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Announcement DetailsHome > BackWilma Dykeman dies at age 86 Articles:
Wilma Dykeman, 86, a Writer on the Environment and Race, Dies
Dykeman leaves tall literary, civic legacy
Author an early advocate for social equality, land stewardship
Dykeman the first lady of Appalachian literature
Dykeman lived her life for ‘mighty’ purposes
Appalachian writer Dykeman dies – Former state historian and acclaimed novelist
The tall woman – Remembering Wilma Dykeman Other media:
Wilma Dykeman, 86, a Writer on the Environment and Race, DiesBy Margalit Fox Wilma Dykeman, a noted writer about Appalachia who explored her native region — often joyously, sometimes painfully — in many works of fiction and nonfiction, died on Dec. 22 in Asheville, N.C. She was 86 and had lived in Asheville for many years. The cause was an infection resulting from a broken hip, said Karen Cragnolin, a family spokeswoman. The author of nearly two dozen books, Ms. Dykeman was concerned throughout her work with mankind’s custodianship of the land, and with relations between the races and the sexes. Her best-known works include “The French Broad” (Rinehart, 1955), a nonfiction portrait of a river that runs through western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee; and “The Tall Woman” (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962 a novel about a strong-willed mountain woman in the late 19th century. Ms. Dykeman was also known for “Neither Black Nor White” (Rinehart, 1957), an account of Southern race relations written with her husband, James R. Stokely Jr. Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Ralph McGill called it “painstaking, probing and faithfully done.” “Neither Black Nor White” won a Sidney Hillman Award as the best book of 1957 on world peace, race relations or civil liberties. Wilma Dykeman was born in Asheville on May 20, 1920. In 1940 she earned a bachelor’s degree in speech from Northwestern University; she married Mr. Stokely the same year. He died in 1977. Ms. Dykeman is survived by their sons, Dykeman Stokely of Manhattan and James R. Stokely III of Boston, and two grandchildren. Her other books include a novel, “The Far Family” (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966); a biography, “Too Many People, Too Little Love: Edna Rankin McKinnon, Pioneer for Birth Control” (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974); and, with her husband, “Highland Homeland: The People of the Great Smokies” (National Park Service, 1978). Dykeman leaves tall literary, civic legacy
By Quintin Ellison ASHEVILLE — Asheville native Wilma Dykeman, who in 18 novels and nonfiction books championed and chronicled the people of Appalachia and the land that shaped them, died Friday night. She was 86. Dykeman suffered a hip fracture two months ago. She had been in declining health since and was living in an Asheville hospice. Dykeman is credited with helping bridge the gap between Thomas Wolfe and the current generation of Appalachian writers. She was among the first to unflinchingly portray what she termed “the unique virtues and tragic flaws” of mountain people, mining material from her own deep roots to the region. “She was trying to present a realistic view. Here is who we are and why we are this way,” said Sharyn McCrumb, bestselling author of “The Songcatcher” and “St. Dale” and 2003 winner of the Wilma Dykeman Award for Regional Historical Literature. Dykeman tirelessly promoted writers whose works she admired, influenced generations of students as an educator and fought for causes she felt were just, including racial and gender equality and protecting the environment. “She was a personage, not a person,” said George Brosi, editor of the literary magazine Appalachian Heritage, a publication of Berea College in Kentucky. “When she walked into a room, you could tell — that person is somebody.” A literary life Dykeman grew up in the Beaverdam community and attended Biltmore Junior College in Asheville and Northwestern University in Illinois, where she majored in speech. Shortly after graduating she married James R. Stokely Jr., a Tennessee poet whose father was president of Stokely Canning Co. The two, who met each other through Thomas Wolfe’s sister Mabel, kept homes in Asheville and Newport, Tenn. The couple co-authored several books, including “Neither Black nor White.” This 1957 book on integration went on to win the Sidney Hillman Award as the best book of the year on world peace, race relations or civil liberties. Stokely died in 1977 at age 64. “They were a true partnership in every sense of the word,” said Jeff Daniel Marion, an Appalachian writer from Knoxville, Tenn. “From the standpoint of being partners in writing, partners in marriage and partners in having similar points of view.” The couple had two children, Dykeman Stokely and James R. Stokely III, also writers, and their mother co-authored books with them as well. A love poem It was her first book that would prove prophetic, and for many Appalachian writers, deeply influential. “The French Broad,” published in 1955, taught a generation to look toward their heritage when searching for subject matter. “I think it would be hard to overestimate her importance,” said Robert Morgan, a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., author