Harry Leon Wilson, Jr.,—or Leon, as he went by—was, like his father, more co-opted into the Fortean movement than a committed member.
Born in Carmel in 1913, Leon came of age in a beautiful environment, although under trying circumstances. His parents failing marriage and divorce when he has fourteen left him hardly ever seeing either Harry Wilson or Helen Cook Wilson. If he showed any interest in the Fortean Society, which assembled when he was around 18, there is no record of it. Likely he knew of Fort, though, if not from his father, but just because Fort was often referred to among the literati of the area. Ed Ricketts, sometimes collaborator with John Steinbeck, noted in late 1943:
“Charles Fort makes my tired ache, altho I realize I am one of a minority. Many people whose minds I respect admire him: Janko; at one time John [Steinbeck]; Toni. Most of the writers whose work appears not to be circumscribed by form are those who have got to use it familiarly as a person uses his senses. And I suppose most of of them went thru a conscious struggle on that score before finally getting into their own peculiarly characteristic and individual form, or becoming free of it altogether.”
In 1938, Leon went to Hollywood to make his living as a writer. His father had been there for a time, as had Thayer, but both were gone elsewhere when Leon arrived. After three years, he moved to Tennessee and joined the Highlander Folk School. It had been founded in 1932 as a cradle of industrial and union activism in the South. He only stayed for a year, though, his job as librarian interrupted by World War II—although not as one would expect it.
Leon did not approve of the war—although I am not sure why. He resigned from Highlander to keep the school free from his issues: the school supported the war and, probably more importantly, was already seen as a front for communism, and his stance could have hurt its image. Leon did not register for the draft, and was thus arrested in March 1943. In October he was sentenced to two years imprisonment. Two months later, Thayer wrote his encomium to Harry Leon Wilson, and appended to it a description of Leon’s plight—Thayer was agains the war and in full support of all Conscientious Objectors, so Wilson, son of a founder as well as a CO, was a potent symbol. Thayer reamed the New York Times report on Leon’s arrest, attacking it for underplaying how great a writer Senior was, as well as dismissing Junior as a mere librarian in Tennessee:
“The teachers and ‘librarians’—in fact all the unselfish humanitarians who give Monteagle (TN, home of the school) their time and services—serve entirely without pay, The school’s program is financed by contributions from individuals—and unions.
There’s the rub.
That’s why you never heard of the Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tenn., where Leon Wilson would rather work without pay, teaching blacks and whites of all ages to read—and to organize—than to participate in pointless mass-murder.
Like Dave Cowan, and his own father, like yourself and Your Secretary, Leon Wilson has ‘set too much copy’ to take the printed word of the Freeprez as ‘sacred authority.” [The last was a quote from Senior’s “The Wrong Twin.”]
As it turned out, Leon was paroled in December 1944. He wrote Tarkington:
“Dear Tarkington,
I have been meaning to write and let you know of my sudden return to society out ‘of the shadows’ as the convicts affectingly call it when writing for their prison magazines.” . . .
“First, I was released just a month ago, on a type of parole designed for all Selective Service violators, whether by conscience or mere evasion. The parole conditions are that you do work of ‘national importance’ which, interpreted, means work in a hospital--clerical in my particular case--at 50 dollars a month and maintenance, which condition puts us violators on the same pay rating as soldiers. I have no fault to find with the arrangement--in fact would have done the work for much less had I been allowed to do it instead of being sent to prison. That’s water over the dam, now, though.
Prison was a severe, endless experience; I was there a year. Conditions are for the most part all that you imagine: that is the the system is ‘sane’, modern, humane, and all that. But a prison is a prison, no matter how many modern conveniences you have such as radios, chicken on Sunday, and guards that very seldom fall back on brutality.
The poorest feature of prison is that there is no rehabilitation. Same is thoroughly discussed at meetings of the American Prison Association, but even the overlords are too cautious to claim that any man is ever rehabilitated by being kept in a pen. Some of the men grow less social while there; many come out unchanged--of the hundreds I knew well, I didn’t see one go out improved. (End of free glimpse behind the walls--I would say, winding up, that I found a great deal in the experience that was valuable in the way any intensive experience of your life is valuable.)
I particularly chose to come hear for my parole because my mother is living here. My job is interesting--after a year of prison I am to have a year in a big, rushed hospital--another new world for me. The story of the extreme difficulty in getting parole is too heart breaking and dull to go into now. I am happier not having to think about the rigors of what is past.”
He married—a woman who was serving the war effort, as it turned out, and when his wife went to law school, the couple moved to New York. Thayer, though, never reported any meeting with the younger Wilson. But there was at least one small connection. Wilson sent one letter to Thayer, the post-script of which Thayer published in Doubt 13 (December 1945):
“P.S., I met someone the other day with this idea: that there should be universal time, that is all over the old mud ball it should be 8:15 A.M. Monday at the same time; the hour should be the same as a pice of nomenclature, having nothing to do with amount of darkness in the air. Have you encountered this before? Some striking advantages present themselves: there would be note more of this: ‘It’s 9:30 here in London so it’s now——, etc.’ There are equally obvious disadvantages; such as, you could not call up a party half way round the world at your 8:00 P.M., and the like; however, strikes me it is the very first step one might take to make this ‘global’ world really one community. I pass it on for what it’s worth.”
