Robert Chester Ruark, Jr.
Journalist and Novelist
December 29, 1915 - July 1, 1965
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Robert Ruarks is, perhaps, the most well loved and respected author to emerge from Eastern North Carolina.
His boyhood was spent in Wilmington and Southport. After graduating from New Hanover High School, at the age of 12, he attended the University of North Carolna, where he graduated in 1935.
His best selling book, The Old Man and the Boy, is based on his hunting, fishing and camping experiences with his grandfather, Capt. Edward Adkins, a retired river pilot who lived in Southport.
During World War II, Ruark served as a merchant seaman and later as a naval gunnery officer. Returning to his passion for writing after the war, he began writing for the Washington Daily News and achieved national prominence in over 180 newspapers as a syndicated columnist for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain.
"I think his North Carolina pieces are just terrific." said Bland Simpson, director of the creative writing program in the UNC English Department. "Some people may find some of his attitudes dated on some subjects, but his observations of how things were done in the field at the time, were really on the money."
"It is some of the best 'portraiture in words' of hunting, fishing and life in the field that we have."
In 1953, he established his permanent residence in Palamos, near Barcelona, Spain, where he wrote his best-selling novels.
His novel, Something of Value, brought him international acclaim. Based on the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya during the '50's, the book and is adaptation in the MGM movie, created a powerful narrative of African Nationalism. His literary style and, in some respects his lifestyle, resembled that of Ernest Hemingway, whom he know and greatly admired.
Perhaps one of Ruark's letters in his collection, best describes his confidence in his writing gained from his trips to Africa.
"I would never have had the courage to quit the safety of New York without Africa's constant beckon. Without the African experience, there would have been no topics for the scores of articles and stories and the two books which have combined to make me financially secure..."
In May 1957, Robert Ruark visited the UNC Campus at Chapel Hill where he remembered and praised the professors he most admired: Professon O. J. Coffin of the English Department, Professor J. P. Harland of the Archeology Department, Philips Russell in the Creative Writing Department and Walker Caldwell, Historian.
However, Ruark did not forget his fraternity brothers at the Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity. He purchased an ice machine, one of the first in the Chapel Hill area, as a gift to his old fraternity.
On July 1, 1965, Robert Ruark, who had lived life to the fullest, died in a London hospital at the age of 49. All of his manuscripts, letters, syndicated newspaper columns, books and magazine articles, totaling over 5,000 items, were left to The University of North Carolina. They are now housed in the Wilson Library.
In the year 2000, Ruark was inducted into the North Carolina Hall of Fame with the likes of Thomas Wolfe. Then on April 19, 2009, after being nominated by members of the Robert Ruark Society, he was also inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Viewers may want to read and print a copy of the Joint Resolution adopted by the North Carolina Senate and House and subsequently ratified on August 1, 2007, honoring this world famous North Carolina writer. The resolution was sponsored by State Senator Tony Rand. Click Here to view the resolution.
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