of the best-seller “Gap Creek.” “And though I grew up in Henderson County on a little farm, I had never been a student of the region until I read the book. After that I started thinking more and more about the history, the Cherokee Indians, the geology and that type of thing.” “The French Broad,” part of the acclaimed “Rivers of America Series,” was a fusion of history, environmental activism and folklore. A critic once described Dykeman’s book as a “love poem” to this region and its people. Family key in life, work Dykeman continued to write more nonfiction books, including biographies about Will Alexander, a champion of race equality, and Edna Rankin McKinnon, an early proponent of birth control. She also wrote columns for the Knoxville News-Sentinel newspaper and articles for numerous national publications. “She was a very observant reporter — she had a background as a journalist,” said poet Fred Chappell, a Haywood County native and former state poet laureate. “And her fiction was attractive to a wide readership.” Dykeman wrote three novels, “The Tall Woman,” “The Far Family” and “Return the Innocent Earth.” The main character in “The Tall Woman” was a mountain woman who works to bring a community together after the Civil War and was loosely based on her mother. “Return the Innocent Earth” tackled the Stokely family legacy when Dykeman examined modern industry through a fictionalized Tennessee canning company. The characters in Dykeman’s novels weren’t romanticized, McCrumb said, but nor were they in the “we was so poor” Erskine Caldwell style, most vividly portrayed in his 1932 classic novel “Tobacco Road” about a family of poor white tenant farmers. In “The French Broad,” Dykeman wrote that mountain people — her people — were “at once so maddening and so charming, wrong about so many things and yet fundamentally right so often.” ‘An original’ Along with building an impressive body of work, Dykeman — who as a young girl had dreamed of a career on the stage — was active as a speaker. She once estimated she gave 50 to 75 lectures a year. Marion, a former English professor and director of the Appalachian Center at Carson-Newman College, said Dykeman has never received the recognition she’s due. “The focus has been either too much on Wilma as a novelist, or on Wilma as a newspaper writer, but not enough on the total Wilma Dykeman and the force that she was in this world,” Marion said. William Friday, retired UNC system president and host of “North arolina People” on UNC-TV, remembers Dykeman showing up for a television interview attired in one of her signature broad-brimmed hats. “I could see the producer was having a fit because you wouldn’t be able to see her face,” Friday said. “But she yielded to the cause of public television, and it was a great interview.” Dykeman used speaking opportunities to deliver to a more diverse audience the same message of land stewardship and equality that she’d focused on as a writer. “She was an original,” said Friday, who had a 25-year friendship with Dykeman. “She was many things all at once — entertaining, intelligent, friendly, inquisitive, expressive, all those words fit her. She loved the mountains and she loved the rivers, and she used all of her creative ability to put that story before us. She made an enormous contribution to the culture of North Carolina, and we all ought to salute her.” Author an early advocate for social equality, land stewardshipASHEVILLE — When a young Wilma Dykeman was trying to get her first book, “The French Broad,” printed, the publishing company involved asked her to cut a chapter on how pollution was harming the French Broad. Dykeman refused, later joking she decided to call that section “Who Killed the French Broad?” because maybe the company’s executives would be fooled into believing it was a murder mystery. Ultimately the hapter was included, and Dykeman proved prophetic when she warned: “Filth is the price we pay for apathy.” “She wrote ‘The French Broad’ before Rachel Carson wrote ‘Silent Spring’,” said Karen Cragnolin, executive director of RiverLink, a group dedicated to the revitalization of the French Broad River and its tributaries. “I think Rachel Carson has been credited for waking the United States and the world to the environmental crisis that was coming, but Wilma got it before that. She got it in 1955.” Carson’s book on the danger of synthetic chemical pesticides was published seven years after “The French Broad.” Doing what was right, which in Dykeman’s mind included land stewardship and social equity for all people regardless of race, gender or social class, was at the heart of Dykeman’s writings and lectures. Her environmental activism extended to newspaper columns in the Citizen-Times and Knoxville News-Sentinel urging readers in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee to protect the river they share. Today, a 17-mile riverfront parkway in Asheville called the Wilma Dykeman Riverway honors her efforts. Dykeman the first lady of Appalachian literatureAshevill — Writer Robert Morgan remembers first hearing the term Appalachian literature in the 1970s. “In that period before this revival, it was really Wilma Dykeman who was keeping things alive,” Morgan said. “I think she really is one of the people responsible for the vigor of contemporary