Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
N C L R ONLINE
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PHOTOGRAPH BY SYLVIA FREEMAN
you are not acquainted with Sally’s memorable poem “Plumber’s Daughter,”* here are a few lines from the close of this marvelous work (the section of the poem starts with “When I’m trying to fit the ends of my life together . . .”): I’ll remember passing by Tabernacle Church And recall my father’s hands, and think of my own Modest contribution to tabernacles Where I’ve been invited to participate in construction, And I’ll scrub the grease from my hands, pucker up my lips, Throw back my head and send my whistle pouring Like cool clear water through clean copper pipe Across the great green earth.
Beautiful, right? Sally received her bachelor’s degree from UNC Greensboro and her doctorate from Carolina. With a background also as a journalist, she taught every level from kindergarten through graduate school, including twenty-eight years as a faculty member at Peace College, inspiring thousands of young people to find their own unique writing voices. Anyone who has read Our Words, Our Ways: Reading and Writing in North
* “Plumber’s Daughter was first published in Strawberry Harvest (Laurinburg, NC: St. Andrew’s, 1986).
Carolina, a Carolina Academic Press book masterfully edited by Sally, knows immediately they are in the presence of a superb teacher. Sally’s published nonfiction, fiction, and poetry can be found in numerous journals too lengthy to cite here, and in 1986, her collection of poetry, “Strawberry Harvest,” was published by St. Andrews Press. In the late 1990s, she undertook the Herculean task of serving as editor of Word and Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry, published in 1999 under the auspices of the North Carolina Poetry Society by Carolina Academic Press. Truly there is no finer collection of North Carolina poems! Sally’s leadership and involvement with state groups, including the North Carolina Writers’ Network, North Carolina Poetry Society, North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, North Carolina English Teachers Association, the ground-breaking North Carolina Women Writers Conference, and hundreds of committees, councils, and conferences that Sally held leadership positions with, is legendary. And of course – there are the awards. Sally is the Michael Phelps of North Carolina! The Ragan-Rubin Award, the R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award, the Sam Ragan Award, the City of Raleigh Arts Commission Medal of Arts Award, the Wake County YWCA Academy of Women Arts Award, among many others. And now, one more for your sizable collection! But all these successes, awards, service to organizations, and creative achievements do not attest to something more important – Sally’s shining character. I’d like to know if there is anyone in this room today who has not heard a story about – or has not been personal witness to – Sally’s extraordinary kindness, her generosity to others, her righteous sense of justice, her courage in the face of loss and illness – and her wickedly delicious sense of humor. I am humbled to stand in your presence, Sally, because you are the very best of us.
ABOVE Sally Buckner at Quail Ridge Books, 2011