be cool to finagle a rubdown from Wally like the ones he once administered to Feller and the other Indians I idolized? So, I yelled downstairs, “Mom, my back really hurts!”

My crying wolf fooled no one; nonetheless, the scheme worked. With my folks looking on and shaking their heads at my transparent ploy, Wally provided a brief backrub. All fixed. So, much like Bill Murray’s character Carl Spackler who was promised “total consciousness” by the Dalai Lama in Caddyshack, I got that going for me.

My baseball passion extended to the game’s vast array of statistics. Without attempting to, I committed to memory countless batting averages and home run totals. One mark that always stuck with me was pitcher Johnny Allen’s 1937 win-loss record of 15-1. His resulting winning percentage of .938 was, at the time, a major league record.

The mark was ultimately bettered by Elroy Face’s 18-1 for the National League’s Pittsburgh Pirates in 1959, but to this day, Allen holds the American League record. No pitcher in the 146 years of major league history has posted an undefeated season with at least 15 decisions — the minimum number required to qualify for the winning percentage title. More astonishing is the fact that Johnny was undefeated until the meaningless final game of his ’37 campaign. Risking the unblemished record, he took the mound against the Tigers with just two days of rest. Allen lost 1-0, the lone run scoring in the aftermath of an error by Indians’ third baseman Odell Hale. According to an online post by the Society for Baseball Research, an infuriated Allen “went ballistic after the game” and twice had to be restrained from assaulting his third baseman.

Such behavior was not out of the norm for the hyper-competitive hurler. His 13-year major league career (1932-1944) with the Yankees, Indians, St. Louis Browns, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants was replete with similar incidents. He was known to throw furniture in the clubhouse, but his piques of wrath weren’t confined to the ballpark. After a tough loss to the Red Sox, an enraged Allen returned to the team’s hotel, upended stools in the bar, kicked over an ashtray of sand, and sprayed a corridor with a fire extinguisher. In 1943, it took several teammates to restrain Allen after he rushed an umpire “like a wild man” after the ump called a balk on him. When another unfortunate third baseman cost Allen a game by dropping a pop fly, the pitcher decked him in the clubhouse, then announced to his startled Yankee teammates, “If anybody else drops an easy fly on me, that’s what’s going to happen to you.”

In a notorious 1938 controversy, umpire Bill McGowan ordered Allen to remove the sweatshirt he wore underneath his jersey after the pitcher had cut strips out of the sleeves to “improve ventilation.” Distracted by the fluttering fabric, opposing hitters complained. Allen refused to change his shirt and huffily stalked into the clubhouse, defying Indians’ manager Oscar Vitt’s directive to return to the mound. Allen was fined but recouped his money by selling the sweatshirt to a downtown Cleveland department store, which proudly displayed it in its storefront window. Today, the garment is an exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

While his competitive fire could land Allen in hot water, it no doubt contributed to his pitching greatness. His near undefeated season in ’37 merited his selection by The Sporting News as that year’s Major League Player of the Year. His career winning percentage of .654 (142-75), ranks 22nd best all-time. Hall of Fame catcher Bill Dickey described Allen’s sidearm fastball as “the meanest delivery in the league for a righthanded hitter. He’ll buzz it over the bat handle before you can see it.”

A second Hall of Famer, Al Simmons, picked Allen as the toughest pitcher to hit against in that slugger’s 20-year career. Allen’s record might have been even more impressive had he not been plagued by a sore arm his last six years in the majors.

My fascination with stats like Allen’s 15-1, and for baseball itself, cooled substantially at age 13 after I failed to crack the starting lineup and quit the local little league team, the Hudson Hornets. I stopped buying baseball cards and no longer paid rapt attention to the exploits of legends like Feller and Ted Williams, let alone those of less remembered stars like Johnny Allen. 