Appalachian writing.” Dykeman and contemporary John Ehle — also an Asheville native who wrote fiction and nonfiction and was politically active — are credited with bridging the gap between novelist Thomas Wolfe and the next generation of Appalachian writers. “Her books were extremely important because they gave us a sense that you could write about the region and make literature of it,” Morgan said. It wasn’t just her novels and nonfiction books that were important. “If you were going to name the three most influential people in the whole idea that there even exists a field of Appalachian studies, Wilma is going to be one of them,” said George Brosi, editor of the magazine Appalachian Heritage. The other two, he said, would be Cratis D. Williams, a professor at Appalachian State University, and Jim Wayne Miller, a Buncombe County native who taught at Western Kentucky University. All three – Dykeman, Williams and Miller - are now deceased. “Wilma was one of that small handful who created the field of study and then went on to help define it and give it direction and value,” Brosi said. Dykeman did this through speeches, book reviews, magazine and newspaper articles and as an educator. She taught classes at Berea College in Kentucky and at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Dykeman also served on Berea’s Board of Trustees and the University of North Carolina’s advisory board. “Long before most people knew it existed, Wilma played a really significant role in making the world aware there is a literature — separate from the grand division of Southern literature — that is of the upland South,” said poet Jeff Daniel Marion of Knoxville, Tenn. Ehle described Dykeman as “generous” to other authors, with a discerning eye for talent and potential. “To me, she is the first lady of Appalachian literature,” Ehle said. Dykeman lived her life for ‘mighty’ purposes“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” – George Bernard Shaw Wilma Dykeman wrote that George Bernard Shaw spoke for her in the words quoted above. There can be no doubt she knew the “true joy in life” all her 86 years. A brilliant light, warm and steady, though sometimes twinkling with a wicked wit, went out in Asheville Friday with her death. She left us 18 books that radiate her passion for the people and mountains of her birth, for knowledge, for justice, for beauty, for language itself. But all who knew her will miss her clever wisecracks, her lively laughter, her probing curiosity, her ardent advocacy for a healthy earth. Ahead of her time Dykeman blazed trails in environmentalism, civil rights and feminism. And she was a seminal force in Appalachian literature earning homage from literary heirs such as best-selling authors Robert Morgan and Sharyn McCrumb. She wrote under her own name at a time when it never occurred to most folks that a married woman could keep her maiden surname. Her book “The French Broad” made its appearance in 1955, seven years before Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” Her negotiation with the publisher tells much about her character. After her husband, James Stokely, suggested she write about the river, she wrote the publisher of The Rivers of America series. Rinehart Company (later Holt, Rinehart) wrote back that they weren’t going to invest in any of the smaller rivers, but that if a book were interesting enough, they would publish one about a river “no wider than a man’s hand.” Dykeman took this as a challenge and sent them a chapter and an outline. The response was favorable, but they wanted her to remove a proposed chapter on pollution. “I hesitated, then replied that I had to have this chapter but I would try to make it interesting,” she told guests at an award ceremony in 2001. “I would call it ‘Who killed the French Broad?’ Perhaps people would think it was a murder mystery. (Of course, it was murder but not a mystery.) At publication, that chapter received more response, from Raleigh to California, than any other part of the book.” In 1955, she understood what many of us still struggle to comprehend: “…When we turned away from the spring at the edge of the kitchen yard and turned on the faucet in our porcelain sink, we turned off our interest in what came out of the spigot. One by one we allowed ourselves and others to begin the rape which finally (in places) ended in the murder of the French Broad….” The impact of her words is hard to calculate, but growing public awareness and concern for controlling water pollution led in 1972 to enactment of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (later the Clean Water Act) to regulate discharges of pollutants into U.S. waters. “I think she awoke not just the region, but the nation to the intrinsic value of our natural resources like our water and our mountains,” said Karen Cragnolin, executive director of RiverLink. With her husband, Dykeman wrote “Neither Black nor White” in 1957, a book on integration that won the Sidney Hillman Award as the best book of the year on world peace, race relations or civil liberties. Another of her books was a biography of birth control pioneer Edna Rankin McKinnon. She also wrote columns for the Knoxville News-Sentinel and articles for numerous national publications, including the New York Times. The Times chose a commentary she and her husband