Flannery_ A Life of Flannery O'Connor - Brad Gooch [178]
In each of many visits to Atlanta, I was shown extraordinary hospitality by the Emory University Professor of English Richard Rambuss and his partner, Charles O’Boyle, as well as by Virginia Spencer Carr. At Emory Special Collections, I received expert guidance to the Betty Hester letters, unsealed in 2007 after twenty years, from Director Steve Enniss, as well as from the O’Connor scholar and University Vice President and Secretary Rosemary Magee and University Archivist Virginia Cain, who led me on a tour of Emory University Hospital, where O’Connor was hospitalized in 1951. For background on Piedmont Hospital, where O’Connor was hospitalized in 1960, and again in 1964, I was given detailed information by the historian and archivist Diane Erdeljac. I was aided on many occasions by the Atlanta Historical Society, and for information on Peachtree Heights in the 1930s, I am indebted to Bill Bell. I was honored to be able to speak with two of O’Connor’s Atlanta first cousins, Dr. Peter Cline and Jack Tarleton.
All roads in O’Connor research lead to Milledgeville, where Flannery lived most of her years, and where the bulk of her papers are deposited. Most knowledgeable in all things having to do with O’Connor’s letters, manuscripts, and memorabilia is Nancy Davis-Bray, associate director for Special Collections at Georgia College and State University. My special thanks to the good-natured Marshall Bruce Gentry, professor of English at GSCU and editor of the Flannery O’Connor Review, for inviting me as keynote speaker at the 2006 “O’Connor and Other Georgia Writers” conference, and for publishing my talk in the journal in 2007; and to his predecessor, a walking repository of O’Connoriana, Sarah Gordon. For allowing me to remain as a guest in his rambling ranch house during stays that could go on for months, I am indebted to Dan Bauer, assistant professor of English; and for his friendship, to Michael Riley, associate professor of English. Robert J. Wilson III, professor of History, shared valuable historical information about Milledgeville, as did Craig Amason, executive director of the Andalusia Foundation, who facilitated, as well, my 2005 Travel and Leisure article, “House of Stories,” on the opening of the farm to the public. My introduction to Milledgeville was a lovely picnic with Louise Florencourt, executor of Regina O’Connor’s estate and cotrustee of the Mary Flannery O’Connor Charitable Trust, on the front porch of Andalusia. I was also a luncheon guest in Milledgeville of O’Connor’s friend and biographer William Sessions.
For memories of Mary Flannery O’Connor during her childhood years in Milledgeville, I relied on conversations with Charlotte Conn Ferris, Dr. Floride Gardner, Martha Marion Kingery, Elizabeth Shreve Ryan, Frances Powell Binion Sibley, and John Thornton. I twice visited O’Connor’s cousin Frances Florencourt at her home in Arlington, Massachusetts, where she shared clippings, photographs, and letters from the family archive; and I was pleased to be a guest speaker in March 2007 at her course on O’Connor at the Regis College Learning in Retirement program. I spoke, too, with her late brother-in-law, Dr. Robert Mann, husband of the late Margaret Florencourt, at his home in Lexington, Massachusetts. Many shared anecdotes about the adult O’Connor in Milledgeville: Dr. Zeb Burrell, Pete Dexter, Mary More Jones, Mary Dean Lee, Dr. Robert E. Lee, Kitty Martin, Alfred Matysiak, Sr., Catherine Morai, Dorrie Neligan, Carol Sirmans, Mary Barbara Tate, Mary Jo Thompson, and Margaret Uhler.
Most remarkable was the overwhelming response to a mailing to O’Connor’s fellow alumnae of the George State College for Women, through the Alumni Affairs Office; I received more than fifty replies. For their generous communications by either letter, telephone, or e-mail, I thank Virginia Wood Alexander, Louise Simmons