This issue of the Register opens a window on the future, a window that clearly shows how the Center shapes our world for the better. As Allison Finch's story eloquently details, graduates of the Center's Southern Studies M.A. program have distinguished themselves through their careers within classrooms, museums, newspaper offices, television studios, and foundations. In these diverse places our graduates find that knowledge of the American South and her culture are an important asset for their careers. Together these Southern Studies graduates represent a new generation of leadership for both our region and our nation. We salute each of them and want them to know how very proud we are of their impressive achievements.
This year we are pleased to join friends throughout the world in celebrating the centennial of William Faulkner's birth. The Center's photographic exhibits, the University's annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, and ceremonies in Oxford, New Albany, Moscow, and other places will pay tribute to Faulkner's great legacy as a writer who chronicled the American South and through his fiction shared his "postage stamp of native soil" with the world.
It is with both sadness and warm memories that we pay tribute to three dear friends who died in recent months. Virginia Morgan worked closely with Ann Abadie in organizing the Center during its first years. After a career with the Cotton Council in Memphis and New York, Virginia came to the University where she studied and taught in the English Department. Drawing on her considerable business experience, Virginia was an invaluable help in organizing Center activities and writing grant proposals, and her cheerful sense of humor was especially welcome as we labored to establish programs during our formative years.
Howard Duvall was a familiar face at all Faulkner events, and his wit and good judgment were especially welcome. Always well dressed and always ready to engage in wonderful conversation, Howard was a regular member of the coffee klatch of local businessmen that gather each day at a table in Smitty's Restaurant just off the Oxford Square to discuss world affairs and render opinions on their solutions. While the most heated debates were often over who would pay for the coffee, their opinions were and always will be rich in local lore and wisdom. Howard represented the heart of Oxford, and his deep love for the Square and its constantly changing worlds was respected when, as he had once requested, his body was driven around the Courthouse twice before being laid to rest in the Oxford Cemetery.
Charlotte Capers, who died this past December, was a staunch supporter of the Center. Charlotte had served on our State Advisory Committee for many years and believed deeply in the Center's work. Throughout her life she was the guiding spirit of historic preservation in our state. From her first job at the State Archives in 1938 as a temporary secretary, Charlotte rose to become its first female director in 1955 and worked there until her retirement in 1983. A close and dear friend of Eudora Welty, Patti Black, and former governor William Winter, she systematically gathered their papers and those of many other Mississippians for the Archives, and she worked tirelessly for preservation of historic structures throughout the state.
Charlotte's love for history and literature was reflected in her prolific writings that included 99 book reviews for the New York Times and her collected essays in The Capers Papers. Her writings, impressive as they were, were rivaled by her famed sense of humor and wit as a storyteller. Robert Penn Warren told me about a memorable evening he shared with Eudora Welty and Charlotte at Eudora's home in Jackson. After dinner they sat together and traded stories. Warren drew on his best Kentucky tales, Eudora recalled memorable sagas of Jackson, and Charlotte entertained them both with her unforgettably funny stories. Warren declared Charlotte to be the finest storyteller he had ever met.
I will always be indebted to Charlotte for a letter of introduction she gave me when I began my travels throughout Mississippi in 1967 to record and photograph blues musicians, storytellers, and folk artists. It was a tense time, and I was often afraid as I traveled lonely country roads exploring the worlds of Mississippi folklore. Using her most courageous, forceful voice, Charlotte declared in the letter that I was her old friend and that I should be allowed safe passage through all roads and communities in her beloved state. I carried her letter with me during my fieldwork and have since kept it as a special relic of that time and of her friendship. Just as Charlotte's letter blessed and secured my journeys in the '60s, her memory is and will always be an inspiration for our work at the Center.
William Ferris