co-authored as one of the 100 best it had published during its first 100 years. A pioneering voice in Appalachian fiction Three novels, “The Tall Woman,” “The Far Family,” and “Return the Innocent Earth,” were her own favorites among her books. In a tribute to Dykeman when she received the North Caroliniana Award in 2001, Henderson County native Robert Morgan said that when he read Dykeman’s fiction, “I saw that the inevitable focus of fiction about the region was the land and the seasons, and the strong women who struggled on the land to raise children and feed large families, to keep their families together over the generations as decent and responsible people. There could be no better model for a young writer than Wilma Dykeman’s ‘The Tall Woman.’” Dykeman, who majored in speech at Northwestern University, was also an active and entertaining speaker, once estimating that she gave 50 to 75 lectures a year. Along the way, she reared two sons, with each of whom she also co-authored books. A remarkable love story She was, as admirers have said of her, a “force” and an “original.” She was also half of a remarkable love story. After her husband died in 1977, she wrote, “I pity those who will never know such a long and good togetherness. It was not easily achieved. Courage, effort, generosity, humor, determination went into those years. The result was love.” Dykeman once wrote an essay in the form of a letter to an “Old Friend” - the elm tree that stood at the corner of her house. It concludes, “…If that limb should break and fall, as you will someday, you have shared to the fullest in life, sheltering, nurturing, inspiring creatures great and small. A blessing you have been. Blessings to you.” It is a most fitting benediction for the author herself. Appalachian writer Dykeman dies – Former state historian and acclaimed novelist
By: David Popiel (Editor's note: Information for this story was compiled from Plain Talk files, the Associated Press reports, and various media sources, including "Citizens of the Century.") Highly-acclaimed Appalachian writer and speaker Wilma Dykeman Stokely died last Friday in Asheville, North Carolina. She was 86 and had been in declining health for many months. During October she was expected to be in Newport for the state unveiling of the Stokely Brothers farm state historical marker but had fallen and was unable to attend. She fractured a hip and suffered a staph infection after hip replacement surgery in recent weeks and then went into hospice care about two weeks ago, according to long-time friend Karen Cragnolin, who is executive director of RiverLink. Her writing career spanned more than 50 years during which time she presented truthful portraits of mountain people in 18 novels and nonfiction books and numerous articles. Born in a valley near Asheville in the early 1920s, she was the daughter of Willard J. and Bonnie (Cole) Dykeman and named after her father but also carrying her mother's name, too. She was introduced to her future husband, James R. Stokely, in 1940 by Mabel Wolfe, sister to author Thomas Wolfe and they were married in October of that year. Dykeman had just graduated from college and planned to live in New York before meeting Stokely in Asheville. She was a prolific writer during the 1940s and 1950s mostly doing short stories and magazine/newspaper articles, while she and James lived on an apple orchard-land he bought from his uncle, Governor Ben W. Hooper. They also had an orchard in Asheville at the same time. Her husband, constant companion, and writing collaborator, preceded her in death in 1977-when he suffered a heart attack at their Clifton Heights home. But, by that time, the couple had co-authored three books: their first,"Neither Black Nor White," became a prize winner and was published in 1957; Their "Seeds of Southern Change" was published in 1962 and reprinted in 1976; "The Border States," a Time-Life book was published in 1968. The young Wilma Dykeman was drawn to the Newport poet who was the son of one of the founding brothers of Stokely Brothers canning company-later the national company, Stokely Van Camp. He was an authority on Thomas Wolfe, who was a personal friend after meeting him at Princeton. She met Wolfe in 1937, a year before he died. At the time, Dykeman was a reporter for Biltmore Junior College, now the University of North Carolina at Asheville. James Stokely also was a personal friend of the great American poets, Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg. Weeks before his death they were doing what both enjoyed, lecturing on Appalachian literature at Berea College. Wilma and James Stokely traveled throughout the world and visited most state in the US lecturing and participating in workshops. The people they met reads like a Who's Who of the world and included the Dali Lama, Bishop Tutu, and Alex Haley. Word of her death before Christmas Eve brought many tributes to her, including comment by best-selling author Sharyn McCrumb: "She was trying to present a realistic view-'Here is who we are and why we are this way.'" Dykeman had often said that she spent her early years studying the stories, mannerisms, dialect of mountain people so that she could tell their stories and present Appalachia culture in an authentic voice. She spent many years with her husband and partner in their