HR0571 LRB094 12887 HSS 47735 r

1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2     WHEREAS, Shelby Foote was born on November 17, 1916, in
3 Greenville, Mississippi, the cultural center of the
4 Mississippi Delta; he was the only child of Shelby Dade Foote,
5 a local businessman, whose roots ran deep in American history,
6 and Lillian Rosenstock Foote; and
 
7     WHEREAS, Under the influence of William Alexander Percy, a
8 local author and the uncle of young Shelby's best friend,
9 Walker Percy, young Shelby took to books, discovering abiding
10 favorites from Shakespeare to Dickens; and
 
11     WHEREAS, At the University of North Carolina at Chapel
12 Hill, Mr. Foote wrote short stories and poems for the campus
13 literary magazine before dropping out in 1937 without taking a
14 degree; he did find occasion, with Walker Percy, to visit
15 William Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi; and
 
16     WHEREAS, In 1940 Mr. Foote entered the United States Army
17 and served as a battery captain of field artillery in Europe
18 before his Army career ended in 1944; and
 
19     WHEREAS, Following his military service, Mr. Foote found
20 odd jobs, including a stint as a reporter for The Delta
21 Democrat Times; and
 
22     WHEREAS, In 1946, he sold his first short story to The
23 Saturday Evening Post, and after rejections and rewrites, he
24 sold his first novel, "Tournament", to Dial Press; and
 
25     WHEREAS, Mr. Foote would go on to write five more novels,
26 including "Follow Me Down" (1950), "Love in a Dry Season"
27 (1951), "Shiloh" (1952), "Jordan County" (1954), and
28 "September, September" (1978), all of which were set in the
29 South; and
 

 

 

HR0571 - 2 - LRB094 12887 HSS 47735 r

1     WHEREAS, Mr. Foote's 89 cameo appearances in Ken Burns's
2 PBS series "The Civil War" in 1990 were informed by his own
3 three-volume history of the war, two decades in the making,
4 that blended his practiced novelist's touch with precise, but
5 defiantly un-footnoted research; and
 
6     WHEREAS, In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Mr. Foote's
7 "The Civil War: A Narrative" as No. 15 on its list of the
8 century's 100 best English-language works of nonfiction; and
 
9     WHEREAS, Shelby Foote, a great American Civil War
10 historian, passed away at the age of 88 in Memphis, Tennessee,
11 on June 27, 2005; and
 
12     WHEREAS, Mr. Foote is survived by his wife, Gwyn; his
13 daughter, Margaret; and his son, Huger Lee; therefore, be it
 
14     RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
15 NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
16 the citizens of Illinois celebrate the life and literary gifts
17 of one of the most prominent Civil War novelists of all time;
18 and be it further
 
19     RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
20 presented to Mr. Foote's family with our deepest sympathies and
21 highest esteem.