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    • TB Times: St. Augustine coming to grips with civil rights history
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    • Long dresses, long pants, no shorts: Life before AC was uncool
    • Sunken shipwrecks are being turned into "parks" off Florida coast
    • Run-down Dunedin hotel to be rebuilt in same architectural style
    • Painting at Ringling Museum leads scholar to discover slavery roots of Spanish painter Juan de Pareja
    • Hampton Inn in downtown Bradenton gets state historic preservation award
    • Civil War re-enactment draws criticism in Holly Hill
    • New documentary spotlights Anna Maria Historic Green Village
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    • 67-year-old shipwreck off Florida identified
    • Florida History Today - Project studies South Florida native communites
    • Florida History Today - Tarpon Springs halts Sponge Docks upgrades
    • Florida History Today - Compromise reached on Tequesta circles preservation
    • Florida History Today - Sears homes remembered in Sanibel
  • On this day in Florida history - August
    • Aug. 15, 1887 - Eatonville becomes one of first all-black towns in U.S.
    • Aug. 13, 2004 - Hurricane Charley kicks off unusually active 'cane year
    • Aug. 12, 1981 - Developed in Boca Raton, first PC released by IBM
    • Aug. 11, 1987 - Santeria church vows to sacrifice animals despite Hialeah ban
    • Aug. 10, 1981 - Tragic discovery confirms death of missing Adam Walsh, 6
    • Aug. 9, 1956 - Reporters look down noses covering Elvis in Daytona Beach
    • Aug. 8, 1896 - Cross Creek, Yearling author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings born
    • Aug. 6, 1868 - Great Seal of the State of Florida adopted by Legislature
    • Aug. 5, 1763 - Britain takes over Pensacola, expands slavery over two-decade Fla. rule
    • Aug. 4, 1842: U.S. gives free Florida land to settlers willing to fight Seminoles
    • Aug. 1, 1939 - Florida Highway Patrol formed; to begin with 60 troopers
  • On this day in Florida history - July
    • July 31, 1962 - Actor, tax evader Wesley Snipes born in Orlando
    • July 30, 1956: Delta Burke, star of tabloids and television, born in Orlando
    • July 28, 1896: With railroad into town, city of Miami incorporated
    • July 27, 1816: U.S. forces obliterate 300+ free blacks, Indians at 'Fort Negro'
    • July 26, 1876 - Daytona incorporated, named after founder Matthias Day
    • July 25, 1884 - St. Petersburg Times debuts as West Hillsborough Times
    • July 25, 1957 - Country star, actress Pam Tillis born in Plant City
    • July 23, 1836 - Cape Florida Lighthouse attacked by Seminoles
    • July 22, 1964 - First 536 home lots sold in new city of Coral Springs
    • July 21, 1821 - St. Johns and Escambia become first two Florida counties
    • July 20, 1969 - U.S. astronauts walk on the moon
    • July 19, 1952 - Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins is born; stardom and tragedy await
    • July 18, 1940 - Winners of St. Pete mayor's safety slogan contest announced
    • July 17, 1821 - Spain officially transfers Florida to United States
    • July 16, 1943 - Former 'Canes, Dolphins, Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson born
    • July 15, 1997 - Killer gigolo guns down Gianni Versace at South Beach mansion
    • July 14, 1921 - Florida's most famous 'cracker cowboy' dies at 58
    • July 13, 1927: Officials dump $250k in liquor into Gulf Stream
    • July 10, 1972 - First of two major party conventions opens in Miami Beach
    • July 9, 1957 - Pass-a-Grille and three other towns form St. Pete Beach
