Wirt Williams
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1921-1986
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Wirt Williams signs copies of A Passage of Hawks published by McGraw Hill in 1963. |
Wirt Williams on New Year's Day in 1986. The photo was taken six months before his death at the age of 64. |
Wirt Williams, who was raised in Cleveland, Mississippi, became interested in writing when he was very young. His desire to write was highlighted at the age of eighteen when he read Ernest Hemingway's collection of short stories, In Our Time. He attended Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, where he received a bachelor's degree in English and American literature. During his spare time, he occasionally taught classes for his father, who was the head of the social studies department at Delta State. He received a master's degree from Louisiana State University in journalism in 1941 and joined the navy the next year.
Wirt Williams at the time he was commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy during World War II. He later retired as a Lt. Commander in the Naval Reserve.
Photo courtesy of Williams' sister Catherine Williams Graves
Wirt's sister Catherine adds this information about Wirt's Navy service: "Wirt was on duty as an officer on a destroyer chasing German subs in the North Atlantic. The United States had been slow in responding, and the museum at Cape Hatteras said that more than 400 U.S. vessels were lost before they could effectively respond. Many were lost in the Hatteras area. Wirt's ship, the U.S.S. Decatur, went out on these runs to find and sink the subs and then return, usually to New York or Boston for refueling and supplies. Wirt considered this job good duty because the men had good food and got into those ports for r & r."
"As it was obvious the U.S. was going to have to go after Japan in the Pacific, he (Wirt) was transferred to an amphibious ship, an LSM, and sent to the South Pacific. When the U.S. was planning to attack Japan, a great armada of ships gathered at Okinawa to get ready for the attack. Wirt told his signalman that if he ever saw LCI(G)24 (landing craft infantry, gunboat 24) to signal it. They saw the gunboat in all that mass of boats one day and sent a boat over to bring Ranny (Wirt's brother) to Wirt's ship where they had dinner and a little visit before they would all head to Japan. There was never any invasion because the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb and that brought an immediate surrender by Japan. Ranny's LCI had the G on it because it had been converted from a regular landing craft to a gunboat which ran in and tried to clean out any pockets of the enemy. Ranny was awarded a bronze star, but he never told any of his family. Elizabeth found the information on his discharge record and also on an old uniform ribbon."
After
serving his term in the Navy, Williams worked as a reporter
for the Shreveport Times and as a writer for the
New Orleans Item. For his reporting, Williams
won a Pulitzer Prize nomination, a Heywood Brown Newspaper Guild
Award, and the ABC Award. In 1953 he returned to school and
received a doctorate in English from the University of Iowa.
He then began to teach in the English department at California
State University at Los Angeles. In all, Williams wrote six
novels in his career. Although he may not be as well known as
some other writers, three of his books (The Enemy
(1951), Ada Dallas (1959), and The
Far Side (1972)) were nominated for a Pulitzer
Prize. In 1961, Ada Dallas was turned into a motion
picture called Ada by MGM. Wirt Williams
also wrote one non-fiction work entitled The Tragic Art
of Ernest Hemingway, which was published in 1982. Other
novels by Wirt Williams are The Trojans, A Passage
of Hawks, and Love in a Windy Space.
Wirt Williams died of a stroke on June 29, 1986, at the age of sixty-four.
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1921 - born in Goodman, Mississippi
- -moved to Cleveland, Mississippi, where he grew up
1940 - received BA degree in English at Delta State University
1941 - received MA in journalism
1942 - joined U. S. navy
1946-1949 - worked as reporter, writer, researcher, and city editor for New Orleans Item
1949 - won Heyward Brown Newspaper Guild Award
1949 - won ABC Award
1951 - The Enemy published
1953 - received a Ph.D. in English from University of Iowa
1957 - Love in a Windy Space published
1959 - Ada Dallas published
1961 - MGM production of Ada based
on Ada Dallas
1963 - A Passage of Hawks published
1966 - The Trojans published
1972 - The Far Side published
1982 - critical study called The Tragic Art of Ernest Hemingway released
1986 - dies at the age of 64
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Letter from Wirt Williams' sister Catherine Williams Graves:
"Thanks so much for your interest in our brother Wirt.
I wish you could have known him ...he had a great sense of humor
and was fun to be around, along with being extremely intelligent.
We still miss him.
Wirt, our brother Ranny (Randolph Rayner Williams), and I (Catherine
Colton Williams Graves) all spent our formative years in Cleveland,
MS. We were blessed to have a wonderful high school there, and
then all three of us got our bachelor's degrees in Cleveland
before we moved on to graduate or professional schools. Our
father, Wirt, Sr., came to Cleveland when Delta State was founded
and he was the first chairman of the history department.
