Full Text of HR0571 94th General Assembly
HR0571 94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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HR0571 |
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LRB094 12887 HSS 47735 r |
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| HOUSE RESOLUTION
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| 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
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| 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
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| 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
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| 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
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| WHEREAS, Following his military service, Mr. Foote found | 20 |
| odd jobs, including a stint as a reporter for The Delta | 21 |
| Democrat Times; and
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| 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
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| 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
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HR0571 |
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LRB094 12887 HSS 47735 r |
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| 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
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| 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
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| 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
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| WHEREAS, Mr. Foote is survived by his wife, Gwyn; his | 13 |
| daughter, Margaret; and his son, Huger Lee; therefore, be it
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| 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
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| RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | 20 |
| presented to Mr. Foote's family with our deepest sympathies and | 21 |
| highest esteem.
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