But two years ago, Allen came to mind again when I came across a short 1935 piece in The Pilot, reporting that Allen “who used to clerk in the Aberdeen Hotel, is going great guns for the New York Yankees” and that, during this employment, circa 1926-27, Allen pitched for the local Aberdeen team that competed in the Moore County Baseball League.

A search of the archives of The Pilot and the defunct Moore County News failed to unearth further references to Allen’s days here, but Wint Capel’s biography of Allen, Fiery Fast-Baller, published in 2001, provided some additional details about the pitcher’s pre-major league wanderings.

Born in Lenoir, North Carolina, in 1905, Allen, like his Yankee teammate Babe Ruth, spent the bulk of his youth in an orphanage, playing both infield and outfield positions for the Thomasville Baptist Orphanage baseball team. Capel writes that there “was no hint that he would become a sensational big league pitcher.”

While at the institution, Johnny suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was resting the muzzle of a 12-gauge shotgun on the toes of his shoe when the gun accidentally discharged, causing the loss of two toes on the teenager’s right foot. (Another great North Carolina pitcher, Jim “Catfish” Hunter, also suffered a shotgun injury to his right foot when he was a teenager, losing one toe.) Though he chafed at the orphanage’s strict regimen — making frequent attempts to run away — Allen did learn the basics of the bookkeeping trade there. It was expertise enough to secure a night clerk position at Greensboro’s O.Henry Hotel following his 1922 release from the orphanage.

According to Capel, Allen drifted from one hotel clerking job to another, “for a change of scenery as much as anything,” serving brief stints at the Monticello Hotel in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Sheraton in High Point, North Carolina, and the Wildrick Hotel in Sanford, North Carolina. While working at the latter establishment, he got back into baseball, playing on a local church league team.

In or around 1926, Allen pulled up stakes again, moving to the Sandhills for a clerking position at the Aberdeen Hotel, and soon joined the town’s semi-pro baseball team. 

The 23-year-old Allen left Aberdeen in 1928 to play “organized baseball” with the Greensboro Patriots of the Class B Piedmont League. During that season, he also pitched for teams in Fayetteville, Greenville and Raleigh. In 1929, he signed with the Asheville Tourists, where Johnny Nee, a scout for the New York Yankees, saw him and, impressed with his blazing fastball, signed the 24-year-old to a contract.

After two years of seasoning with Yankee minor league affiliates Allen joined the mighty Bronx Bombers in 1932. The manager was the great Joe McCarthy. His teammates included Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Bill Dickey. In that rookie campaign, he logged a sparkling 17-4 record and pitched in the World Series where the Yanks defeated the Chicago Cubs in four games.

After three more seasons in New York and five in Cleveland, Allen was dealt to the St. Louis Browns, something that was dutifully noted in a 1940 issue of the Pinehurst Outlook. Jerry V. Healy’s story included a recounting of Allen’s initial appearance 14 years earlier for Aberdeen. Pitching against “the strong Mt. Gilead nine on the latter’s local grounds,” a disastrous outing “almost ruined Allen’s career.” As Healy put it, “the farmer boys up in that section loved nothing better than to hit a fast ball a country mile, and Johnny had a fast ball. The coming star (Allen) was retired in short order.”

After his catastrophic debut, Healy noted that Allen, “quiet and peaceful in those days,” eventually starred for Aberdeen. “Wild as a hawk, he won many games by the mere effort of scaring opposing batters away from the plate,” Healy wrote. Allen’s lone shortcoming was “his slow and stumbling baserunning,” no doubt caused by the injury to his foot. Allen made up for this deficiency by smashing home runs and extra-base hits.

The article also mentioned Allen’s link to Jack Meador, “the present manager of the Aberdeen Hotel,” which had previosly employed Johnny. Moreover, in 1928 the hotelman had moonlighted as the Fayetteville Highlanders’ secretary-treasurer during Allen’s brief time on that team. Several months after Healy’s article was published, a massive fire consumed the Aberdeen Hotel. A new hotel was constructed on the same site and renamed the Sandhills Hotel, with Jack Meador remaining in charge. The new structure burned down in February 1942, and Meador lost his life attempting to rescue guests from the blaze.

