FDR Cottage in Warm Springs, GA Burns

On Tuesday, we lost a vital piece of history.  McCarthy Cottage at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilition burned - possibly as the result of an electrical storm. (Please note that nearby the Little White House is still standing!)

In 1924, Franklin D. Roosevelt went to Warm Springs GA (they called it Bullochville) in those days, seeking a cure for the paralysis caused by polio.  What he found was a dilapidated resort, a simple way of life, and plenty of southern hospitality.

When this newspaper article in The Atlanta Journal hit the wires, polios from around the country began coming to Warm Springs.  Roosevelt's dream of a rehabiliation center became a reality much sooner than he imagined. 

The dilapidated resort consisted of pools fed by warm mineral water, various cottages, and a large victorian hotel known as Meriwether Inn.  Roosevelt viewed the inn as a firetrap.  In 1927 McCarthy cottage was built and he stayed there instead. McCarthy Cottage became his Georgia home until he built the Little White House in 1932.

Roosevelt loved the resort so much that he bought it and changed it's entire mission.  It would no longer be a resort but rather a place for children and adults affected by polio to find comraderie, to rehabilitate, and to get their lives back.

That's what Ann Fay Honeycutt did in COMFORT, the sequel to BLUE. 

As a fictional character, Ann Fay represents the many real individuals whose lives were changed at Warm Springs. They arrived in various stages of despair and hope and found others who shared their pain.  They discovered friends, lovers, and role models. They followed Roosevelt's example and went on to live productive lives. 

One small and yet very important piece of history burned to the ground this week but no fire can destroy the happy results of Roosevelt's dreaming and his gift to children and adults who had had polio.

You can view an image of McCarthy Cottage at Southeastern Literary Tourism Initiative and read about the fire here.

PEACHY KEEN: THE STATE OF GEORGIA, JIMMY CARTER, AND WORLD PEACE

The copyedits are almost finished on my Blue sequel. While accepting (and occasionally rejecting) my copyeditor's changes, I ran across this paragraph.

In a way I hoped Daddy would go stay with Mamaw and Papaw Honeycutt. Because I knew what it was like down there. I figured if there was any place in the world that could make a sad person feel better, it was the state of Georgia.

In the sequel, Ann Fay travels to Georgia. In fact she even stays for awhile. After all, her grandparents live there. And there's a place called the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, and another known as The Little White House, and a spot in the road called Magic Hill. But mostly there is a softness in the air, a little romance, and a welcome from the people that makes Georgia so peachy keen.

I love that Jimmy Carter is from Georgia. And I love that, after his presidency, he went back to Plains and did powerful things such as write books and get involved with a great organization that changes peoples lives. I especially love that he works for peace around the world.

Assuming that Ann Fay lived to a ripe old age she was a Jimmy Carter fan because she knows first hand the after-effects of war. Here's a glimpse into how war changed things at her house.

“My daddy can’t run the tiller,” I said.

“Is it broke?”

“The sound of it scares him. He did two and a half rows and just quit. You should’ve seen how he was shaking.”

Junior hung his hat on a hook inside the living room door. And his car key beside the hat. Bessie went in the kitchen to get him some cake and milk.

He balanced the dish with the cake on his knee. He ate it without talking to me. He knew good and well I wanted him to come and till that garden for my daddy. But I could see he was going to make me beg. So I did.

“I’m asking you to till the garden for him, Junior. He wants to do right by his family. But loud noises bother him. And you know how loud that tiller is.”

“Your daddy run me off his property and I don’t suppose he’s going to let me come back two days later, now is he?”

“He won’t be home for another hour and a half. You’ve got time before he gets there.”

I knew Junior wanted to turn me down, but of course he couldn’t. And his momma was right there to make sure he didn’t. “Don’t argue. Just go,” she said. “Leroy needs you and you’ll kick yourself later if you don’t help out.”

Junior looked like he wanted to kick something right that minute. He ate one last big bite of cake and drank the rest of the milk. Then he stood and his mother took his dishes from him and carried them into the kitchen.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Lots of people ask me about Junior Bledsoe's involvement in the sequel. Yes he's in the book. And like everything else in Ann Fay's life, their relationship gets complicated. But that's all I'm saying on that subject!

Mostly I am saying that Comfort struggles with the subject of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (back then it was known as War Neurosis) At the time of the Civil War it was called Soldier's Heart. I could totally grab that phrase and use it for my book but uh, well the amazing Gary Paulsen has already done it!

In the wake of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I did not have to go further than my radio to hear stories of post war trauma. In some ways, research has never been easier.

Unless you count the emotional toll. There is nothing light and easy about postwar trauma. Maybe that's why the sequel to Blue is called Comfort.

WRITING WHAT I KNOW

My daddy's garden. (scaled back considerably from my growing up years!)

We writers are advised to write what we know. This might mean that the overall theme of a book or story will be based on a writer's experience. Or it might simply mean that a story is infused with details drawn from a writer's life.

In BLUE, my character plants her father's peas after he goes off to war. The garden is pretty much left in Ann Fay's care. And yes, this grows directly out of my own life experience. My father who is in his 80's, still makes every effort to plant his peas in February of each year.

I know vegetable gardens. For as long as I can remember, I along with my 7 siblings, spent summer evenings in the garden. Planting, watering, weeding and picking! I think love of the soil is bred in me. Digging in the dirt is still my favorite part of gardening.

And, oddly enough, harvesting is sometimes my least favorite. Maybe it's a little rebellion harking back to lazy July mornings when we had to get up early to pick lima beans before it got hot! In those days I hated lima beans. (And I despised those soft-bodied yellow bugs squishing under my fingers when I picked.) We complained loudly that we had to plant lima beans, pick them, shell them and then, adding insult to injury, we had to eat them!

But somewhere along the way I learned to love limas. Vegetables, in general, make me really happy.

Gardening can make a "poor" girl feel downright rich. I mean, if you've got fresh tomatoes and corn-on-the-cob, you've got just about everything. If you have the skills to grow your own food, you not only have food, you have a legacy to hand down to your children and theirs too.

What's for dinner? Produce from my daddy's garden!

See why Ann Fay loves her daddy?