Dykeman, Wilma 1920-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born May 20, 1920, in Asheville, NC; died of an infection resulting from a broken hip, December 23, 2006, in Asheville, NC. Author. Well known for her fiction and nonfiction works celebrating Appalachia, Dykeman often wrote on themes concerning the environment, race relations, history, and world peace. A 1940 graduate of Northwestern University, she married poet James R. Stokely, Jr., that year. Her first book, The French Broad (1955), won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Trophy, while her second, Neither Black nor White, was written with her husband and won the Hillman Award for best book on world peace, race relations, or civil liberties. Dykeman would go on to publish twenty books over the years. Among her other titles are The Far Family (1966), Return the Innocent Earth (1973), Explorations (1984), and Haunting Memories: Echoes and Images of Tennessee’s Past (Hand-tinted Photographs) (1996). An active public speaker who continued to make appearances for years after her husband’s 1977 death, Dykeman also wrote a regular column for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. She received an honorary doctorate from Maryville College, was named both Tennessee Conservation Writer of the Year and Tennessee Outstanding Speaker of the Year, and was declared Tennessee state historian in 1981.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, December 25, 2006, Section 3, p. 11.

New York Times, December 29, 2006, p. A23.

Washington Post, December 26, 2006, p. B4.