Garland Roark

Even though it drizzled rain much of the day, September 26, 1946 was a very special day of celebration in Groesbeck, Texas. It was Garland Roark Day.  Citizens turned out in large numbers to honor one of its native sons, the author of a newly published, award-winning novel, Wake of the Red Witch. 

Garland Roark was born in Groesbeck on July 26, 1903, the son of James H. Roark, who was born in Kosse in 1876, and Mona Lee Davidson, a native of Alabama who was born in 1878.  Garland’s parents were married in Groesbeck on November 30, 1898 where they later had their three children.  After Garland’s father died suddenly when Garland was four years old, his mother began teaching school in order to support the family. 

Recalling his childhood in Groesbeck, Garland once stated, “Before I was five I had learned to read and write and discovered a talent for drawing which developed over the years until my ambition was to first become a cartoonist, then an illustrator.  I delivered the Dallas Journal every morning, taking as pay watercolor lessons, and during the great hurricane of 1915 when I was ten, I was considered quite a hero for having delivered the paper, even though flying tin roofs sailed about me.”  He is also known to have once said of Mary Glaze, a longtime teacher in Groesbeck, that he wouldn’t have been the writer he had become if not for her.

In 1916, Garland’s mother moved the family to Kosse where she had just been employed as a teacher at the high school.  Garland graduated from Kosse High School and attended West Texas State Normal College  (now West Texas A&M) in Canyon.  However, his college education ended after one year when he had to start working to help support his mother and young sister.  Presumably, this was after the death of his older brother, James, in 1923.  Garland related, “I was a soda-fountain boy, a sign painter, a door-to-door magazine salesman; I worked in the oil fields and aboard cargo vessels plying the Mexican Gulf and Caribbean Sea...” Later he obtained a job in Dallas as a window display artist for a large drug company chain.  He recalled that while he was working in Dallas, “I used to wart John Knott, the Dallas News cartoonist, while I was learning how to draw.”  For a while, Garland did chalk talks in small-town theaters.  That was when he learned to draw quick sketches with both hands, which gave him an advantage getting hired over other artists.  This ability also served him later as a writer.  He once said, “When I get tired of writing with one hand I just use the other.”

Garland eventually got into the advertising business working in Dallas, San Antonio and Chicago.  He finally settled in Houston, where he continued to work in advertising.  There he met and in 1939 married Leola Elizabeth Burke, a native of Nacogdoches.  They had two daughters, Sharon and Wanda. 

While continuing his career in advertising, Garland began writing after reading a story in The Saturday Evening Post whose ending he said, “didn’t satisfy me.” A writer in The Houston Post wrote, “When the urge to write fiction came on him he began reading books about the sea, ships, island dialects, tropical vegetation, and South Seas lore.  He filled innumerable notebooks with details, and slowly the plot for Wake of the Red Witch began to take form…Many times he had to consult experts in matters pertaining to the Pacific islands.”  His time spent working on cargo vessels earlier in his life greatly influenced his writing.  He once stated, “I met many odd but wonderful characters who appear in my works of sea fiction.”

Much of the work on the Wake of the Red Witch was done at the kitchen table of his Houston home.  He once stated, “I allowed myself a few hours each night for my thousand words, good or bad, usually after the children were asleep.”  Sometimes, Garland and Leola would go to Galveston for a weekend of writing at the beach.  Publishers were reluctant to take a chance on an unproven author, and Garland almost gave up hope of ever being published.  Little, Brown & Company took a chance and printed 7,200 copies of his novel, which was released on April 1, 1946. 

Set in the South Seas, Wake of the Red Witch was described by the book editor of The Houston Post as “a story of brutal men and a Dutch trading empire, and the search for a sunken ship whose holds were filled with gold.  The outstanding character is Ralls, the cruel, courageous young American skipper who deliberately sank the Red Witch and her precious cargo and fought desperately to recover the sunken wealth.” 

The events of Garland Roark Day in Groesbeck on Thursday, September 26, 1946 began with Garland Roark speaking to the student body at Groesbeck High School followed by a luncheon at the school served by the Home Economics class.  Because of the day’s festivities, school was only in session for the first half of the day. 

One of the highlights of the day was a parade in which Garland rode in an open-top roadster with Earnest Browder, Mayor Bruce Campbell, B. L. Bradley, C. D. Kelly, and Billy Hobbs.  The Mexia High School Band played its part in the celebration by marching and playing in the parade.  It must be noted that Groesbeck High School had to suspend its band program in 1942 because of a lack of band director candidates due to World War II, and it wasn’t reinstated until 1948.  Following the parade, the Limestone Theater, owned by Sid Smith, had a special matinee featuring the Van Johnson film Easy to Wed.  According to The Groesbeck Journal, “The theater will have one of the main floats of the parade depicting the title of this picture with a mock marriage ceremony with Miss Zelda Sharp as the bride and Mr. Franklin Jackson as the groom.  Nuff sed!  Bro. Suddath will be the preacher.”  The parade was such a big event that the Groesbeck Commission Company delayed the cattle auction that day until after the parade.

At Fort Parker State Park, a ceremony was held later in the afternoon to rename the park’s 30-foot excursion boat.  Leola Roark had the honor of christening the craft Red Witch.  The Roark’s then had the pleasure of cruising the lake in the newly christened vessel captained by E. J. Crow, Manager of Fort Parker State Park.  Later, the Groesbeck Lions Club hosted a barbeque at the state park, and the day’s events concluded with a special program at the Groesbeck Methodist Church at 8:00, which featured a book review of Wake of the Red Witch by Mrs. Herbert Emery of Dallas.  On Friday morning, Leola was honored with a tea sponsored by the Shakespeare Club and Tuesday Study Club, while Garland was at Cayton’s Drug Store signing copies of his book.

By the time of Garland Roark Day in Groesbeck, Garland had already completed his second novel, Fair Wind to Java, which was also made into a movie in 1953 and starred Fred MacMurray and Vera Ralston.  Over a period of 25 years after the publishing of Wake of the Red Witch, he wrote an average of one book per year, mostly historical sea fiction set in the 19^th century.  In addition to Wake of the Red Witch and Fair Wind to Java, he wrote eleven other sea faring novels including Rainbow in the Royals, adventures sailing to California during the Gold Rush; Star in the Rigging, an account of the contributions of a small naval fleet to Texas’ fight for independence; The Outlaw Banner, naval action of the Civil War; and The Lady and the Deep Blue Sea, a narrative of a clipper ship race.

In 1951, Garland published Doubtful Valley under the pseudonym “George Garland,” the first of six western novels he wrote under that name.  His other works include The Cruel Cocks, a novel about cockfighting in Louisiana; Captain Thomas Fenlon, a biography; The Coin of Contraband, a biographical novel; and Drill a Crooked Hole, a novel about Texas oil fields.  He also wrote several short stories during his writing career and wrote a historical features column in The Houston Chronicle during the early 1960’s.  He received the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for his historical novel Hellfire Jackson, was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters, and served on the first editorial board of the East Texas Historical Association.

Garland was still living in Houston during the early 1950’s, but Leola convinced him into moving the family to Nacogdoches so they could raise their daughters in a smaller community.  He died in Nacogdoches on February 9, 1985.