Kathryn Tucker Windham: Ghost tales with Jeffrey: Selma author and storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham, 93, died Sunday, June 12, 2011. In 2008, the Montgomery Advertiser interviewed Windham in preparation for her 90th birthday. Here, she talks, and sings, about Jeffrey, her favorite ghost.
The world and especially the state of Alabama has lost one of it's best loved story-tellers! I have heard her many times and have her books and tapes on casette. I wonder if I can burn these to CD to preserve them to hear especially around Halloween when she spoke at SLoss Furnace telling her stories of the furnace men who died when building and working there.
She also had her favorite ghost "Jeffery" that lived in her house. He loved her and I Wonder where he is with her spirit on earth gone. I wonder if he will still occupy her home which she lived in for most of her life.
She told of spirits that live on and encounters with them in the Southern Mansions around the Southern USA. She was a fabulous story-teller and writer of many. many books to share her stories in only the way she could. I am very fortunate to have heard her with that slow southern drawl she spoke in, you almost have to hear her speak, it is infecting to listen to her. You would always not want her to quit speaking at her events.
She died in her home peacefully Sunday, June 12, 2011 with I am sure Jeffery at her side.
I know I will miss her as her presence was so generous in Alabama. My daughter heard her stories also, especially at Halloween with her Jack-O-Lantern carving contest at Sloss Furnace. We also saw and heard her at Kentuck, an art event in Tuscaloosa, AL. She wore her black Shirt with an image of "Jeffery" on the front with a long skirt and her famous hat, on top of her grey hair. She was quite a LADY, If I do say so!
Smiles, Cyndi
GRITS Southern Portraits Alabama
(Girls raised in the South)
Kathryn Tucker Windham is probably best known by young readers for her books about Jeffery and other Ghosts. Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffery (1964) written with Margaret Gillis Figh, was her first book about Jeffery and other ghosts. Other titles include Jeffery Introduces Thirteen More Southern Ghosts (1971), Thirteen Georgia Ghosts and Jeffery (1973), Thirteen Mississippi Ghosts and Jeffery (1974), Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffery (1976), and Jeffery's Latest Thirteen: More Alabama Ghosts (1982). In the words of Kathryn Tucker Windham, "My desire is to preserve our Southern ghost tales-the true ones-before they are lost." She certainly seems to have satisfied that desire.
Posts
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment