DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. George Sessions Perry — born May 5, 1910, right here in Rockdale, the son of Andrew and Laura Perry. Now, some writers spend their whole lives searching for something worth writing about.
George Sessions Perry didn't have to look very far. The people and events from his growing-up years in Rockdale — the folks he knew, the stories baked into this corner of Texas — those became the raw material for a long line of fiction and non-fiction, stories and novels that he'd carry out into the wider world. In 1933, he married Claire Hodges of Beaumont.
And then, four years after that, the first of those books found its way into print. Just the first. There were more to come.
Then came the war — World War II — and George Sessions Perry didn't sit it out at a safe distance. He went in as a correspondent, sending back first-hand accounts of what was happening out there. Not just to any publication, mind you.
To readers of The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post. People were reading about the war through his eyes. Along the way, he won several major awards, including the 1941 National Book Award — the kind of recognition that tells you the rest of the country had taken notice of what Rockdale had always known.
George Sessions Perry died in 1956 to 1957. The marker doesn't get more precise than that, and maybe that's fitting — because it's the stories that stay, long after the dates blur.
What the marker says
The son of Andrew and Laura Perry, George Sessions Perry was born May 5, 1910, in Rockdale. In 1933, he married Claire Hodges of Beaumont. Four years later, he published the first in a long line of fiction and non-fiction stories and novels, many of which were based on people and events from his growing-up years in Rockdale. As a World War II correspondent, he brought first-hand accounts of the war to readers of "The New Yorker" and "The Saturday Evening Post." Perry won several major awards, including the 1941 National Book Award, before his death in 1956-57.