    • July 8, 2011 - Last space shuttle launched from Cape Canaveral
    • July 7, 1983 - 'Operation Everglades' drug bust rocks Everglades City
    • July 6, 2003 - 'Hillbillies' star Buddy Ebsen, raised in Orlando, dies at 95
    • July 5, 1928 - Elks begin arriving for 1st Florida national convention
    • July 4: Florida celebrates America's Independence Day
    • July 3, 1971 - Doors singer, Melbourne native Jim Morrison dies
    • July 2, 1961: Key West icon Ernest Hemingway dies; cats live on
    • July 1, 1951: St. Pete woman's burning death baffles investigators
  • On this day in Florida history - June
    • June 1, 1937 - Amelia Earhart leaves Miami to begin final voyage
    • June 2, 2008 - Bo Diddley, 79, dies at his home in Archer
    • June 3, 1961 - Arrest made in case that leads to 'right to an attorney'
    • June 4, 1939 - Jewish refugee ship turned away from Florida coast
    • June 5, 2013 - Zephyrhills woman, 84, claims $590 million Powerball jackpot
    • June 6, 1990 - Broward Judge rules 2 Live Crew album 'obscene'
    • June 7, 1928 - Two elections workers shot in Tampa ballot box heist
    • June 8, 1888 - First train rolls into terminus "St. Petersburg"
    • June 9, 1903 - Flagler's Breakers Hotel burns down in Palm Beach
    • June 10, 1991 - South Florida learns it will get new major league baseball team
    • June 11, 1953 - Sabal Palmetto palm becomes Florida's state tree
    • June 12, 1913: With first bridge, Miami Beach is open for business
    • June 13, 1974 - Askew appoints first female Cabinet member
    • June 14, 1966 - FSL's Miami and St. Pete set record for longest baseball game
    • June 15, 1822: City of Jacksonville founded, named after Andrew Jackson
    • June 16, 1955 - Judge Chillingworth and wife go missing
    • June 17. 1942 - German U-boat saboteurs land at Ponte Vedra Beach
    • June 18, 1983 - Sally Ride becomes first American woman in space
    • June 19, 1972 - Hurricane Agnes makes landfall in Panhandle
    • June 20, 2003 - Non-profit Wikipedia established in St. Petersburg
    • June 21, 1926 - Miami barbers don't want to be called 'chirotonsors'
    • June 22, 1990 - Florida bans thong bikinis in state parks
    • June 23, 1938 - Marine Studios, 'world's first oceanarium,' opens
    • June 24, 1987 - S. Fla's most famous resident, Jackie Gleason, dies at 71
    • June 25, 1981 - Dolphins QB Bob Griese retires after 14 seasons
    • June 26, 1964 - Governor orders extra police to riot-torn St. Augustine
    • June 27, 1964 - State tells Daytona: Stop price-gouging your tourists
    • June 28, 1911 - Big Cypress Indian Reservation created by President Taft
    • June 29, 1931 - Monticello hits 109 degrees -- hottest-ever for Florida
    • June 30, 1975 - Cher marries Daytona Beach's favorite son Gregg Allman
  • On this day in Florida history - May
    • May 1, 1562 - Jean Ribault arrives at St. Johns River, claims Florida for France
    • May 2, 1936 - Panama City Beach incorporated in Bay County
    • May 3, 1901 - Jacksonville burns to the ground
    • May 4, 1990 - Execution goes awry as flames, smoke shoot from head
    • May 5, 1961 - Alan Shepard becomes first American in space
    • May 6, 1965 - Rolling Stones play Clearwater, write 'Satisfaction' riff
    • May 7, 1940 - Voting machine shortages create long wait at polls
    • May 8, 1923 - Killings of work camp prisoners detailed in hearing
    • May 9, 1981 - Sinkhole swallows house, five Porsches in Winter Park
    • May 10, 1781 - Spanish Gen. Bernardo de Gálvez captures Pensacola
    • May 11, 1996 - ValuJet Flight 592 crashes into Everglades
    • May 12, 1997 - Tornado hits Miami, poses for photos, videos