home overlooking the Pigeon River in Newport where they raised two sons: Jim "Rory" Stokely III, and Dykeman Stokely. She was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University, Chicago, majoring in speech, with minors in English and history, and held honorary doctoral degrees from several colleges and was a professor in the English Dept. of the University of Tenn. at Knoxville. She served as Visiting Goode Professor of Appalachian Studies at Berea College in 1992. Her first novel, "The Tall Woman," 1962, was so popular that it remained in print for more than 30 years. Her first book, and one considered to be one of her most important works, "The French Broad," was published in 1955 by Rinehart as part of the Rivers of America series. "Neither Black Nor White"-a study of the contemporary South, won the Hillman Award in 1957 as the best US book on world peace, race relations, and civil liberties. In 1973, she published "Return the Innocent Earth"-her third novel and acclaimed at the time as her best. The book portrayed the Clayburns, a poor but enterprising family that goes into the canning business at the turn of the century-1900 and operates in a small mountain town called Churchill. In 1975, she presented, "Too Many People, Too Little Love"-a biography of Edna Rankin McKinnon, a pioneer in family planning from 1930s to 1960s. By the early 1970s, she also had written "The Far Family," "Prophet of Plenty: The First 90 Years of W.D. Weatherford," and "Look to This Day." It was not uncommon for her to give 70 to more than 100 lectures a year, while continuing to write articles, such as her popular Knoxville News-Sentinel and Newport Plain Talk weekly columns. Her articles also appeared in the New York Times magazine, US News & World Report, Harper's, and Reader's Digest. Other works and contributions included "A Bicentennial History" for the nation's 200th birthday in 1976 and "Explorations," (1984, published by Wakestone Books, founded by her son, "Dyke" Stokely, "Tennessee," and "Appalachian Mountains." This photographic presentation by Clyde H. Smith was accompanied by text written by Stokely and her son, Dykeman Stokely in 1980. She always found time for community service and gained recognition for this, such as in 1998, when then Mayor Roland Dykes proclaimed Sept. 10 as "Wilma Dykeman Day." In 1971, she was named to the State Democratic committee of which Tipper Gore was coordinator, to help register young women between 18 and 24 to vote. In 1974, she was selected to write the state history, "Tennessee: A Bicentennial History," and the announcement of her selection was made by Senators Howard Baker and Bill Brock III. Two years later, she was interviewed by a writer for Humanities magazine who stated that "Wilma Dykeman knows Tennessee better than most people know their own families." She admitted that she first considered refusing the offer to write the Tennessee portrait for the national series but "was afraid someone else would not write it with the knowledge and love for it that I have." Then Governor Lamar Alexander, current US senator, appointed Stokely as Tennessee Historian in 1981 for a four-year term. He said,"Wilma Dykeman is my favorite contemporary Tennessee historian because she so obviously cares so much about the people whose lives she has recorded." In 1992, she received the Distinguished Tennessee Writer Award in Oak Ridge for her outstanding literary contributions. In 1994, she and Dr. Fred M. Valentine Jr. received the Pride of Tennessee Award from Governor Ned Ray McWhorter-because of their commitment to community, education, and advancement of the humanities. McWhorter said, "She has managed to capture and truthfully portray the people, places, and events that make East Tenn. and Appalachia a unique place in world culture." She earned a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Trophy. She was also honored as a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Chicago Friends of American Writers, and Tennessee Conservation Writer of the year. Her recognitions also include the Hillman Award, and the North Carolina Gold Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters, and the overnor's Award in Humanities, 1992. She was a president of Clifton Club, first woman ever to be elected to the Berea College Board of Trustees, member of the State Advisory Board for the Endowment for the Tennessee Performing Arts, member of the Smoky Mountain Park Natural History Association, and member of First Baptist Church of Newport. She was chosen for inclusion in the 1996 book, "A Bicentennial Tribute to Tennessee Women: 1796-1996." Funeral arrangements are incomplete and will be announced Wednesday afternoon by Morris Funeral Home, in Asheville. The tall woman – Remembering Wilma Dykeman