Leon never appeared in the Fortean Society Magazine again. He died in 1997.
Born in Carmel in 1913, Leon came of age in a beautiful environment, although under trying circumstances. His parents failing marriage and divorce when he has fourteen left him hardly ever seeing either Harry Wilson or Helen Cook Wilson. If he showed any interest in the Fortean Society, which assembled when he was around 18, there is no record of it. Likely he knew of Fort, though, if not from his father, but just because Fort was often referred to among the literati of the area. Ed Ricketts, sometimes collaborator with John Steinbeck, noted in late 1943:
“Charles Fort makes my tired ache, altho I realize I am one of a minority. Many people whose minds I respect admire him: Janko; at one time John [Steinbeck]; Toni. Most of the writers whose work appears not to be circumscribed by form are those who have got to use it familiarly as a person uses his senses. And I suppose most of of them went thru a conscious struggle on that score before finally getting into their own peculiarly characteristic and individual form, or becoming free of it altogether.”
In 1938, Leon went to Hollywood to make his living as a writer. His father had been there for a time, as had Thayer, but both were gone elsewhere when Leon arrived. After three years, he moved to Tennessee and joined the Highlander Folk School. It had been founded in 1932 as a cradle of industrial and union activism in the South. He only stayed for a year, though, his job as librarian interrupted by World War II—although not as one would expect it.
Leon did not approve of the war—although I am not sure why. He resigned from Highlander to keep the school free from his issues: the school supported the war and, probably more importantly, was already seen as a front for communism, and his stance could have hurt its image. Leon did not register for the draft, and was thus arrested in March 1943. In October he was sentenced to two years imprisonment. Two months later, Thayer wrote his encomium to Harry Leon Wilson, and appended to it a description of Leon’s plight—Thayer was agains the war and in full support of all Conscientious Objectors, so Wilson, son of a founder as well as a CO, was a potent symbol. Thayer reamed the New York Times report on Leon’s arrest, attacking it for underplaying how great a writer Senior was, as well as dismissing Junior as a mere librarian in Tennessee:
“The teachers and ‘librarians’—in fact all the unselfish humanitarians who give Monteagle (TN, home of the school) their time and services—serve entirely without pay, The school’s program is financed by contributions from individuals—and unions.
There’s the rub.
That’s why you never heard of the Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tenn., where Leon Wilson would rather work without pay, teaching blacks and whites of all ages to read—and to organize—than to participate in pointless mass-murder.
Like Dave Cowan, and his own father, like yourself and Your Secretary, Leon Wilson has ‘set too much copy’ to take the printed word of the Freeprez as ‘sacred authority.” [The last was a quote from Senior’s “The Wrong Twin.”]
As it turned out, Leon was paroled in December 1944. He wrote Tarkington:
“Dear Tarkington,
I have been meaning to write and let you know of my sudden return to society out ‘of the shadows’ as the convicts affectingly call it when writing for their prison magazines.” . . .
“First, I was released just a month ago, on a type of parole designed for all Selective Service violators, whether by conscience or mere evasion. The parole conditions are that you do work of ‘national importance’ which, interpreted, means work in a hospital--clerical in my particular case--at 50 dollars a month and maintenance, which condition puts us violators on the same pay rating as soldiers. I have no fault to find with the arrangement--in fact would have done the work for much less had I been allowed to do it instead of being sent to prison. That’s water over the dam, now, though.
Prison was a severe, endless experience; I was there a year. Conditions are for the most part all that you imagine: that is the the system is ‘sane’, modern, humane, and all that. But a prison is a prison, no matter how many modern conveniences you have such as radios, chicken on Sunday, and guards that very seldom fall back on brutality.
The poorest feature of prison is that there is no rehabilitation. Same is thoroughly discussed at meetings of the American Prison Association, but even the overlords are too cautious to claim that any man is ever rehabilitated by being kept in a pen. Some of the men grow less social while there; many come out unchanged--of the hundreds I knew well, I didn’t see one go out improved. (End of free glimpse behind the walls--I would say, winding up, that I found a great deal in the experience that was valuable in the way any intensive experience of your life is valuable.)
I particularly chose to come hear for my parole because my mother is living here. My job is interesting--after a year of prison I am to have a year in a big, rushed hospital--another new world for me. The story of the extreme difficulty in getting parole is too heart breaking and dull to go into now. I am happier not having to think about the rigors of what is past.”
He married—a woman who was serving the war effort, as it turned out, and when his wife went to law school, the couple moved to New York. Thayer, though, never reported any meeting with the younger Wilson. But there was at least one small connection. Wilson sent one letter to Thayer, the post-script of which Thayer published in Doubt 13 (December 1945):
“P.S., I met someone the other day with this idea: that there should be universal time, that is all over the old mud ball it should be 8:15 A.M. Monday at the same time; the hour should be the same as a pice of nomenclature, having nothing to do with amount of darkness in the air. Have you encountered this before? Some striking advantages present themselves: there would be note more of this: ‘It’s 9:30 here in London so it’s now——, etc.’ There are equally obvious disadvantages; such as, you could not call up a party half way round the world at your 8:00 P.M., and the like; however, strikes me it is the very first step one might take to make this ‘global’ world really one community. I pass it on for what it’s worth.”
Leon never appeared in the Fortean Society Magazine again. He died in 1997.