    • May 13, 1955 - Jax fans chase Elvis after show, tear off his clothes
    • May 14, 1973 - Skylab launches new era of space study...and toys
    • May 15, 1947 - Florida State College for Women goes co-ed, renamed FSU
    • May 16, 1929 - Lake City mob lynches grocer after wife shoots chief
    • May 17, 1980 - Not guilty verdict triggers three days of rioting in Miami
    • May 18, 1955 - Educator Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune dies
    • May 19, 2004 - Drugstore chain owner Jack Eckerd dies at 91
    • May 20, 1913: Henry Morrison Flagler dies in his home at Palm Beach
    • May 21, 1956 - Police close beach after catching black, white teens talking
    • May 22, 1931 - Canned rattlesnake goes on sale from Arcadia
    • May 23, 1898 - School for Deaf & Blind issues first diplomas
    • May 24, 1931 - Writer develops Planet of the Apes storyline for Miami
    • May 25, 1961 - JFK challenges nation to land on moon within decade
    • May 26, 1845 - Florida holds first statewide election
    • May 27, 1965 - Mysterious land deal near Orlando revealed
    • May 28, 1935 - Now controversial "Old Folks At Home" becomes state song
    • May 29, 1967 - Woman jailed after 25 kids found in station wagon
    • May 30, 1989: Claude Pepper dies after 60 years of public service
    • May 31, 1539 - DeSoto comes to Florida, changes continent forever
  • On this day in Florida history - April
    • April 1, 1926 - Air Mail service begins in four Florida cities
    • April 2, 1513 - Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida
    • April 3, 2006 - Gators basketball team win first-ever national title
    • April 4, 1933 - NASCAR 2nd generation leader Bill France Jr. is born
    • April 5, 1925 - 'Great Miami Tornado' kills 5, destroys 250 homes
    • April 6, 1959 - Seminole Tribe votes to support building "Alligator Alley"
    • April 7, 1890 - Author, Everglades crusader Marjorie Stoneman Douglas born
    • April 8, 1923 - News of "lost" Tamiami trail blazers heats up
    • April 9, 1921 - Whites kicked out of West Palm Beach "colored" town
    • April 10, 1766 - John Bartram ends journey through Carolinas, Ga., Florida
    • April 11, 1986 - FBI shootout in Dade prompts cops' need for more powerful guns
    • April 12, 1981 - Space Shuttle launched for first time
    • April 13, 1951 - Marion County sheriff killed by forged check suspect
    • April 14, 1528 - Bumbling conqueror Pánfilo de Narváez lands near Tampa
    • April 15, 1896 - Henry Flagler's railroad arrives in Miami for first time
    • April 16, 1915 and 1917 - Aviation takes two steps forward
    • April 17, 1961 - U.S. launches failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba
    • April 18, 1957 - Florida to U.S.: Integration ruling unconstitutional
    • April 19, 1930 - First Publix store incorporated in Winter Haven
    • April 20, 1967 - Orange Juice becomes official state beverage
    • April 21, 1924 - NY's infamous 'Bobbed Haired Bandit' caught in Jax
    • April 22, 2000 - Elian Gonzalez seized in raid, returned to Cuba
    • April 23, 1982 - Keys secede from Union, create Conch Republic
    • April 24, 1965 - Orlando honors hometown astronaut with John Young Day
    • April 25, 1966 - Gov. Haydon Burns says his plane trailed by UFO
    • April 26, 1920 - Crop shippers seizing ice, creating shortage
    • April 27, 1969 - 1,000 students help during FSU admin building fire
    • April 28, 1985 - World's tallest sand sculpture built at Treasure Island
    • April 29, 1980 - U.S. braces for magnitude of Mariel Boatlift
    • April 30, 1915 - Broward County created, named after former governor
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Picture
Picture