by Kirkland Symmes Editor's note: Acclaimed Asheville writer, conservationist and social critic Wilma Dykeman Stokely died Dec. 22 at age 86. I first got to know Wilma Dykeman after I moved here from Houston, Texas, in 1988 and began attending public events at The North Carolina Arboretum, Warren Wilson College and assorted Buncombe County public libraries with my wife, Gay. We're both avid readers, but we soon found we also had several other things in common with Wilma. Like her, Gay came from a rural background and attended Northwestern University, earning a degree in speech. Northwestern had the best speech school in the country, and Gay and Wilma used to joke that the school was ahead of its time in taking young ladies with potential. Both of Wilma's sons went to Yale, as I did. And beyond that, we all shared a strong drive to strive for what we considered to be the very best. Wilma always spoke of her husband, James Stokely (who died in 1977), with the greatest affection. Gay and I have been married for 55 years now, and we understood the kind of loyalty and commitment those two had shared. Wilma's trademark was her vividly colored, broad-brimmed hats (which, as one biographer noted, contrasted with the whiteness of her hair in her later years). Bill Friday, the long-running host of UNC-TV's North Carolina People, recalled that his producer was afraid the hat might hide Wilma from view, but her attire prevailed and her charm came through just fine. The only child of a 56-year-old New Yorker and a 23-year-old Ashevillean mother, Wilma grew up during the Great Depression. After graduating from Northwestern in 1940, she moved to New York, where she thought about going on the stage but opted for her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. "I write because, if I didn't write, I can't live with myself – and no one can live with me," she told one interviewer. In New York, Wilma met James Stokely; two months later, they were married. Over the next few decades, they raised two boys and wrote several books together. Wilma's most memorable book is The French Broad. She'd grown up in "the beautiful and secluded valley of Beaverdam Creek, which flows into the French Broad River," and her 1955 work, an early call for water conservation, provides a richly layered, compelling portrait of the river and the region. A writer, lecturer and conservationist, Wilma addressed many social issues in both her fiction and nonfiction work. The award-winning Neither Black Nor White (1957 – co-written with her husband) and Seeds of Southern Change (1962) discuss racial matters. The Tall Woman (1962) depicts a strong, progressive Appalachian woman in the years just after the Civil War. Too Many People, Too Little Love (1974) is a biography of birth-control pioneer Edna Rankin McKinnon. Wilma kept a journal almost all her life, ready to research and report on any subject of interest to herself and her Appalachian following. In the 1999, Wilma was pleased to become one of the first female members of the Pen and Plate Club, to which I also belong. An Asheville institution, the club had only recently opened membership to women. The meetings combine good food, good conversation and the reading of a paper on a literary theme, and I admired her willingness to dig in and write a paper when she was almost 80. It was, of course, on her favorite subject: Appalachian literature. Instead of considering her own considerable contribution, however, she very generously reported on other writers who helped put this area on the literary map. Her life covered quite a span from Thomas Wolfe up to today, and she saw literature from the historical perspective. I am a student of history, and I appreciated the historical perspective she brought to literature. But Wilma saved her highest praise for Thomas Wolfe, whom she called "the ultimate Appalachian, perhaps universal writer: offering pinnacles of inspiration and hidden coves of darkness, demanding our effort and attention to all life's minutes and days, the joys and defeats and challenges we know alone – and together." Bound with the other Pen and Plate essays, this piece is on the shelves of Pack Library's North Carolina Collection. Wilma had a great sense of humor and would laugh heartily recalling that she'd had the opportunity to name a professional football team. After Bud Adams moved the Houston Oilers to Nashville, he formed a committee of football men (including NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue) and one woman – Wilma Dykeman Stokely, the official state historian of Tennessee – to come up with a new name for the team. They held several meetings, and it was Wilma who, observing the full-scale copy of the Parthenon in Nashville's Centennial Park, proposed a name out of Greek mythology: the Titans. Wilma got great satisfaction from her two sons, Dykeman and James, and her other family. She was particularly delighted that her grandson, Will, is attending Northwestern, her alma mater. As her health declined, it was our privilege to pick up Wilma and drive her to our house for lunch. She loved inhaling the fresh air on the terrace, enjoying quiche and flan beneath the tall, golden-leaved oaks. In such a congenial environment, among her many Asheville friends and admirers, it was easy to recollect the good times – memories of things done together or of events that took place long before we knew each other. This delightful and gracious lady was laid to rest beside her mother in the picturesque cemetery in her beloved Beaverdam Valley. [Kirk Symmes, an Asheville resident since 1987, is an instructor at the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement.]
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Karen Cragnolin talks about the environmental importance of Wilma Dykeman's writings
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