Document text
A True Sense Of Place By John Darling What earth is to a farmer, words are to Marian Place. At 91, the author has passed the 3,000 volunteer hour mark, tilling the soil of oral histories for the Southern Oregon Historical Society. At the same time, Place is near a second milestone: She is considering writing another historical novel or nonfiction history book. It would be her 50th. Four-time winner of the Golden Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, Place began her writing career as a young mother, raising two kids in Butte, Mont., in the 1940s, while her husband, Howard, worked for Texaco. With a library science degree from University of Minnesota, Place wanted to find work that blended with her home-based lifestyle. She built connections with forest workers and soon was writing articles on natural resources and history for sports, hunting and fishing magazines, and sometimes for large general circulation ones like Family Circle. In the early years, she wrote as "Dale White," a gender-ambiguous name that skirted prejudices against women writers, she said. Place sold articles about the development of smoke jumping in Montana, flying through smoky skies in a Ford Tri-Motor with the door off. The story soon became the 1953 nonfiction book, "Tall Timber Pilots," and Place never went back to magazine writing. "I've loved (being an author) and it's served a beautiful purpose. I've been successful because I know my way around printed matter and I'm meticulous in my research," said Place, a longtime Medford resident. "I've traveled all over the West with Howard in his work and everywhere we've moved, I went right into the libraries and learned all I could and took notes. If I say a big rock is 10 miles down the trail, it's going to be 10 miles down the trail." Place is not one to belabor history with long tomes. She aims most of her work at high school readers, with a few shorter adult nonfiction books - on Crater Lake, missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, explorer John Wesley Powell, the Santa Fe Trail, the Nez Perce retreat, the Mount St. Helens volcano and three popular books on the irresistible Bigfoot. Her "Westward on the Oregon Trail," published in 1962 by prestigious American Heritage, "made a lot of money," she said. At the suggestion of her granddaughter, she even wrote some 1970 children's novels about a witch called Witchina. Her adolescent novels - "The Wild Horse Trap," "Thunder in His Moccasins," "Fast Draw Tilgman," to name a few - may be aimed at younger readers, but they're built around real customs, places and events of the times and couched in "a reasonable, controlled vocabulary." On her formidable productivity - about a book a year over a half century - Place said, "I'm handicapped. I won't play bridge. I've got too many things to do." Place eschews computers - "I don't have the brains or the eyesight for them." - preferring a simple electric typewriter and paper. Her love for history sprang from hours of listening to her grandparents talk about their grandparents. "I was amazed by how much people did on their own back then. People were so self-motivated." When a high school journalism class opened her mind to writing, it merged with history and a career took shape, she said. Place's New York agent is ever eager for the next manuscript and she could easily dedicate her energies just to books. But Place has always set aside time to labor in history's vineyards. In the 1970s, she was director of adult services for Jackson County libraries. And now, as oral history indexer for Southern Oregon Historical Society, she's racked up over 3,000 hours organizing names, dates, places and things so researchers can find what they want without reading tome after tome. Place is concentrating on the timber history and works about 10 hours to index a one-hour interview. Her volunteer work has a therapeutic as well as a civic purpose. "Doing oral history is a lifesaver for me," she said, "because I'm mentally engaged in something that stimulates my mind." Her outside interests also give other writers a break. She has earned the Mark Twain award for children's literature and, after she won the Golden Spur in the children's category for the fourth time, the Western Writers Association had to ask her: Could she please stop submitting entries and give others a chance? John Darling is an Ashland free-lance writer. Your story suggestions for Prime Times are welcome at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.