Celebratg William Gay | Chapter 16

Contents:

• LEBACKER WILLIE GAY JR. SAYS HIS STOLEN R HAS BEEN RETURNED
• SOMEONE WAS DUMB ENOUGH TO STEAL WILLIE GAY JR.’S R
• WILLIAM GAY WAS NEVER TOO BY FOR LIFE’S SMALLER MOMENTS
• I LOVE WILLIAM GAY’S ‘THE LONG HOME’
• CELEBRATG WILLIAM GAY
• STORI OM THE ATTIC, PREVLY UNPUBLISHED WORK BY WILLIAM GAY, REVIEWED BY DAWN MAJOR
• REMEMBERG WILLIAM GAY
• WILLIAM GAY DI AT 70; WRER TIED TO TENNSEE
• WILLIAMGAY

LEBACKER WILLIE GAY JR. SAYS HIS STOLEN R HAS BEEN RETURNED

For those of you who have been followg the saga of Willie Gay Jr.

Chiefs lebacker fally posted some good news three days after his ri was stolen om the weekend, Gay’s r was stolen om him and he took to Twter to ask for help to fd out what happened and to get back to him. The tweet has sce been leted but Gay origally posted, “All my Kansas Cy people My r has been stolen please retweet this” wh a photo of his r Wednday night, Gay had posted that his r had been found and that everythg was okay after all. In fact, Gay seemed to have nothg but love for those — Willie Gay Jr.

And jt se you remaed worried about the actual r after readg all of that, Gay provid another y r was revered— Willie Gay Jr. It’s been a rough few weeks for Willie Gay Jr. Gay first jured the toe the team’s fal preason game agast the Mnota Vikgs and has been out ever sce.

SOMEONE WAS DUMB ENOUGH TO STEAL WILLIE GAY JR.’S R

Now that Gay has his r back, we n only hope thgs ntue to get better for him and that his toe is healg up jt the way he looked the preason, even after missg a few gam, this n still turn to an imprsive breakout season for him on this Chiefs The bt Chiefs players to never w a Super Bowl. Chiefs lebacker Willie Gay a 235 lb.

Lebacker known for his credible athleticism, Gay is one of the more physilly imposg players on the team’s entire fense, the sort of guy who uld n any of down only to then loom over most of when he tch up. That’s not the sort of person who should be profiled for a crime like ’re gog to assume that whoever stole Gay’s r was simply wowed by the obvly betiful ri showsed the picture above whout any realizatn as to who belonged to.

WILLIAM GAY WAS NEVER TOO BY FOR LIFE’S SMALLER MOMENTS

Or maybe that was part of the thrill of knowg they were drivg around Willie Gay’s r—shg their chips for a wild adventure Thelma & Louise style. )As for Gay, we jt want to offer up our ndolenc for his tratn and loss. Gay is currently out for at least three full gam on jured rerve after sufferg a toe jury the fal preason tilt agast the Mnota ’s hopg Gay’s r is rightfully returned to him the same ndn was stolen.

William Gay was a good man. The night I met William Gay, we were a bar Columbia, South Carola, town for the Southeastern Inpennt Booksellers Associatn annual nference. “Tst me, ” he said, “you haven’t heard of William Gay but that’s about to change when his first novel out November.

I LOVE WILLIAM GAY’S ‘THE LONG HOME’

I never once saw William Gay dnk, -pilotg or not. But William Gay was not most men, nor like them most ways. “William Gay, ” I said.

“William Gay, ” he said.

My brother Frankie lived wh her and took re of her and wanted to meet William Gay. From the foreword to The Lost Country by William Gay. The are some well-known facts William Gay’s official bgraphy: that he lived a b the woods, that he didn’t e email, that he worked nstctn his whole life until someone fally noticed he was a great wrer.

CELEBRATG WILLIAM GAY

William Gay was born a wrer. As a late-life lerary succs who didn’t attend creative-wrg programs or pay for profsnal workshops, Gay symbolized the hop of stgglg wrers, pecially ral on.

William Gay’s ath last week of heart failure sent tremors through the muny of wrers and rears Tennsee and beyond, people who loved him as a iend and as a wrer.

We have asked some of those who knew Gay, ways large and small, to send their stori. Today we also proudly publish here another excerpt om William Gay’s forthg novel, The Lost Country. Gay provid the excerpts 2009, as panns to a long terview he gave Chapter 16, but we chose to publish only one of them at the time, holdg the others rerve to n nnectn wh some other news Gay’s life—a big award, perhaps, or the announcement of a publitn date for the new book.

STORI OM THE ATTIC, PREVLY UNPUBLISHED WORK BY WILLIAM GAY, REVIEWED BY DAWN MAJOR

We clu one of them here today, regnizg that the bt person to provi the last word on William Gay’s geo e of language and profound unrstandg of human nature is William Gay himself. Travelg wh William Gay always volv a certa amount of tours. William Gay did not climb down om his ladr and, havg never read a book, ci he was gog to wre one.

Every obuary I’ve read about William Gay—as was the se wh every newspaper or magaze profile I read about William while he was alive—featur his time the rpentry tras, particularly as a drywall hanger, almost as promently as featur his prodig gifts and acplishments as a wrer. Who knows, maybe five hundred years om now, some misguid but clamoro band of send-tier scholars will waste time batg who really wrote the books of William Gay bee, God knows, a drywall hanger om Hohenwald, Tennsee, wh ltle formal tn, would have been pable of dog so himself.

Potg out that William Gay never went to llege is as els an exercise as potg out that Bill Gat never fished.

REMEMBERG WILLIAM GAY

I once asked William Gay what was like to be a famo thor a small town like Hohenwald. But how many of would have the perseverance, the mment to art of a William Gay? At nferenc and ftivals, I liked to thk of William Gay as Home Base a strange childhood game of tag; we uld always fd each other and lose all the disfort of tryg to rema rdial to strangers.

The first words William Gay ever said to me occurred what appeared to be a ballroom si the public library Nashville. When William Gay me to vis, soon beme apparent that there was no book my llectn that he hadn’t read.

WILLIAM GAY DI AT 70; WRER TIED TO TENNSEE

I first met William Gay when I was teachg at Motlow State Communy College Tullahoma.

An ventory of ltle-known facts about William Gay. I met William Gay durg a readg of The Long Home 2000, and we beme very close iends.

A bookstore owner remembers William Gay’s first public readg. I first met William Gay when he me to our bookstore to sign his first novel. I saw William Gay a few other tim at other thor events.

WILLIAMGAY

Not only no more William Gay, but no more William Gay books.

Wh his long curly hair, ep-set ey, weathered face, and his entirely hont and unaffected gaze, William Gay stck me as one of the most formidable people I’d ever met. I first heard of William Gay durg a phone nversatn wh Tom Frankl.

As we were walkg off, the iend wh me said, “That was William Gay? That sound, to me, like a William Gay story: straightforward, unsentimental honty about love and heartbreak.