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The Quintessential Southern Gentleman
Author Terry Kay Is Inducted Into The Georgia Writers Hall Of Fame
By Suzanne Kayes
Barreling down Highway 316 on the way to Athens, I was minutes away from meeting the distinguished Southern author of my ninth-grade book report. “To Dance With the White Dog” has always been one of my favorite tearjerkers, and in 1993, the year of my awkward high school presentation, Hallmark Hall of Fame brought Terry Kay’s fourth novel to the small screen. The made-for-television movie starring Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn earned the highest ratings of the year. His love story touched millions, making Kay’s fiction a verifiable diamond in the rough, not just in his home state of Georgia, but across the country as well.
Just being back in the home of my alma mater added to my apprehension. This is where I first experienced the highs and lows of being a young journalist. I had heard through the grapevine that Kay was a sweet man with wire-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed white beard. And I selfishly hoped that he would share some words of wisdom, some encouragement. Lord knows, I wouldn’t mind seeing my name on a bestseller one day.
Having wound my way through The State Botanical Garden, I spotted Kay in the lower level café of the Visitor Center. An avid gardener, he found it to be a rather soothing spot, he said. He was wearing cream corduroy pants, a light blue sweater, and a pair of snazzy New Balance sneakers. Upon introduction, he immediately brushed my hand aside and gave me a friendly hug. We sat down to a lunch filled with candid chatter about his 11 published works, including all the rejoicing and rejection along the way.
Family Ties
Kay started things off like any proud papa would — by bragging about his wife Tommie, his four children and his eight grandchildren. “This is as honest as I can be about my life,” he said. “I only have one ambition, only one, and that is to provide for my family. That’s it. And it didn’t matter to me if I was waiting tables, which I used to do as a young man, or writing books. It’s sentimental I know, but I mean it.” He continued on to say that he’s extremely grateful for his 68 years, especially after having open-heart surgery, and that every day is a grand and good adventure. And just when I thought this interview wasn’t going to get down to the nitty gritty, he shared the secret to his marriage of 46 years and counting. “I think I’ll write a book called ‘The Advantages of a Three-Day-A-Week Marriage,’ ” he said with a hearty chuckle. “A lot of people would buy that.” There’s nothing like a little good-natured sarcastic wit to get the conversation flowing.
Kay swears by typing in solitude, so Tommie has a condo in Atlanta where she baby-sits the grandkids and manages a framing business with a friend. “She’s really good at handling what I do,” Kay said proudly. “And by that, I mean she never says, ‘What are you writing?’ Never says a word about it until I hand it to her. And then she’s brutally honest about it. If she doesn’t like it, she lets me know.” Turns out her tough cookie attitude is exactly what put Kay on his way to writing.
The Turning Point
“My life has been nothing more than a series of strange accidents.” But in everyone’s life, he added, there’s that one monumental turning point. Kay’s just happened to involve his wife and one of those happy random accidents. Having graduated from LaGrange College with a degree in social science and extensive study in theater, he planned to go to Duke University for graduate studies. But the two lovebirds were to be married, and money was a must. Kay’s first job in 1959, which was incredibly difficult to land, was selling insurance. Little did he know that pedaling insurance meant working nights away from his new bride, who left early each morning to teach school. “Basically, we were like ships crossing in the night. She took that for about a month and a half. Then one morning, when I was still asleep, she came back in the bedroom, woke me and glared down at me. She said, ‘When I come home today, you’ll have another job.’ Then she stormed out of the room and slammed the door.”
Baffled and a bit nervous, the young newlywed picked up a newspaper and scanned the want ads. At the bottom of a page were the words “Wanted: Young Man to Learn Interesting Profession” plus a phone number. “For some stupid reason, I called and it was a blind ad for that newspaper, [the Decatur-DeKalb News]. They were looking for an errand boy, someone to sweep the floors. I had my wife’s voice ringing in my ear, so I took the job at $30 a week.”
Eventually, Kay got up the nerve to ask the head editor for a shot at reporting. The man assumed that this young whippersnapper had studied journalism at The University of Georgia. When Kay told him the truth, the editor reportedly said, “Thank God we don’t have to knock all that nonsense out of you.”
Word for Word
The next bullet point on his resume was the Atlanta Journal, years before the morning and evening editions merged. He flourished as a sportswriter under the helm of Furman Bisher. “Every day, after everyone left, I stayed and copied Bisher’s column. I just retyped his column every day until I began to understand something about his train of thought and his rhythm.” It’s an old exercise that they don’t teach in the school system for fear of plagiarism, he said. All the same, it’s a writing tool that even Ralph McGill, the esteemed former editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, supposedly used.
“The best exercise in the world, as far as I’m concerned, for learning how to write fiction is to take a book by a really good writer and just sit down at your machine every day and copy it word for word until you finish it. And when you finish it, you will be a much better writer than you were when you started. … About three-fourths of the way through ‘Of Mice and Men,’ you get the feeling that this is your book and wonder what Steinbeck is doing writing it.” It’s simply copying to learn, Kay affirmed.
A Famous Friend
Eventually, Kay moved from the sports department to the entertainment desk, becoming a highly revered film and theater critic hobnobbing with the stars. In 1973, he left the Journal for the more lucrative corporate world of advertising and public relations, intent on keeping his true passion alive with some freelance magazine work.
He was doing a piece on the filming of Pat Conroy’s popular novel “The Water is Wide” when the two struck up a deep-seated friendship. And as the story goes, Conroy tricked Kay into writing his first novel “The Year The Lights Came On.” There’s no question about it, Kay said.
