Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Correspondence: George Kephart to Michael Frome

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11125.jpg
11 / 12
Item
  • 'A Son Asks For His Day in Court Editor: Strangers in High Places, by Michael Frome, is most favorably reviewed in the September 1966 issue of American Forests. The review of Chapter XII closes with these words: "In a scant fifteen or so pages I suspect that Frome has made a permanent contribution to American literary history. It is a truly living piece of scholarship." Chapter XII is a biography of my father, and Frome has made me partially responsible for its contents by stating, at page 374: "Those who knew Horace Kephart intimately shared their candid recollections for the preparation of this chapter. George Kephart, Chief Forester of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was interviewed in his Washington office on the family life in St. Louis and subsequent long estrangement." In these circumstances, the following excerpts from my letter of July 26, 1966 to Mr. Frome may interest your readers: "I am shocked beyond measure to find my name linked, even indirectly, to your account of a man for whom I have deep affection—an affection based upon a clear understanding of his faults as well as his virtues. ". . . your readers may easily assume that you obtained a substantial amount of information from me, or that I reviewed the data you had gathered from other sources, or that I had seen a preliminary draft of Chapter XII. "None of such assumptions is correct. I met with you only once, briefly. To the best of my recollection, I provided only fragmentary information regarding the Kephart family. . . . "Had I been granted an opportunity to review pertinent portions of your draft I would have corrected your impresr'on that my father was completely withdrawn from personal contact with members of his family. . . . "I would have given you a picture of my mother quite different from the one you present at page 149. Your picture stems from your conversations with an eighty-seven-year-old man, who recalled a statement which, he alleged, was made by my father, 'almost a half century' previously. AMERICAN FORESTS
Object