Even when he was a teenager, Wirt was a writer--he worked as
a stringer for the Delta Democrat Times,
the Jackson Daily News, Memphis
Commercial Appeal and
several other papers beginning when he was 15 years old. He
went to LSU and earned a Master's degree in journalism (he is
in the school's Hall of Fame) Then came World War II...I won't
go into that since I believe my son Randy Graves has already
sent what I gave him about Wirt's time in the Navy.
When the war was over, Wirt returned to New Orleans to be a
reporter and editor on the New Orleans Item
daily newspaper. He had always loved journalism, but he began
to gravitate toward a different type of writing, and he was
drawn to the renowned creative writing program at the University
of Iowa....Three years later with a Ph.D. in creative writing,
he was recruited by California State University at Los Angeles
and spent the rest of his career teaching at the California
school combining the two fields. He had just retired there in
1986 when he was hit by a stroke and died at the age of 64.
Wirt always had a special spot in his heart for Mississippi.
He never forgot the happy days and life-long friends of his
childhood and youth in the Delta. He returned to Cleveland as
often as he could to touch base with family and friends in the
gracious atmosphere of the Delta."
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Catherine Graves (Williams' sister) also tells this story:
"When I was working in marketing for the Parkview,
we had prospects to lunch frequently. One day I had a dear old
lady from Mississippi who told me she was a student at the school
and lived in that dormitory when my parents were supervising
it. She was there when Wirt was born, and she said the students
were so excited that Miss Nina and Mr. Wirt were having a baby
there that night. The students were all thrilled because the
Williamses had been married several years and had no children.
Interestingly, Blanche Shrock (Wirt's 92 year old cousin) tells
the story that she was mad because my parents Wirt and Nina
had been so good to her. She thought Wirt, Jr., was taking her
place, but she soon got over it because everybody loved Wirt.
Blanche remembers that Wirt and Nina once took her to New Orleans
on the train--a memorable event in her childhood."
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A Review of The Enemy by Alan Boyle (SHS)
In Wirt Williams' first novel, he portrays an excellent image of the mind sets of the 'hunter' and the 'hunted'. The Enemy tells the story in first person of a U.S. sailor who is on a mission to hunt and destroy submarines. With great attention to detail, Williams throws the reader deep into the mind set of a sailor and the problems he has to face every day.
The story starts in early World War II aboard a four-stack
destroyer. These destroyers are quickly being replaced by the
modern equivalent and the Dee, the ship on which the
story is set, is one of four four-stack destroyers remaining. 
The
crew is not notified of their orders until they have set sail.
This is a strange procedure, and no one on board has experienced
it before. After the ship leaves and refuels, the captain tells
the officers on board the orders.
The orders are to seek and destroy German U-boats. The Dee
is assigned to Task Unit Twenty-One Point Thirteen Point Nine.
Its assignment is to protect an aircraft carrier along with
two other destroyers while searching for submarines. To search,
the destroyers are equipped with new radar and sonar technology.
This technology, along with depth charges, torpedoes, and air
cover, is the only defense that they have from the submarines.
As the mission progresses, the orders seem harder to follow
than originally thought. The clusters of submarine sightings
that are investigated return no trace of submarines. The
task unit searches thousands upon thousands of square miles
of water and find nothing. The crew on the Dee, however,
is constantly called to general quarters because of false alarms.
The attention to detail begins to slowly fade as the trip wears
on. Finally, one of the destroyers in the task unit is sent
to investigate four surface contacts, and this destroyer is
destroyed. The Dee is sent to investigate and finds that
the submarines had set a trap by making fake surface contacts.
The hunted had become the hunter. In a quick skirmish between
the Dee and at least three submarines, the Dee
is damaged, but it also damages a submarine. The damage
to the Dee is only minimal, however, and it returns to
port safely.
In The Enemy, Williams forces the reader to look deeper into conflict to see the true enemy. The lines between the hunter and the hunted become interchangeable as the conflict progresses. Williams shows how crossing these lines affects crew members in ways they express openly and in way that they are afraid to express. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good historical fiction novel that keeps very close to the truth.
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Site lists Williams as biographer of Ernest Hemingway.
Internet Movie Database mentions Williams as author of film Ada, released in 1961.
Review of movie Ada from New York Times.
Elmo Howell's book Mississippi Scenes includes photo of Wirt Williams's childhood home near Delta State and an excerpt from Gay Chow's biography of Williams.
Excerpt of review by Williams for E. L. Doctorow's short novel Welcome to Hard Times.
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May, Hal. Contemporary Authors. Vol 119. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1987.
Kibler Jr., James E. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 6: American Novelists Since World War II. second series. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1980.
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Updated February 2, 2009
Letter from Catherine Williams Graves ------------- |