Abstract:
When it comes to producing novelists and journalists, North Carolina has always treasured its own. But you would walk for many miles in the august hallways of our great universities before you would hear anyone mention the name of the man who, for 20 years between 1945 and 1965, was the best-known writer the state -- and UNC -- had ever produced: Robert Chester Ruark. Ruark was born in Wilmington in 1915 and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1935. He became famous first as a newspaperman, then as a feature writer for slick magazines and finally as a best-selling novelist.