Tuesday, September 05, 2017
Filling in Hart's biography
I bought a copy of Alphia Hart's novel through Alibris because I enjoy the idea of owning something that Hart actually printed.
Scrub Oaks is a (presumably) autobiographical story of a smalltown Okla newspaper editor. I skimmed the story and don't think I'll bother to read it... Hart was an excellent journalist (no quotes) and a careful writer, but didn't have the knack of fiction. It's clunky. He should have written the novel the same way he wrote his columns!
Here's the cover bio:
As far as I can tell this part of Hart's bio isn't written anywhere on the Web, so I'll transcribe:
As far as I can tell this part of Hart's bio isn't written anywhere on the Web, so I'll transcribe:
The author of SCRUB OAKS is a former newspaper man, who has held editorial posts on the Tulsa Tribune, the Wichita Beacon, the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, the Binghamton Press, the Syracuse Herald, and the Daily Oklahoman. Preceding his entry into the large daily field, he began his newspaper career by setting type and feeding presses after school hours and on Saturdays in the (like so many others) extinct Lahoma Sun, and has been editor and publisher of several other weeklies in scattered Okla towns. After two years in the Navy as photographer during WW2 he returned to the States to work for the Army Air Force, and for a decade wrote and supervised the production of training films.Adding more detail: Hart was born in 1902. In 1920 when he started his career, Lahoma had a population of 280, well under the usual threshold (~400) for a weekly. The Sun had a circulation of 300 according to NW Ayer. The other 'scattered weeklies' and major papers would have been during the 20s and early 30s. His photography job at the Daily Oklahoman was from 1935 to 1940, then the military through the '40s. He took up with Hubbard in Phoenix around 1951, got discontented and married and moved back to Enid in '54, where he set up his press and started publishing his own newspaper again. The Aberree lasted from '54 to '65 when Hart had a stroke. I still can't find details after that point; not clear if he died quickly, but he was definitely out of commission.
Labels: Aberree
¶ 2:56 PM
