Accession
Number: 26
John Fetterman Papers, 1945-1975
Bulk Dates 1957-1975
10 linear feet
Online
Catalog Record (BANC)
Overview & Series
Description
Series 1 - Personal / Biographical
Series 2 - Pulitizer Prize Material
Series 3 - Published Writings
Material
Series 4 - Article Research Subject
Files
Series 5 - Stinking Creek
Series 6 - Photographs
Overview
of the Collection
These are correspondence, research materials,
writings, and photographs of |
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| Courier Journal-Louisville
Times reporter and editor, John Fetterman (1920-1975). Fetterman,
a Danville, Kentucky native, served
three and half years in the U.S. Navy and then attended Murray
State University under the G.I. bill, graduating in 1948.
He worked for the Murray
Ledger and Times and the Nashville Tennessean. He also tried his
hand at high school teaching and did post-graduate work at the University of
Kentucky before coming to the Louisville papers in 1957 as a staff writer and
photographer. During his Louisville years, he also did free lance writing for
such magazines as the Saturday
Evening Post, Time, Life, and National
Geographic.
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Fetterman was a prolific writer on a wide variety of subjects
that ranged from the whimsical to the tragic. He is probably best
remembered for his stories about
the impact on eastern Kentucky of strip mining, the War on Poverty, and Vietnam.
He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his article, “PFC Gibson Comes
Home,” which dealt with the death of a young Knott County, Kentucky soldier
in Vietnam and its impact on his family and community. He earlier had contributed
to a Courier-Journal series on strip mining, which won a Pulitzer in 1967. Additional
writings on Appalachian related topics include “The People of Cumberland
Gap” for National Geographic (11-71) and his book, Stinking
Creek (1967) that portrayed life in the Stinking Creek area of Knox County,
Kentucky. The core of his writing success has been described as a penchant for
simplifying the complex and capturing moods. Speaking of his approach to reporting,
he once
said, “All I try to do is find out how ordinary people are touched by things
going
on around them and then tell the truth about it.”
RESTRICTED items include several photographs made by Kentucky hospitals and police
departments, a series of 17 medical x-ray films, and excerpts from medical and
police records that include the names and locales of child abuse victims and
their alleged attackers.
Copyright: The Louisville Courier-Journal holds the copyright
to photographs used by Fetterman to illustrate articles produced
for the newspaper. Researchers must consult with the Courier-Journal before
photographs can be duplicated for publication or other use.
Related College Archives:
Series Description
30 Manuscript Boxes
This series consists of records, news clippings, personal and business correspondence
relating to Fetterman’s Navy service, Murray State University student days,
and
High school teaching in Illinois.
This series consists of congratulatory correspondence, press clippings, and printed
awards programs associated with Fetterman’s 1969 Pulitizer Prize.
This series consists of Fetterman’s published newspaper and magazine articles.
| Series
IV |
Article Research Subject Files |
Boxes 6-13 |
This series consists of written and typed notes and other material that Fetterman
compiled in the course of story research. There is an especially extensive file
on child abuse that includes an unpublished book manuscript. Other particularly
extensive files include those for his National Geographic articles, “On
the Road
with an Old-Time Circus” and “The People of Cumberland Gap.”
This series consists of notes, correspondence, and working manuscript related
to the writing and publication in 1967 of his book, Stinking Creek. Fetterman
spent many weekends and days off getting to know the families he wrote about
and kept up contacts with them years later.
This series consists of hundreds of photographic images produced as documentation
for Fetterman’s articles. Photographic formats represented include numerous
35-mm color transparencies, 35-mm and 120 size contact prints and 8x10 enlargements.
There are also numerous 120 and 35-mm negatives without prints. Arrangement
is alphabetical by subject.
The identity of the photographer is not always clear. Fetterman’s name
appears on a large number of the images. Others are identified as being made
by Courier-Journal and Louisville
Times staff photographers Bill Strode and C.Thomas Hardin. Still others
are identified only as Courier-Journal and Louisville Times photographs.
Jonathan Blair is listed as photographer for “On the Road with an Old-Time
Circus,” but neither his name nor Fetterman’s appear on any of that
article’s
35-mm slides.
Bruce Dale was the photographer for “The People of Cumberland Gap.” All
of that article’s slides bear Fetterman’s name. In the published
article
some
of the
photos are credited to Dale and others to Fetterman.
Copyright: The Louisville Courier-Journal holds the copyright to
photographs used by Fetterman to illustrate articles produced for the newspaper.
Researchers must consult with the Courier-Journal before
photographs can be duplicated for publication or other use.
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