I wrote this memorial a year ago about a loss that occurred some years before. I offer it as a reminder to us all relating to those persons who have most influenced our lives as artists.
I worked up enough courage to send my manuscript of nine short stories to Winston Weathers, a professor of creative writing retired from Tulsa University. He already had read one of the stories and had offered the suggestion that I might write a collection stories about my character Miss Shinti. He thought they could be illustrated with ink drawings. Now I wanted to hear his response to the whole collection I’d worked on for over two years. I looked forward to more advice from this man who graciously encouraged my writing efforts.
I met Mr. Weathers back in 1997, introduced by Roy Griggs, the Senior Minister of the church where I directed the music and fine arts programs. Griggs wanted me to meet him because of my writing, and besides Weathers and his partner of forty years and I and my wife of nearly thirty years lived in the same building. The introduction was a spur-of-the-moment thing, the two of us stopping by Weather’s condo just minutes after Griggs had phoned him. I met the professor who was also a William Blake scholar and a published poet and had taught generations of writers beginning in the 1960s. The conversation was friendly and revealed an older man, short in stature, with grey hair, horn rim glasses, a full beard, and genteel ways. He greeted me with humor and warmth.
A couple of weeks later Winston invited Myrna and me to come down the two floors to their condo for afternoon tea. We did so and enjoyed his hospitality and conversation, and received as a present his book on Angels that he told us had been reprinted several times and had been translated into several languages. A few months later my wife and I separated; a few weeks after that I received another invitation to tea. This time I met his partner Joseph Nichols, a retired IBM engineer, and glimpsed a fine relationship that had grown rich with age. The men told of their current project of taking a photograph of the sunrise each day for a year. I saw the tripod on their east-facing balcony on the fourteenth floor. They showed me their recently acquired computer and TV service that allowed them to change back and forth from one to the other without even getting out of their easy chairs. I thought about the advantages of partnering with a computer expert. For Winston old-age convenience wasn’t the only advantage. His partner had published the poet’s many chapbooks. I came away from this afternoon tea with one of those chapbooks in hand.
Then there was another invitation for afternoon wine. This time I came home with a volume of short stories and a story about the book. In 1970 Weathers’ collection of short stories, The Lonesome Game, was reviewed in the Literary Supplement of the Sunday New York Times, an honor that is still considered one of the most important things that can happen to a writer. The story about the book was that not one person on the faculty at Tulsa University even mentioned their colleague’s good fortune, not even a comment from the Dean. Winston was sure the lack recognition stemmed from homoerotic references in the book. I read the eleven stories. The homosexuality was so delicately presented that no one in the 1990s would even raise an eyebrow.
Some weeks later I returned to the apartment downstairs. This time Winston congratulated me on my article about a friend who died with AIDS, a short piece that had been published in the church newsletter. A few weeks later I moved to Denver.
Winston and I corresponded. A couple of years later I sent him a manuscript. He responded encouragingly, saying it was publishable as is, suggesting a publishing house, bemoaning that he no longer knew the editors there (a problem of retiring and growing old I assumed), and warning me not to spend the profits before the checks arrived because most deserving manuscripts never get published. Getting published comes from a stroke of luck in timing, he told me, and explained how the process works. He also said he’d be pleased to write a piece for the cover if the book did reach publication. I felt honored and followed his advice sending the manuscript to agent after agent. I spent none of the anticipated income. None ever arrived.
We wrote more, he telling me about illnesses, new projects, and art displays seen at local galleries and museums. I told him of my work, writing, and new experiences. He was the one who told me to turn one of my memoirs into a short story. It had reminded him so much of the kind of stories the New Yorker used to publish. I again followed his advice and turned my focus toward short stories. Eventually I sent him the nine-story manuscript Miss Shinti’s Debut, humorous stories of a miniature poodle who loved to dance.
About a month later the package was returned by his sister with the sad information that her brother had died. The package included a copy of an article written about him. Although I felt sad at his death, I was even more distressed that the obituary didn’t mention his survival by Joseph, his partner for nearly fifty years. I realized how fortunate I felt not to be living in Tulsa. Apparently Winston knew exactly what he had written in his book of stories The Lonesome Game.
In the following months I thought a lot about this man who had so encouraged me and I reread the letters he had sent. In one of his last notes he told of a textbook he had written, An Alternate Style: Options in Composition (1980, Boynton/Cook Publishers), that after nearly thirty years of being published was going out of print. I thought: I want that book, so I inquired at a used bookstore in my neighborhood. Online they found the book and another one. The one I wanted was going for $165; I bought the other one for about $15. (Now the former book new is $568.) Still I searched shelves at second hand stores and the catalogues of libraries. Even though I couldn’t find the book, I Googled his name and found plenty of references to it. I learned that Winston Weathers had introduced what became known as “Grammar Two” and came to appreciate much more about his notable influence on writing and on the teaching of writing. From my searches I gathered ideas for my own literary experiments.
I wonder how I would have responded to him and his advice had I known that he was much more than the nice man downstairs who engaged me in conversation, served me tea and cookies, encouraged me to write, and gave me literary presents. I could have dropped his name in my query letters had I also known he for years had been a literary agent. But would I have redoubled my effort to be a better writer? I worked at that anyway, but surely I would have asked him more questions. I hope he never thought I was uninterested. I continue my life and my writing life always mindful of and deeply influenced by this fine man and neighbor. Far beyond the composition of these few lines about meeting and barely coming to know Winston Weathers, I want all my writing somehow to honor him.
Denver, 2013
