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In Memoriam...
remembering those who have passed on.

This page is dedicated to storytellers no longer with us. The women and men honoured here were my friends, my acquaintances, people I interviewed for the Journal of Tar Heel Tellers, and people with whom I shared the stage. They were storytellers who touched me personally, who influenced my career, and who I sincerely miss.

Helen Morris was the first treasurer of the NC Storytelling Guild and a delightful storyteller. Her version of the story, Old Dry Frye was the best I've ever heard.

Carolynn Skipper, shown here in 1994, with her husband Dyion. Together they were known as, The Story Company. Carolynn's stories were filled with passion and strength, just as she was.

When Ray Hicks died on Easter Sunday, 2003, North Carolina and the world lost
one of the greatest tellers of all times.
By simply living his life and telling his stories, just as his ancestors had done for generations before, Ray touched us all in a profound way. I first saw Ray at the National Storytelling Festival in 1989 (above photo) and was amazed to hear someone speaking such an old dialect. It was beautiful and unlike anything I'd ever heard, and his stories were my introduction to the Jack Tales. I took the picture to the left of Ray and Connie Regan-Blake in 1996, during Asheville's Tell It in the Mountains storytelling festival.

I first heard Jackie Torrence tell at the National Storytelling Festival in Tennessee. A few years later (above photo) I met Jackie in Durham at a signing for her book, The Importance of Pot Liquor. It was 1994 and when she heard that I was starting a story-telling publication for NC, she was very supportive. My final interactions with Jackie would occur in the spring of 2000, when Mark and I visited her at her home in Salisbury. Jackie was already quite sick and not able to travel much, but was so gracious and welcoming. While Mark worked at setting up a computer for her, I interviewed Jackie for the last issue of the Journal of Tar Heel Tellers that I was to edit. Our two weekends together there in her home are some of my most precious storytelling memories.
Jackie passed away in November, 2004.

Over the years, I had taken three or four nice "storytelling" pictures of Dennis Frederick and Lucinda Flodin, The Storyweavers. Although those photographs were good, solid, on-stage shots, it's this photo (above) that captures best, for me, who Dennis was. The picture was taken in Cashiers in 1997, when a number of us story-tellers had come together to tell at a small festival. We all just went wild when Dennis came driving up, with Lucinda, in this shiny red sportscar that they had rented for the weekend. Dennis was all smiles and full of playful energy, and his spirit of adventure and merriment enveloped us all and made that weekend one of magic. Dennis Frederick passed away, much too early, in January of 2005.

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"To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...
to leave the world a better place...
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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