The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 36

Eternity Continued Is- r.l k'r--' a r-A j4A vttc- -jsIxx dJ 'Ul and he was born in 1921 in Jenkins, Letcher County. He lives today in SeattleWash. In Jones' novel, Prewitt is said to have come from Harlan County. While his father, a striking miner, is in jail, Prewitt's mother dies. The youth bums around the country, then enlists in the Army.

He is musical: "Robert E. Lee Prewitt had learned to play a guitar long before he ever learned to bugle or to box. In the Kentucky mountains along the West Virginia line guitar playing is not considered the accomplishment it is most places." Nowhere does Harlan County touch West Virginia, but this geographic dislocation apparently went unnoticed by Jones1 editors. Neither does Letcher County, but Jenkins is certainly smack on the Virginia line. Though Robert Lee Stewart did grow up in a coal camp, it was not quite the deprived existence Jones probably envisioned.

Jenkins in the '20s and '30s was a model among company towns, with well-built houses and a flourishing business district. An uncle of Stewart's, Jack Rife, said wistfully, "Jenkins was a real town in those days, an A-1 town." Rife lives in Maryland now, but he was in Jenkins not long ago to visit Delia Stewart Bates, his half-sister and the closest relative of Robert Lee Stewart still living in Letcher County. The two filled in some details of their nephew's childhood. When Robert was 13 his mother died, leaving two married children and seven still at home. His father remarried and went to live in a log cabin he built on Cable's Knob.

Robert had dropped out of school after mother died. He shuttled between his married brother and sister and for a time lived in McDowell County, W. Va. In the summer of 1936 he and a friend hitchhiked to Bristol, and there joined the Army. It was his second try; the first time he was underweight.

Stewart was IS and looked it, but he swore he was 17 and signed his father's name on the consent form. Jack Rife remembers that Stewart's father tried to get him out, but the enlistment held. It was no mean feat to get into the Army at the time, for with a nation out of work, plenty of men were seeking a sure $21 a month. Robert Lee Stewart would not see Kentucky again for nine years. He re-enlisted when his three-year term was up and in 1939 was posted to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Save Time and Money! Our Popular "Organizer' Handbag Personalized Free! Reg.

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James Jones came from Robinson, 111., and a background vastly different from Stewart's. The five years he spent in the Army shaped the rest of his life. It was in the Army that Jones decided he would be a writer, or as he put it, "I realized I had been a writer all my life without knowing it or without having written." Jones' family was prominent in Robinson, a small county seat in the Wabash River Valley. His grandfather was a lawyer; his father, a dentist. But in 1939 his father's investments were wiped out, the beginning of a long slide in the family fortunes.

When Jones graduated from high school in 1939, he expected to go to Northwestern University, as his father and brother had. But there was no money, and his father advised him to join the Army. He choose the Army Air Corps, then not a separate service branch, and was sent to Hickman Field, Hawaii. For reasons not clear, he soon transferred to the Infantry and was assigned to Company of the 27th Infantry Regiment (the "Wolf- BACONS, LOUISVILLE 4-18-17 3600 Bardftown Road 40218 Add 2.00 dal. dig.

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