The secret Florida 
life and death 
of the man 
who wrote

Picture

Science Fiction's
greatest novel

The author of one of the genre's most revered works lived anonymously in Daytona Beach with his wife and unfinished sequel
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By Denny Bowden
Volusia History - Retracing

Florida's Past
This week I took a short drive to two local homes of the author of the best science fiction novel ever written (as voted by college professors who were teaching science fiction). He was born in New Smyrna Beach and died in Daytona Beach. It was a quiet trip of only a handful of miles, but it took me back 40 years.

The book is regarded as a science fiction masterpiece, comparable with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach.

   Nestled with other homes on the beachside of Daytona are two residences where Walter M. Miller, Jr., and his wife lived a secluded life made possible by royalties from the greatest SF novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, winner of science fiction’s highest prize, The Hugo Award. Since its publication in 1960 it has sold millions of copies. A few years later, in 1967, Canticle was recognized as “the high point” of all religious science fiction novels.  Brian W. Aldiss, critic and science fiction novelist, noted in his Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction that reviewers of Canticle “said it was so good it couldn’t possibly be SF.

   As I drove to Miller’s homes, my thoughts returned to the late 1970s when I was teaching classes of science fiction at Spruce Creek High School.  I smiled to myself, remembering how I wrote and published some of my own fanzines, including artwork by my students. 

   Parking the car across from one of Miller’s homes, I remembered how excited I was as a teacher when I learned that Walter M. Miller, Jr. was living right here in Daytona Beach.  I hunted down his phone number and asked him if he would come and speak to my classes, but he was guarded and hesitant – finally declining, saying that for many years he had been suffering writer’s block.  It was as if Faulkner or Hemingway was telling me he gave up writing 15 years ago because of writer’s block. 

   Miller had quickly developed from a “commercial writer” of what many would call pulp fiction to become an artist of novelistic writing. He had published his first science fiction short story in 1951, and he had stopped writing just nine years later at age 37.

   I was introduced to Miller’s Canticle at the Daytona Beach Community College in 1974 in Pat Bennett’s science fiction course, which I was taking for credit to extend my teaching certificate.  At the time I thought of myself as a young man who had already travelled much in science fiction, so as I entered her course I was quietly judgmental about what books she would select. 

   But I soon realized that she was confronting us with a broad range of science fiction, and her choices have stood the test of time, including Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, Kurt Vonnegutt’s Player Piano and also Cat’s Cradle, as well as the Hugo Award-winning A Canticle for Leibowitz. None of us, not even our instructor, knew that the author had been born in New Smyrna, nor that he was secretively living in Daytona Beach.

   My conversation with one of the greats of science fiction went something like this:

   “Hello. Mr. Miller?”

   “Yes.”

   “Hi. My name is Denny Bowden, and I teach a science fiction course at Spruce Creek High School, and I want you to know how much I admire your novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz. That is how you pronounce it, isn’t it–LEE bow WITZ.”

   “I suppose. I’m not really sure myself.”

   “Oh, I wasn’t sure if it was LIGH bow WITZ or LEE bow WITZ.”

   “I’m not sure either.”

   “It’s an honor to speak with you, and I’m calling to ask if you’d be willing to speak to the students in my science fiction classes someday.”

   There was silence on the phone.

   “I don’t mean a formal lecture – just a chance for my students to meet you and to ask you some questions.”

   Then he broke his silence and said something like, “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to come. I’ve had a writer’s block.”

   He said little more, but he meant that he’d not written for years and years.

   New Smyrna Beach is where Miller’s eventful life began, where he was born as an only child on January 23, 1923, when his father worked there for the Florida East Coast Railroad. Miller’s childhood home still stands today at 705 South Magnolia Avenue, though in recent years it has served as a chiropractor’s office. 

   When Miller was 18 years old, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he hurriedly enlisted in the Army Air Force the very next month, leaving New Smyrna Beach behind to face some of the most brutalizing experiences of World War II. 
   
