Introduction

Jesse Hill Ford, MBA ‘47, is one of Montgomery Bell Academy’s most noteworthy authors. During his lifetime, Ford published four novels, two plays, a biography and numerous short stories and articles. Ford also wrote over 30 editorial articles for USA Today. In addition to his own body of work, Jesse Hill Ford was a mentor and teacher to many current writers including the best-selling mystery writer, Richard North Patterson. Due to the generosity of Mr. Ford’s widow, Lillian Pelletier Ford, the archives at Montgomery Bell Academy is fortunate to be the recipient of many of Ford’s personal photographs, news clippings and memorabilia. The first major exhibit in the MBA Archives Room was held from January-July 2004 and was devoted to celebrating the life and legacy of Jesse Hill Ford. The following photographs are of memorabilia that were part of this exhibit.

Early Life and Education

Jesse's early essays in a family scrapbook

Born in Troy, Alabama, Jesse Hill Ford grew up in Nashville where he attended Parmer Elementary School, Montgomery Bell Academy and Vanderbilt University. As a young boy, Ford enjoyed writing as evidenced by the two short essays that he wrote while in the second grade!

Jesse's photograph as editor of The Bell, MBA's yearbook.

While he was an MBA student, Jesse was encouraged to pursue his interest in writing by MBA English teacher, Mary Helen Bitzer (Lowry). In addition to his studies at MBA, Jesse worked part-time as a stock boy at Walgreen Drugs. Because of MBA’s academic rigor coupled with many hours of work at Walgreen, he failed algebra and Latin in his first year and Latin in his second year. He repeated these course in the summer at Peabody College. During his years “on the hill,” Jesse played football, wrote for The Bell Ringer and was editor of The BELL. Years after graduating from MBA, Jesse Hill Ford told an interviewer, “My years at MBA were some of the happiest in my life.” (O’Hare, Mike. “A Chat with Jesse Hill Ford” The Bell Ringer, Nov. 22, 1988, 4.)

Jesse's fraternity membership certificate

Upon graduation from MBA in 1947, Jesse matriculated to Vanderbilt University where he joined the national fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, wrote stories and sketches for campus publications and actively practiced journalism as the campus correspondent for the Nashville Tennessean. While at Vanderbilt, he excelled in English, studying two years under Fugitive writer, Donald Davidson. He received his Vanderbilt B.A. in 1951.

Jesse and his St. Bernard, Captain, in the early 1960's riding in Jesse's Volkswagen in Humboldt, TN.

In the spring of 1951, Jesse married Sally (Sarah) Davis of Humbolt, Tennessee. That fall he enlisted in the U.S. Navy with a reserve officers commission which he earned at Officers Candidate School during the two previous summers. While in the Navy, he was stationed in Okinawa and Japan. After earning an honorable discharge from the Navy in 1953, he enrolled in Graduate School at University of Florida where he studied with another Fugitive writer, Andrew Lytle.

Life as a Writer

Jesse wrote a tongue-in-cheek article about dueling for the June, 1964 Nashville Magazine called "A Modest Proposal."

After graduating from Florida in 1955, Jesse began work in Nashville as public relations director for the Tennessee State Medical Association. Using this job as a springboard for his career in public relations, Jesse accepted the position of Assistant Director of Public Relations for the American Medical Association in Chicago. Because he was unhappy with the civil rights strife in the city, he stayed in Chicago for less than a year. Making the decision to become a full-time writer, he moved his wife and family to Humbolt, Tennessee, Sally’s hometown. In the Jan. 4, 1959 Nashville Tennessean Magazine, Jesse said, “I left the concrete canyons of Chicago to come to Humbolt, center of West Tennessee’s strawberry industry. But I didn’t come here to pick strawberries. I came to write my novel.”

During the late 1950's and early 1960's, Jesse had several stories published in Atlantic magazine, The Conversion of Buster Drumwright was aired on national television and he won an O. Henry Award for his story “How the Mountains Are.” He continued to write prolifically, often publishing stories and essays in magazines.

Jesse's diploma from his Fulbright Fellowship year.

In April, 1961, his first novel, Mountains of Gilead was published. A month later, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for one year’s study at the University of Oslo. Later in 1966, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Subsequent academic honors included visiting lectureships at Memphis State (1969-1971) and Vanderbilt (1987).

Paperback edition of The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones with scenes from the movie on the cover.

1965 was a pivotal year in Jesse’s writing career because it was then that The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones was published. In June of that year, Lord Byron Jones became a Book-of-The-Month Club selection. Moreover, an excerpt from this book was published in Cosmopolitan and movie rights were sold. In 1966 The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Copy of newspaper advertisement for the film "The Lberation of Lord Byron Jones."

