Silent Voices Can Live On
March 6, 2025
By Tom Poland
It’s Up to You
The passing of another year is close at hand, and I find myself thinking of people I lost in 2024. Each month, it seems, I lose someone, and if don’t, I recall those already gone. In my small world the people I lose create a hierarchy of pain: family first, friends second, and writers I’ve known, third. If I’m honest, a more hurtful loss occurs—that of a pet. Those hurt the most because we don’t have pets long enough. For now, though, I turn my attention to writers we’ve lost.
Read writers who have left us. Widen your horizon.
Have you ever decided to find an old friend before it’s too late? James Salter did. In his memoir Burning The Days, Salter wanted to find a Texan, Bob Morgan, a roommate from West Point who failed and dropped out of school. “I lost track of him,” wrote Salter, “the wires went dead.” Morgan, it turned out, became an Army paratrooper in World War II. Wounded in Italy, he deserted the hospital to join his unit in France. Decades later, Salter tried to find his old roommate. The search led to a phone number in Spur, Texas—no longer in use. A lead took him to Lubbock. No luck. He reached out to the Veteran’s Administration. Nothing. He contacted a newspaper editor in Spur, who recalled an obituary for Bob Morgan. Wrong Bob. Then the editor found a Bob Morgan subscriber in New Waverly, Texas.
Salter called the number in New Waverly. A woman answered and handed the phone to her husband. Morgan lived in Plano, Texas, he said. That was “lived”, past tense. Too late. His friend had committed suicide. Of Morgan, Salter wrote, “A distant piece of the shoreline had dropped away.” That is, I gather, a part of his life died with Morgan.
Two writers I knew died in 2024, John Culler and Roger Pickney the 11th. John hired me to my first position as a writer. I worked with him not quite two years before he became the top editor at Outdoor Life. You early risers? You will agree with John. “The most delicious time in all creation is just before sunup on a summer morning.”
Roger Pinckney, the 11th, and I met just once at a book-signing. Afterwards we shared emails and discussed writing. He lived on Daufuskie Island where his bigger-than-life persona and epic stories cast a long net that captured many. With his hunting prowess, drinking, and magnificent tales, he was the closest thing South Carolina had to Ernest Hemingway.
Among many gifts, James Dickey left us a poem, “Looking for the Buckhead Boys.” If you’ve ever wanted to find an old high school friend, Dickey wrote the poem for you.
As the Internet ascended, James Salter sent me a card. “I’ve never looked myself up on the internet. Must be frightening.” Frightening, period. Dishonest people make it more terrifying each day, but you can find wonderful writers on it, a saving grace.
Pat Conroy wrote a blurb for my book, Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It. “In these pages we ride shotgun with Tom past covered bridges, tenant homes, country stores, and sweetgrass basket stands into a South that—like the Goat Man—we may never see again.” I will never see Pat again, but I have his words.
Each year my world shrinks; yours does too. We won’t see any of these writers again but their words live on. You want a good read? Check out Roger Pinckney’s piece on Hemingway in Sporting Classics magazine, Angler, Fighter, Lover LEGEND. Read James Salter’s Burning The Days. Look up John Culler’s Purple Heaven, and watch James Dickey read “Looking for the Buckhead Boys” over the internet. Dead writers open up new horizons. Let silent voices speak again, and consider each a gift, a gift to yourself.
Photos by Tom Poland.
Georgia native Tom Poland writes a weekly column about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and culture and speaks frequently to groups in the South. Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, stating, “His work is exceptional to the state.” Poland’s work appears in books, magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout the South.
Visit Tom’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email him at tompol@earthlink.net
