MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE
2005 3rd Extraordinary Session
To: Rules
By: Senator(s) Clarke, Butler, Carmichael, Davis, Dearing, Frazier, Harvey, Hewes, Jackson (11th), Jordan, Pickering, Thames, Thomas, Walls, White, Williamson
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION COMMENDING THE LIFE OF RENOWN MISSISSIPPI NOVELIST AND CIVIL WAR HISTORIAN SHELBY FOOTE, A NATIVE OF GREENVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, AND LONGTIME RESIDENT OF MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, AND EXPRESSING THE SYMPATHY OF THE LEGISLATURE ON HIS PASSING.
WHEREAS, Novelist and Civil War Historian Shelby Foote, who became a national celebrity explaining the war to America on a 1990 PBS documentary, died at 88 years of age on Monday, June 27, 2005; and
WHEREAS, Shelby Foote was born in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1916, where he spent most of his childhood and his early adult life. After attending the University of North Carolina from 1935 to 1937, Foote was drafted into the Army in 1940. He rose to the rank of Captain before being dismissed by court martial in Ireland in 1944 after traveling two miles beyond the official limit to see his girlfriend (who later would become his first wife); he joined the Marines the next year; and
WHEREAS, born during the Jazz age when money was abundant, and growing up during the Great Depression when money was scarce, Shelby Foote experienced many changes that greatly influenced his ideas and writings. There was definitely much to write about, having lived in the heart of the South where cotton plantations thrived, where the depression hit hard, and where the prospect and excitement of war was always in the air. Shelby Foote's ancestors also created exciting elements for his fiction and influenced his work. The details of Foote's family background are directly related to Foote's work; and
WHEREAS, Foote published his first novel, Tournament, in 1949. This was followed by three other works -- Follow Me Down (1950), Love in a Dry Season (1951), and Shiloh (1952). Foote's ability to create a realistic portrayal of the Civil War -- factually accurate, richly detailed, and entering into the minds of men on both sides -- led by his editors in Random House to invite him to write a short history of the war to appear for the conflict's centennial. Twenty years later, Foote had produced his massive three-volume history of the war -- Fort Sumter to Perryville (1958), Fredericksburg to Meridian (1963), and Red River to Appomattox (1974). To a generation of Americans who learned most of what they knew of the Civil War from his starring role as the co-narrator of the PBS documentary The Civil War, he was an enigma of sad and haunted dark eyes and a lilting Southern drawl; and
WHEREAS, Foote has been a Guggenheim Fellow three times, and has served as a lecturer at the University of Virginia and Memphis State; and
WHEREAS, in addition to his wife Gwyn, he is survived by his daughter, Margaret Shelby, and a son, Huger Lee; and
WHEREAS, like William Faulkner, Walker Percy, Richard Wright, Willie Morris, Eudora Welty and other magnificent Mississippi writers before him, Foote's talents will stand the test of time. It is with sadness that we note the passing of this prolific Mississippi Journalist, whose gift for storytelling brought permanent recognition to the Mississippi Delta and to the State of Mississippi:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES CONCURRING THEREIN, That we do hereby commend the life of renown Mississippi Novelist and Civil War Historian Shelby Foote, a native of Greenville, Mississippi, and longtime resident of Memphis, Tennessee, and express to his surviving family the sympathy of the Legislature on his passing.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That this resolution be presented to the surviving family of Shelby Foote and be made available to the Capitol Press Corps.