Jesse continued to write in Humbolt and published his third novel Feast of St. Barnabas in 1969. In that year, filming of the movie Lord Byron Jones began in Humbolt. Jesse collaborated with Sterling Silliphant to write the script for the film. The cast included Lee J. Cobb, Roscoe Lee Brown, Lee Majors, Barbara Hershey and Lola Falana. On March 18, 1970, the movie premiered in New York City.

The warm reception the movie received in New York, was unfortunately not duplicated in Jesse’s hometown of Humbolt. In September, 1970 when Lord Byron Jones opened in this small west Tennessee town, local attorney Lemmy Lee Harrell called it “the dirtiest, sorriest, commonest thing” he’d ever seen. Both black and white citizens began harassing Ford and his family. It was in this climate of hate and unrest that a terrible accident occurred. On November 16, 1970, Jesse Hill Ford accidentally killed Private George H. Doaks, a drunken soldier AWOL from the army who was trespassing on Ford’s property at night. After the incident, Ford was charged with murder. Although he was acquitted in a trial that was held in 1971, negative news coverage and huge legal expenses left Ford’s reputation and finances in shambles. Because of the trial and its aftermath, his relationships with his oldest son, Jay was strained for years. Old rituals and loyalties were never the same for him. Following a divorce from Sally in 1973, Ford left Humbolt permanently.

Jesse received a bust of Edgard Alan Poe as memento of his "Edgar Award."

Jesse traveled and continued to write. In 1974, he began a semester as writer-in-residence at the University of Rochester and later was a speaker for Virginia Tech’s English Dept. On Nov. 15, 1975, he married Lillian Pelletieri Chandler in Nashville, Tennessee. The following year, his final novel, The Raider was published along with the short story, “The Jail” which won the Edgar Award as the outstanding mystery story of the year.

Richard North Patterson dedicated The Outside Man to Jesse Hill Ford.

In 1977 Jesse began a year as writer-in-residence at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. It was at this time that he met a young lawyer and aspiring writer, Richard North Patterson. Ford’s encouragement and mentor ship helped Patterson so much that Patterson’s novel The Outside Man was dedicated to Jesse. In Anne Cheney’s book The Life and Letters of Jesse Hill Ford, Southern Writer Patterson states, “With his astonishing memory and deep love of language, Jesse was a walking reference to instructive examples of accomplished writing, many of them quite obscure. He was tender of young writers, for he never forgot the terrors of approaching the task of fiction armed only with a passion to write and a fragile belief in one’s own talent. His criticisms were kind and yet dead-on, and his patience did not include patience for the idea of letting a story go before it was the best one could make it. Jesse was a professional, and knew that writing was a craft.”

An autographed photograph from Mae West to Lillian Ford.

Throughout the late 1970's and 1980's, Jesse continued to write and travel. He rewrote screenplays and became close friends with Hollywood director, William Wyler. Other Hollywood friends and associates of Jesse and Lillian Ford included: Polly Bergan, George Cukor, Bette Davis, Troy Donahue, Nora Ephron, Eddie Fisher, Cary Grant, Rosey Grier, Lillian Hellman, Alex Hailey, Alan Ladd, Jr., Bruce Lee, Karl Malden, Ray Milland, Vic Morrow, Warren Oates, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Talia Shire, Mae West and Darrel Zanuck.

Despite extensive travel and friendships with many famous people, Jesse kept in contact with Montgomery Bell Academy English teacher, Mary Helen Lowry. In 1987, Jesse proudly returned to MBA to become a member of the Cum Laude Society.

The MBA Archives has copies of all of Jesse's USA Today editorial articles.

From 1985 through 1992, Jesse wrote editorial columns for USA Today from a conservative viewpoint. During this eight year assignment, he wrote over thirty essays.

Ford underwent open-heart surgery at the age of 67. Suffering from severe depression following his surgery, Jesse Hill Ford took his own life on June 1, 1996.

Cover of Anne Cheney's biography of Jesse Hill Ford.

In a moving tribute to his friend, journalist John Seigenthaler wrote, “He was without a doubt, one of the most talented and tortured writers the South has produced.” Just before his death, writer Anne Cheney published The Life and Letters of Jesse Hill Ford, Southern Writer. In it she summarizes Ford’s literary genius:

In the Sixties, Jesse Hill Ford was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones, and was included in three O.Henry Collections. Before the emergence of Cormac McCarthy, Barry Hannah, and Harry Crews, Ford was writing neo-Southern gothic, creating his own Yoknopatowpha in West Tennessee without Faulkner’s grandeur but with something of Faulkner’s comedy and, what for his time is significant, one of the few Southern writers influenced by Faulkner and the Southern Agrarian tradition who was willing and able to show Jim Crow for what it was in the South.

Montgomery Bell Academy is proud to call Jesse Hill Ford one of its alumni. Ford’s novels, short stories and plays are a lasting testimony to his literary genius. All of Ford’s novels are housed in MBA’s Patrick Wilson Library and are available for examination.