The Aberdeen team photo accompanying Healy’s article identified Allen and all his pinstriped teammates. According to longtime Aberdeen Mayor Robbie Farrell and his sister Betsy Farrell Ingraham, virtually all the Aberdeen players shown in the picture became men of prominence in the community. Gordon Keith owned the town’s dry-cleaning business and also won the 1939 golf championship of the Southern Pines Country Club. Gordon’s brother, Kenny Keith, was the town’s go-to carpenter. Billy Huntley owned substantial real estate in the area, including the local drive-in theater. Max Folley’s family ran the lumberyard. Bill Maurer was active in the tobacco markets and became co-owner of the Aberdeen Warehouse. Hughes Bradshaw operated a gas station. John Duncan McLean owned the local hardware store and served as Aberdeen’s mayor.

Arnold “Bony” Ferree served as a health inspector, while his brother, Purvis Ferree, achieved fame in Winston-Salem as the longtime golf pro at Old Town Club. Purvis became the first person inducted into the North Carolina Golf Hall of Fame. His son, Jim Ferree, would continue the family’s golf legacy by winning a pro tour event (the 1958 Vancouver Open) and was the beknickered, silhouetted model for the PGA Champions Tour logo. Finally, George Martin owned Martin Motors, the town’s Buick dealership, on South Street, now a church. Martin installed a bank of showers inside the dealership so that his teammates would have a place to wash up after games.

Gordon Keith’s son, David Keith, now lives in Cameron. His irrigation contracting business is in the old family house on Keith Street in Aberdeen. Born after his father reached 50, David is only in his 60s. He remembers his father saying that Allen was a “ringer” — paid money, presumably raised by the passing of a hat at games, to pitch for Aberdeen — and that his father often served as Allen’s catcher. The games were on Wednesday afternoons, the day many area businesses closed at noon, and attracted sizable crowds. (The Aberdeen Supply Company closes on Wednesday afternoons to this day.)

David Keith still has an ancient, scuffed baseball with links to the old Aberdeen nine. It was given to him years ago by his best friend, Sam Buchan, a grandson of the aforementioned George Martin. Buchan got the ball from Martin’s teammate John Duncan McLean. Mayor McLean kept the ball, belted for a home run in a Moore County League championship game, as a piece of local memorabilia. Just a few years ago, the ball was among the possessions stolen from Keith’s house in a robbery. Fortunately, the perpetrator was caught and the treasured ball returned.

While The Pilot did little to cover the activities of the Moore County Baseball League, the 1932 season was a notable exception. That year, the Aberdeen team found itself in the thick of the race for the league title. Several of Allen’s old teammates from the ’20s were still mainstays on the squad, including Martin, Max Folley, Purvis Ferree, Bill Maurer and Billy Huntley. To reach a playoff series against Vass-Lakeview for the league championship, Aberdeen needed to beat Southern Pines in the last game of the regular season. The deciding contest was played the last day of August on Aberdeen’s home field, now the site of Cactus Creek Coffee.

The county was abuzz, the game looming larger than even the upcoming World Series in which Johnny Allen would appear. When game day arrived, the ballfield was packed. “Two thousand or more people from every corner of the county gathered around the Aberdeen diamond for Wednesday’s big game,” reported The Pilot. “It was the climax of a thrilling baseball season. Aberdeen and Southern Pines were deserted. Everybody was at the ballpark.”

As Aberdeen’s player-manager, George Martin sent himself to the mound for the pivotal game. Inspired by the massive crowd, he pitched brilliantly, shutting out Southern Pines, 6-0. But it wasn’t Martin’s fastball that had turned the trick; it was his out-of-the-past, good luck garb. “George had put on his 1921 uniform. Of course! That explained all,” wrote The Pilot reporter. “You remember George Martin back in 1921. Burning ’em in. Foe to every opposing batsman. Striking ’em out with his change of pace. George in his 1921 clothes! What chance had Southern Pines?”

Aberdeen went on to defeat Vass-Lakeview three straight in a best-of-five series, breezing to the league championship. Playing a nifty first base, Martin contributed multiple hits in each game, including a tide-turning homer in game two — likely the ball now in the hands of David Keith. The Pilot attributed much credit for the series victory to Martin. “He not only guided his men well, but proved an example in the field and at bat, playing errorless ball and hitting with the best of them.”

Five years later, Martin died suddenly while working at his desk. He was just 36. The Pilot described him as one of “Aberdeen’s most beloved citizens,” and that he would always be remembered for his baseball accomplishments — especially the memorable ’32 game he pitched and won in a 1921 uniform.

“You should talk to Kam Hurst, George Martin’s granddaughter,” David Keith said. “I think she has his uniform.”

Hurst’s grandparents had lived on Pine Street in Aberdeen in a home Martin built in 1923. After he died in 1937, his widow continued to reside in the house for many decades. After Hurst’s grandmother’s death, the house remained in the Martin family. While making repairs in 2009, Kam and her husband, Ricky, spotted her grandfather’s long forgotten baseball gear in the attic, undisturbed since his death 72 years earlier.

Inside a timeworn black duffle were Martin’s cleats, still sharp enough to dig into a basepath, his glove — little more than a primitive leather slab — and a cap bearing the red letter “A.” Separately, there was George’s wool uniform, still wearable. The pinstripes, however, didn’t have the “A” insignia affixed to the players’ jerseys in the ’26-’27 team photo. This had to be George Martin’s 1921 uniform.

While Martin’s heroics highlighted the rousing finish of the Moore County League’s 1932 season, the eight team league didn’t last much longer. It would disband in 1934. The four-team Sandhills Baseball League tried to fill the vacuum, but with the Great Depression raging, it was difficult to cajole financially struggling spectators to drop money into a passing hat. A Memorial Day All-Star game that attracted a crowd of 500-600 resulted in paltry receipts of $14. Semi-pro baseball in North Carolina was beginning a gradual fade-out.

Also on the wane was Johnny Allen’s playing career. His final major league season in 1944 was the only one in which he recorded a losing record. He stayed in the game, however, becoming a minor league umpire. Once the bane of the “men in blue,” Allen became the chief ump of the Carolina League. He gave up the job in 1952, thereafter buying and selling real estate in St. Petersburg, Florida.

When not on the mound, Johnny Allen was personable, a good husband and father, and a generous contributor to charities, including the orphanage of his youth. While he could be nasty to those who cost him victories, in the fullness of time he claimed he mostly got sore at himself “because I think of a million and one things I could have done in the situation and didn’t do.” There may have been a third baseman, or two, who would be less generous.

Allen died in 1959 at the age of 54. Enshrined in the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 1977, he was later named one of the best 100 players in the history of the Cleveland Indians. A ranking of the best baseball players born in North Carolina places him fifth. The four in front of him are in the Hall of Fame.

John Allen III, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, believes his grandfather should be recognized among baseball’s all-time greats, but is not, “because he didn’t kowtow to the press. In fact, he went out of his way to tell them how little respect he had for them. Boy, do we need more of those type of men today.”

While Johnny Allen’s relative standing in the ranking of baseball greats may be subject to debate, it is undisputed that he is the greatest ballplayer ever on a Moore County team. His exploits here — and those of George Martin on long ago Wednesday afternoons — become less ephemeral after laying eyes on relics like Martin’s glove, uniform, spikes, and the ball he smashed for a home run.

As James Earl Jones’ character Terence Mann reflected in Field of Dreams, baseball appeals to our longings for the past. “The one constant through all the years has been baseball . . . It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again.”