“He started pushing me to write fiction, but I had no ambition, no desire whatsoever.” Growing up as the 11th of 12 kids on a farm outside of Royston, Kay was raised not to dismiss such confidence.
“If somebody expressed faith in you, you had an obligation to try, at least try,” he said.
Apparently, Conroy told his editor about a fellow writer with 150 pages of pure genius. Never mind that it was an outright lie. “I didn’t have a single word,” Kay said. “I knew I had to do something about it though. I just couldn’t walk away from it. My thought was I’ll write 150 pages and they won’t accept it. It’ll be over with and I can live happily ever after. So, in a month, I wrote 150 pages exactly on a manual typewriter. I didn’t even bother to correct the spelling or the punctuation.” Kay was doing his best to sabotage himself.
“I sent it off with an honest cover letter saying that I didn’t think there was anything to any of that stuff. Except for one little vignette about getting electricity on the farm. Maybe that could make a book.”
To his complete surprise, the publishing company offered him a contract and an advance to write his first novel. Kay later learned just how lucky he really was. The editors had received 30,000 manuscripts that same year and published roughly 15 of them. “I have found that story amuses non-writers and irritates writers because they want it to be that easy for them.” Personally, it makes me want to stalk Conroy for a recommendation.
Reeling from Rejection
The powers that be would publish pretty much anything of Conroy’s, Kay said. He was their “golden boy” simply because his books would fly off the shelves. Not so for Kay. In fact, he received a rejection letter just two days before our interview. His agent called it “trash.” Mercifully, he’s learned to deal with such harsh criticism over the years.
“The first rejection I had, I thought it was going to kill me.” Even with one novel to his name, no amount of rewriting could convince the publishing house to take a second spin. Kay immediately spiraled into a four-day depression. It would have lasted longer but Tommie knew just what her husband needed. “She said, ‘I want you to do me a favor. I want you to get up. I want you to pack your bag and get out of here. You’re driving me crazy.’ ” Kay remembered it being a very tense moment full of drama and self-pity. “I got ready to leave and she said, ‘Take your typewriter. Don’t you know the only thing that’s going to get you out of this is more writing?’ ”
In response, Kay moaned about being a one-book wonder with nothing more to write. Tommie told him to go write “Eli.” How did she know about that old screenplay, he pondered? Kay wrote it after a debate with his friend James Dickey who penned “Deliverance.” As someone who grew up in the rural foothills of North Georgia, Kay thought it was imperative to portray mountain people as the “survivors” they are, not “mutants.”
After being temporarily kicked out of his house, Kay wound up in a cheap motel near the airport. “This was one of those places where if you didn’t have a switchblade, they’d rent you one,” he said with a smirk. Still fuming mad, he sat down and typed his first sentence: “For two days, the Irishman had watched the house and waited.” The sentence had come out of nowhere. “It had nothing to do with what I had written in the screenplay at all, but once I wrote that sentence, that book was dead on. I wrote the first chapter that afternoon. And I was so angry with my wife because I knew it was good.”
In the end, Tommie let him come back home and “After Eli” generated critical acclaim. “A lot of people think it’s my best work,” he said.
Enchanting Emotion
His most popular book, however, is without a doubt the endearing tale of an elderly man heartbroken over the death of his beloved wife. “Nothing touches ‘To Dance With the White Dog’ in terms of its emotional impact on people,” said Lee Walburn, the former editor-in-chief of Atlanta Magazine. Kay and Walburn met at West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia) before they both transferred to LaGrange College. “We’ve been best friends, more like brothers, ever since,” he said fondly. So much so that Walburn named his son David Terry.
The account of Kay’s father and a mysterious white dog moved Walburn. “I told him I’d whip his butt if he didn’t write it,” he said jokingly. So Kay immortalized this mystical family legend, first into a magazine article and then into an international best seller in 1990. The Georgia Center for the Book dubbed it one of their 25 must-reads. Seemed everyone was mesmerized with this lonesome man who swore up and down that the soul of his sweetheart came back to him in the form of a fuzzy, white phantom.
Teddy Bear Teacher
Then again, the author himself is a fascinating character. “He’s one of the most caring, giving people I know,” Walburn declared. “He would like for you to think he’s this gruff old man, but he’s soft as a marshmallow when it comes to helping others.”
Kay has such an infectious zeal for his craft, that he’d actually rather teach than write, he confessed. His next work should be titled “Smoke and Mirrors,” a phrase he repeated often, alluding to the magic of fiction. Having taught numerous writing classes, he has volumes of guidance to share on techniques such as character development, description, rhythm and theme.
Funny thing is, he’s only been invited to two classes at The University of Georgia — and he’s lived in Athens for 9 years now. Walburn equated it to “sitting on a hog and praying for a ham sandwich.”
Distinguished Honor
The University of Georgia Libraries certainly recognizes Kay’s wealth of work and his scope of influence. Later this month, April 21 to be exact, Kay will be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame at the Student Learning Center. He will be honored alongside former President Jimmy Carter (a distant cousin of Kay’s) and Frank Yerby, the first black author to write a best-selling novel in 1946. They’ll join the ranks of legends like Margaret Mitchell, Flannery O’Connor and Alice Walker. Furthermore, Kay and Conroy will stand side by side, as Conroy was inducted just last year.
The mission of the Hall of Fame is to recognize writers both past and present whose work best reflects the state’s spirit. And Kay’s been on the list of nominees since its inception in 2000, said program director Skip Hulett. “Athens is lucky to have him.” Plus, Kay’s always brought attention to the wealth of literary talent in Georgia, he added. It’s a cause he champions kindly. And as a writer myself, I appreciate that heartfelt support.
Terry Kay’s Collection Published From 1976 to 2003
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