1884 H. M. Sutherland 1967

Author Of uHip Pocket Essays" Succumbs

by JOHN ARCHER CARTER*

H. M. Sutherland-"Maynard" to homefolks but "Joy" to my fellow alumni and to me-a member of the Class of 1917-writer, fighter, humorist and every inch a Southwest Virginian-died April 22 in the Veterans' Hospital in Roanoke. He was 73 years old.

He is survived by his widow, Mrs. Irene Draper Sutherland; a daughter, Miss Rose Ella Sutherland; and a sister, Mrs. Edna French, all of Clintwood.

What follows is a tribute to his memory and there shall be not one sad song in it. Joy wouldn't wish a shadow of gloom to enter here. After all, Joy has not lost his uni':ersity and its people. They are a bright and happy part of his spirit. We who knew him have not lost him. Surely, one cannot lose any spirit that one, with love remembers.

Nearby is a humorous story of Joy's life, written by Joy himself twenty years ago. I shall add to it here and take sharp but kindly issue with the latter part of it.

When Joy had been a student at the University of Richmond for a year, this young mountain man, never a joiner and somewhat of a loner, was acquainted with every student and all the professors. And every acquaintance was a friend . Then in October., 1915, Joy was suddenly an outstanding member of the student body, perhaps the most "famous" man on the campus. Joseph A. Leslie, editor of The Collegian, had op~ned the columns of his newspaper to Joy for a series of "Hip Pocket Essays" on subjects of Joy's choice-"Love," "Skirts," "Whiskey," and "Courtship," to name a few. These essays promptly were a hit.

At that point Joy began a career that presently would nudge him far along on the high road toward fame and fortune . . . a road from which years later he would be compelled abruptly to depart.

Shortly after he was graduated, Joy went to war, and there he received an injury that plagued him through the years. For "a year or so" after the war, as he writes, he was in the hospital. Then came a spell of studying and teaching at Columbia University, and after that, a pleasant trek along the high road toward fame and fortune.

May this aging professional writer assert that if one is a top man on the editorial staff of The New York Times and is also a writer of short stories for the "slicks" including The Saturday Evening Post, one, in modern lingo, has it made. His w~s the big opportunity. He could have been brilliantly successful as a newspaper man, magazine writer, novelist, radio and TV writer.

When he was still a young man, however, that old war injury forced him into semi-retirement, away from Manhattan, back to the mountains. There, he writes in the piece nearby, he served several terms in the State legislature, then founded "The Dickensonian," named, of course, for his home county.

When he founded The Dickensonian he had just begun to fight!

I talked about Joy with an engaging neighbor of mine here in Venice, Florida where I am living. This neighbor is now retired, but for forty-five years, he was a distinguished physician in Norton and surrounding areas of Southwest Virgina. "In all my years in Southwest Virginia," he told me, "I never heard one person say anything but good about Maynard Sutherland. He was liked-he was highly respected-not just because of his good character and his fighting spirit but because of the deeds he did, the services he performed for his home country, by the spoken word and especially the written words as they appeared in his own newspaper. It was familiar throughout the Southwest. Mighty few people ever did more for that beautiful part of Virginia than did Maynard Sutherland."

Joy came home from the Big League, so to speak-back to his beloved hills. He used his talents, so generously given, for the benefit, the progress-always an uncompromisingly wholesome progress-of his home country and its people, his neighbors.

* Mr. Carter, whose brillia nt career embraced newspaper work, public relations and advertising, was the first editor of The Collegian. He was Public Relations Director for the Richmond Chamber of Commerce, later worked for advertising agencies in New York, and was Director of Radio-Television for the American Heritage Foundation. · [ 13 J

Confessions of a Reformed Reformer

(Editors Note: When Dr. Ralph C. McDanel wrote his college mate H. M. ( Joy) Sutherland for biographical information to adorn a piece about him in the fall, 1947 issue of the Alumni Bulletin, the author of "Hip Pocket Essays" responded with the letter below.)

Dear Mac:

I certainly am flattered and pleased beyond expression that I have been remembered after these many years away from my Alma Mater. You ask for some data concerning my activities. In brief they are:

Soon after having been graduated from the University of Richmond (1917) I set out upon my self-imposed task of reforming the entire world. I, of course, felt that I could best accomplish this by joining the forces of Democracy and sailing overseas to destroy the power of Kaiser Bill who at the time personified all of the evils of this world. But after coming in contact with German armies in France, and getting the worst of the deal, I concluded that perhaps I had been taking in a bit too much territory in including the entire world.

I returned to these United States, and, after a year or so in an army hospital, I entered Columbia University where I received a B.Litt., and then for a couple of years I was instructor in the Columbia School of Journalism. I had by that time determined that I would limit my reforming activities to the United States only, and to accomplish this I went to work on the editorial staff of the New Y ork Times. After some five or six years of crossing lances with political windmills and Wall Street tycoons, I was forced to the conclusion that I was again taking in too much territory.

And so I returned to my native land in Southwest Virginia where I began to lay plans for the reformation of my home state of Virginia. I got myself elected to the Virginia General Assembly for four terms, and, after bucking the Byrd machine ineffectually, I retired from that scene, finally convinced that even Virginia was a bit too much territory, and that perhaps I was going about that reformation task the wrong way.

I came back to my native county of Dickenson, and decided that I would reform my home town of

(Continued on page 16)