It reminds us of a target on a basement wall.  PS

Pinehurst resident Bill Case is PineStraw’s history man. He can be reached at Bill.Case@thompsonhine.com.

The Bard of Pinebluff

Manly Wade Wellman,
our forgotten man of letters

By Stephen E. Smith

On a September afternoon 53 years ago, I was one of eight creative writing students who had gathered for the first time in room 301 of the Carlton Building on the campus of little Elon College. We were awaiting the arrival of our instructor, an adjunct professor unknown to me. A fellow student who was repeating the course offered a concise appraisal: “This guy has published a truckload of books.” And at that moment an imposing figure appeared in the doorway.

Manly Wade Wellman was 6 feet tall, barrel-chested and wide-shouldered. He appeared to be in his mid-60s, with graying hair combed neatly back from his broad forehead. His face was round, open, accentuated with heavy eyebrows and a prominent nose below which was cultivated a tweedy Clark Gable mustache. I noticed immediately the peculiar way in which his eyes reflected light. The very tops of his irises flickered, suggesting an authentic inner illumination. He was dressed neatly in a frayed sports jacket that matched his mustache. A glasses case was stuffed in the pocket of his shirt, the collar of which was pulled tight by a bolo tie clasped with a silver and turquoise medallion.

“I’m Manly Wade Wellman!” he announced, surveying the anxious faces staring up at him. Then he launched into a story that went something like this: When Manly’s father was a boy of 8, he was taken by his father to attend a lecture by Mark Twain. Father and son found seats in the front row of the auditorium, and when the lights came up, the illustrious raconteur stepped to the edge of the stage and removed a folded paper from the inside pocket of his white linen jacket.

“I would like to read a poem,” Twain announced. The audience, who had not gathered to hear America’s foremost humorist read a poem, was silent for a moment, then burst into laughter. Annoyed, Twain held up his hand. “No,” he said, “this is a serious poem.” Again, the audience laughed. Twain frowned, crumpled up the paper, and tossed it onto the stage, where it remained until he had concluded his lecture. According to Manly, his father spent the evening staring at the wadded-up poem, and at the conclusion of the lecture, he was taken by the hand and led from the hall, thus consigning to the dustbin what may have been a priceless scrap of American literature.

More than half a century later my initial impression of Manly and the story he told during that first class session remains with me, long after the yarns of other teachers, friends and fellow writers, accomplished storytellers all, have faded from memory. Manly no doubt intended the story to serve as an analogous revelation, but what I recall most vividly are the sensuously effective images: that long-ago evening when the romantic possibility of a white-haired Twain still existed in America, the irreverent audience, that small boy longing to rescue the Great Lost American Poem, all of it spun forth in Manly’s raspy baritone, rising and falling with modulations of passion, poignancy, and a lingering trace of regret. He grumbled his way through the description, exposition and complications, all elaborately embroidered, and when he arrived at the story’s obvious climax, his voice rose suddenly to a crescendo.

“What would I give to know what was written on that scrap of paper?” he roared. “If only my father had reached out to grab it!” — and Manly’s left hand, which I noticed was stunted, the ring finger and pinky withered, suddenly darted out to grab the metaphysical poem. And there it was: almost everything I’d need to know about structuring a narrative.

This was, of course, a well-worn tale, polished and perfected with many tellings — for Manly Wellman, was, first and foremost, a teller of tales, a believer in recreating the moment in words and images. He was also a genuine artist, and the effect was calculated. It was his purpose to communicate in a sequence of rich, concise images so vivid as to be indelible on the impressionable mind. And, in my case, he was successful. I recall at least two later occasions when Manly offered the same story in which he changed minor details to better suit the occasion. Each telling offered fresh particulars and new insights that served to enliven the narrative. Like all accomplished writers, Manly was always in the process of rehearsing and revising, and I took note of the most important lesson a writer can learn — revise, revise, revise.