   Miller began as an Army Air Corps radioman, but soon he encountered traumatic battle engagements as a young B-25 tail gunner, surviving 53 bombing missions over Italy and the Balkans. His quiet upbringing in New Smyrna Beach had not prepared him for his conscience-wrenching participation in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, the oldest monastery in the Western world.  Although the bombing of this German strategic position was necessary, Miller’s active role devastated him, even though prior to the war he had openly considered himself an atheist in college. 
   
   After the war, two years of mulling his war experiences may have been what compelled him in to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1947 when he was 25.

   Fellow Hugo-winning science fiction novelist Joe Haldeman says that World War II caused Miller to have “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for 30 years before it had a name.”  No doubt, the anguished confliction Miller must have felt during the Vietnam War was the reason he kept in his living room a photograph of Ron Kovic, the paralyzed Vietnam War veteran and anti-war activist whose memoir Born on the Fourth of July was adapted into a film by Oliver Stone.

   Miller once said, “[It] never occurred to me that Canticle was my own personal response to war until I was writing the first version of the scene where Zerchi lies half buried in the rubble. Then a lightbulb came on over my head. . . is this the abbey at Monte Cassino? . . . What have I been writing?” 

   In 1945, Miller married Anna Louise Becker, and they eventually had four children. Miller studied engineering at the University of Texas, Austin from 1947 to 1950, but he did not complete his degree. At about that time, he was injured in an automobile accident, and while recuperating in the hospital he wrote his first story, which was published in the prestigious American Mercury magazine. After this he wrote nothing but science fiction and published more than three dozen stories in a variety of magazines between 1951 and 1959.
About 
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the Southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, 
the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. 
The monks of the fictional Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it.
From wikipedia.org

   His successes led to a contract to write scripts for the popular TV show Captain Video, which he and other science fiction writers improved with their talent in science fiction themes.

   Miller’s writing improved quickly, and in 1955 he produced his first Hugo Award winner, The Darfsteller, which won in the novelette catagory.  That same year he published a short story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that later would become the major portion of the first third of A Canticle for Leibowitz, and in the writing of two additional related stories he realized that the three stories together could comprise a novel.  

   As I mentioned earlier, Canticle, a dystopian novel set on a post-nuclear holocaust Earth, is regarded as a science fiction masterpiece, comparable with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach.  David Nolan in The Booklover’s Guide to Florida writes, “Some say it is the best science-fiction novel ever written."

   Miller’s work influenced the direction of science fiction in the 1950s and 1960s.

   Miller had moved to Daytona by the time Canticle was published in 1960, and it won the Hugo in 1961 and has been published in hardcover and paperback in more than 40 editions, never going out of print since it was published 54 years ago. It continues, even today, to show up persistently in “Best Science Fiction” lists, and most prestigiously, Miller’s masterpiece has been voted as the “best all-time science fiction novel” in the Poll Awards of Locus magazine, considered to be the predominant science fiction “news organ.” Canticle has won this award not once, but three times.

   New Smyrnans and Daytonans can take pride in Miller’s accomplishment.

   Canticle was adapted in 1981 on National Public Radio (NPR) as a full-cast radio program of 15 episodes, and in 1993 BBC Radio performed a 90-minute dramatization of the first two parts of Canticle. Then in 2012, BBC Radio adapted the first part of the novel into five 30-minute episodes.

   Miller remained reclusive, even avoiding family members, and over more than 40 years never allowed his literary agent to have a meeting with him. Once, Miller wrote an appreciative letter to another author, praising his work, but at the bottom of the letter added, “P. S., This does not mean I want to meet you!” 

   While living on the beachside in Daytona Beach, Miller signed a contract for a second novel shortly after Canticle was finished, but the small advance of $1,000 may have been what caused him to set aside that project.

   Miller and his wife lived their private life in Daytona for 18 years after Canticle‘s success before he sent his literary agent 60 pages of the manuscript of the sequel, but Miller once again turned away from his novel. I believe this is about the time that I phoned him.

