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THE STATE
A Weekly Survey of North Carolina
EnUr*4 •• iMoni-eUii m*lt*r. Jan* 1, 1688. *1 tb« PoiloOc* *t R*l*l|h. North
Oirolln*. undor tho Act of Moreh 8. 1879.
Vol. XI. No. 46 April 15, 1944
Boyd
He was one of the nation's great¬
est novelists. A resident of
Southern Pines, he was also
keenly interested in the develop¬
ment and progress of the state.
By STRUTHERS BURT
Editor’s note: Struthers Burt
and Jim Boyd were neighbors
at Southern Pines. Not only
that, but they were the closest
of friends. Mr. Boyd’s death a
few weeks ago brought sincere
grief to many other North Caro¬
linians who knew and loved him.
THE first time I saw Jim Boyd
was when I was a young instruc¬
tor of English at Princeton, just
back from Oxford, and he was an
undergraduate. I had heard that there
was an especially brilliant Junior, a
man who wrote far above the average,
and then one day Jim Boyd came to
see me. He had just been elected
Chairman of The Tiger, Princeton’s
comic weekly, my old job, and he
wanted to discuss it with me. I re¬
member it so well— that first meet¬
ing. It was spring and all about
Princeton was that sweet cool heavy
greenness that is so much of Prince¬
ton's spring; that, and the shadows of
great trees. I was living at the time
in an old house with a broad veran¬
da, and we sat out on the veranda
and talked all afternoon. What was
supposed to be a short visit turned
into a long one. Finally, he told me
shyly that he had written some poetry
and would like to show it to me. He
knew that I wrote poetry. And I told
him I would be glad to read it. And
I was telling the truth, for I knew
it would be good poetry, having talked
to him all afternoon.
After that I saw him a few times,
and then I went away, went west to
ranching, and he graduated and
worked for awhile on a Harrisburg
paper, in the Pennsylvania town near
where he had been born, and after¬
wards on the New York Times. I
didn’t see him again until after the
war, when I was living in a small
old house on Mercer Street in Prince¬
ton with a comparatively new wife,
Jim had never seen, and two babies.
THE COVER PICTURE
The young lady on the cover
is Miss Vivienne Poteat, out¬
standing Junior in the Spencer
High School, who has won the
North Carolina American
Legion oratorical contest, held
in Durham last week.
Miss Poteat represented
North Carolina in the contest
at Columbia, S. C., which was
held on Tuesday night of this
week. (At this writing we don’t
know how the contest came
out.) If Miss Poteat won, she'll
go into the national finals.
In North Carolina, she won
over 3,800 other contestants,
which is an achievement of
which anyone might well feel
proud.
Ho came unexpectedly; he was ab¬
rupt and concentrated and Scotch-
Irish ns he always was when he had
something important to say. And what
he wanted to talk about were some
short stories he had written. Some
stories, and some more poems.
A Natural-bom Writer
The mark was on him. He was a
writer. Xo doubt about that. He had
the stigmata. And his stories were true
and beautiful. And so were his poems.
And I knew that they would be pub¬
lished and that a great writer had
come into my house. He was shy and
humble, the way all good artists are.
and troubled, and elated. Troubled
and elated when 1 told him what I
thought. And then he stayed to sup¬
per and met my wife and two babies,
and from then on he was a part of
our lives, as we became of his.
All the time he had been talking
to me about his stories, he had been
walking up and down, up and down,
his hands in his trousers pockets; and
always he did that when he was
deeply stirred and thinking deeply.
Lithe, slim, very concentrated, feeling
( Continued on page twenty-five)
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