When class was dismissed, I beelined it to the library and looked up Manly Wade Wellman in Books in Print. My fellow student had been correct — Manly’s books occupied a couple of pages of the reference work. From there I wandered into the stacks and ran my index finger along the spines of 10 or 15 glossy covers with “Wellman” printed in big letters. I selected Not at These Hands, a mainstream, slick-covered novel published by Putnam, a big-deal New York house, and checked it out. I read the bio information on the dust jackets of several other books, mostly science fiction and fantasy, and learned that Manly had been born in Portuguese West Africa in 1903, and that he had ancestry that reached back through the Civil War to Colonial Virginia. He’d lived in Utah, New York and three or four other states, but he’d never stayed in one place for long until he settled in North Carolina after World War II. One of the bios identified Pinebluff, N.C. — wherever that was — as his family home.

His books included biographies — he’d written Giant in Gray, the definitive work on Confederate General Wade Hampton — and there were regional histories, juveniles, mystery novels, science fiction and fantasy. He’d published hundreds of stories in pulps in the ’30s, including more than 50 stories in the legendary Weird Tales, and he’d bested Faulkner in the 1946 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Prize. When it came to writing, he was indeed a jack-of-all-trades. I was duly impressed. Who could ask for a more experienced teacher? Or as it turned out, a better one?

Manly Wellman was fiercely proud of his stature as a writer. “Outlaws,” he called us, generously including his students in the designation, and he had the rare ability, from the moment he stepped into the room, to instill in each student the strong belief in self that made him a successful writer and a charismatic presence.

Each Tuesday morning that semester, I’d drop a story in the campus mail, and Manly would critique and correct it and hand it back after reading it aloud to the class. I was no doubt an annoyingly eager student, and on a couple of occasions I submitted two stories in one week. “You’re like the tiger who’s tasted blood,” Manly laughed — and in fact, I was spending entirely too much study time writing fiction. Not all my stories were keepers, but one was good enough to win a state-wide short story contest that earned me $100 and a magazine publication. When I met with Manly after winning the magazine prize, he asked what my major was. I told him it was sociology. “Change your major to English!” he barked. “There’s no such thing as sociology!”

The class met in a tall-windowed seminar room tucked away in a forsaken corner of the campus. No other classes met on that hall, and we felt we were truly in hiding. We loved being Manly’s “outlaws,” and he lavished attention on each student, managing to be critical while encouraging the better writer within. Every story he returned included a personal note banged out on an old portable, ribbon-weary Royal Quiet Deluxe he toted with him everywhere.

Today, leafing through the yellowing pages of the crude stories I wrote that semester, I find Manly’s corrections, suggestions, rebukes and flattery everywhere scribbled in the margins and between the lines. One of his notes reads in part: “In its organization and the early stages of its writing, it (my story) strikes me as having a good degree of merit, with a particularly intriguing point-counterpoint of almost slapstick humor and gray sadness . . .”

While I was profiting from Manly literary expertise, I knew nothing of his sojourn in Moore County. It would be another nine years before I’d discover the charms of the Sandhills and move from the coast to Southern Pines. And 70 years after the Wellmans — Manly, Frances and son Wade — relocated from Pinebluff to Chapel Hill, longtime resident John Mills, who was a child when the Wellmans called Moore County home, is one of the few locals who remember the family well.

“Manly moved to Pinebluff shortly after the war in 1946 or ’47, and he grew to know and love Moore County during the four years in which he lived here,” Mills recalls. “Manly’s father was a doctor — we had a lot of doctors who used to spend their winters here — and Manly’s father built a log bungalow with a big fireplace that covered one wall. When Manly’s father moved to Raleigh, Manly and his family moved into his father’s bungalow. During his time in Pinebluff, whose population in those days was about 300, Manly served as town clerk and was a member of the Lions Club and the Boy Scout troop committee. During this period, he published The Sleuth Patrol (1947), Mystery of Lost Valley (1948), Raiders of Beaver Lake (1949), and Haunts of Drowning Creek (1951), which was dedicated to my father. Manly moved to Chapel Hill in June 1951 to be near the university library and so that his son Wade could get a better education.”