   Miller continued to live reclusively in Daytona for another 10 years, apparently not working on his writing at all, and then sometime around 1988 an editor for Bantam Books contacted his literary agent and encouraged Miller to continue work on the novel, and this spurred him to life again, producing an additional 250 pages over the next two years.


   No one in Daytona knew that this great science fiction novelist was at work again in his beachside home, fighting persistent bouts of depression and writer’s block and feeling crushed by ambition to accept nothing less than excellence.

   When his wife’s health declined, the pressure to complete his novel must have been unbearable, and when she died in August 1995, Miller could write no more. He told his agent that trying to finish it was like “trying to spit through a screen.” 

   Miller’s literary agent was experienced in working with major writers. Ray Bradbury and William Styron were among his clients, and he apparently knew just how to ask Miller to trust him to place Miller’s manuscript with a novelist who would not re-write Miller’s work.  Miller agreed and told his agent, “Any idiot with a sense of humor can finish this book.”

   Miller’s agent told science fiction writer Terry Bisson that Miller “had ‘hit a stone wall,’ and Bisson was eager to work on Miller’s sequel, saying, “Canticle is one of the few science fiction books not only known but read outside the field (unlike, say, Dune, or Stranger in a Strange Land)."

   Bisson was handed a box with the 600-page manuscript which he said “weighed more than a small dog,” and he said, “It was brilliant. It was beautiful. It was almost perfect. . . It even had a title: Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.” 

   This week as I stepped out of my car, camera in hand, I paused a moment to appreciate this little house that had been Miller’s home. Inwardly, I smiled at this cozy wooden home on the Daytona Beach peninsula at 513 Hillside Avenue, just south of the Orange Avenue/Silver Beach approach to the ocean. I wondered if anyone inside was aware that Miller had lived and written there.

   Next, I drove for about four minutes to Miller’s other beachside home at 403 Lenox Avenue, a few blocks north of the Orange Avenue/Silver Beach approach. It’s a mustard-colored stucco two-story house that abuts the southwest corner of an empty field that was Lenox Avenue Elementary School when Miller was writing in this home. I wonder if any of those children grew up and read Miller’s Canticle.

   Other than his World War II experiences, the most dramatic event for Miller occurred at his Daytona beachside home on the morning of January 9, 1996.  After four months of depression following his wife’s death, Miller phoned 9-1-1 to report that there was a dead man on his front lawn, and when the Daytona Beach police arrived three minutes later at 8:32 a.m., they found Walter M. Miller, Jr., aged 72, seated in a chair on the lawn, dead from a single bullet shot into his brain.

   Work on Miller’s sequel to A Canticle for Leibowitz was yet to be done, and he had turned his back on the novel a final time. Thinking of this, I’m reminded of Miller’s 1954 short story, “Death of a Spaceman,” whose main character says, “I want to be buried with my back to space, understand?” 

   Possibly to honor Miller’s wish to return to his beginnings, his cremated ashes were cast upon Mosquito Lagoon, not far from where he was born in New Smyrna Beach.


Denny Bowden, Ph.D., writes about Volusia County history on the blog,
Volusia History - Retracing Florida's Past.
His work is reposted here by permission.
Read more of his Denny's blogs at 
http://volusiahistory.wordpress.com/

Previous posts
Casey Stengel was a Daytona Beach troublemaker
True Stories about The Real McCoy
Daytona's Deadliest Air Crash: Aug. 10, 1937
Zora Neale Hurston's unsung years on Florida's east coast
Florida's Worst Freezes
Washtub Baths and Pot-bellied Stoves in 1930s Florida
Annie Oakley was nearly crushed to death near Daytona Beach
Before the Seminoles, Timucuans dominated northern Florida
The ghost settlement of Freemanville
Daytona Beach ends Stan Musial's pitching career
and aims him to the Hall of Fame
How Daytona Beach teens' lives changed during World War II