Manly completed The Wild Dogs of Drowning Creek (1952) while living in Chapel Hill, where he also wrote The County of Moore, 1847-1947 (1961) and The Story of Moore County (1974).

Mills has in his possession notes Manly made concerning an incident that took place in the northeastern corner of Moore County at a location known as Big Poplar. Reported in the October 1871 issue of Harper’s Monthly, the altercation involved members of the “White Brotherhood” who attempted to lynch Republican John Campbell. Federal agents got wind of the plot and arrested the perpetrators, marching them to Raleigh to stand trial. It is unclear whether Manly was researching Moore County history or if he intended to expand the Harper’s Weekly article into a book, but he noted that the story was accompanied by a woodcut “showing John Campbell kneeling with rope around his neck and surrounded by masked, hooded and robed figures.”

While living in Pinebluff, Manly became friends with children’s author Glen Rounds, who lived a few blocks away. The two professional writers maintained a congenial if competitive friendship. “There was a knock at my door,” Rounds once told me, “and when I opened it there was this guy who says, ‘I’m Manly Wade Wellman.’ And I said, ‘So what?’” 

Tit for tat, Manly would later tell me: “If Glen weren’t so busy trying to be a damn cowboy, he’d be an all-right guy.” Nevertheless, Manly requested that Glen speak on his behalf when he was honored at the North Carolina Writers Conference in 1982, and Glen was a frequent visitor at the Wellmans’ home in Dogwood Acres in Chapel Hill. “Glen stops by for a free drink when he’s in town,” Manly claimed. “He’s courting a lewd nurse who lives in Carrboro.” Glen was an irrepressible raconteur in his own right, and I count myself fortunate not to have been trapped in the same room with the two of them.

Manly’s generosity was boundless. He was my teacher, mentor and close friend. He encouraged me to apply to the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at UNC Greensboro and wrote an eloquently persuasive letter recommending my acceptance. When I began my college teaching career, he drove long distances to meet with my classes to instruct and inspire them as he had me, and he continued to critique my stories and give advice and guidance. I traveled to London with Manly and Frances when he received an Edgar Allen Poe Award, and I had a front-row seat at the premiere of a movie based on his story collection Who Fears the Devil? On several occasions he and Frances visited with me in Southern Pines.

Manly died in 1986. When he was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, Frances asked me to speak on his behalf. I was proud to do it. I did the same for the late Glen Rounds a few years later. I can’t think of either man without recalling Sir Walter Scott’s lines “. . . When, musing on companion gone/We doubly feel ourselves alone.”

As for Manly Wade Wellman the writer, the author of over 90 books, I’ll leave the literary judgments to my betters. I believe, however, that he made an important contribution to the science fiction and fantasy genre. Writers as disparate as Stephen King and Fred Chappell have acknowledged Manly’s influence. Without a doubt, he was the teacher who appeared at the right moment in my life. There were literary luminaries in Chapel Hill and up Interstate 85 in Greensboro, but I would have been lost in such settings.

Whenever I think of Manly, I recall a cold January afternoon during the final days of that first creative writing class at Elon. It had begun to snow large, wet flakes that were fast piling up against the window glass in room 301. Manly had to drive back to Chapel Hill on a meandering Highway 54, so he dismissed class early and I walked with him to the faculty parking lot on Harrison Avenue. Before getting into his car, he paused a moment and recited a passage: “He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight . . . It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves . . .”

When he’d finished, I asked the source of the passage.

“It’s from James Joyce’s story ‘The Dead.’ You should read it,”
he said.

I watched his taillights disappear in the snowstorm before walking to the library, where I checked out Dubliners. That night I read it cover to cover.  PS