CLYDE RICE (Photo by Patty Cassidy)
"'If I ever get back to my place on the Clackamas,' I murmured to myself, 'I will make it a haven not only for me, but also for friends who are down on their luck—a place for all of us to get our backs against a warm wall and fight off enemies and circumstances that were part of our undoing. A man could nurture his weakened purpose there and reacquire lost dignity—gird himself once more to tilt with the future.'"
Clyde Rice, "The Why of the Place" |
Clyde Rice
Clyde Rice was born in Portland, Oregon near Reed College on July 22, 1903. He completed only a high-school education, but later became self-taught in everything from writing to classical music to boat-building. He explained that he spent the first half of his life as a laboring man because he had too much physical energy to do otherwise; in the second half, he had so many stories to tell that he began writing them down. He did so in longhand, which his wife, Ginny, typed into manuscript form on a portable Royal typewriter. In 1984, at the age of 81, Clyde published the first portion of his autobiography, A Heaven in the Eye, which won the Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, judged by Robert Penn Warren. That book went on to become one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year, being selected by USA Today as one of the best 10 books of 1984. This was followed by a sequel, Nordi's Gift, in 1985, and by Night Freight, an autobiographical fragment, in 1987. Learn more about Clyde's books HERE. At 92 Clyde was still writing actively every day, though a series of strokes had forced him to abandon longhand for a computer. Since Clyde never learned to type, the keys of his computer were reconfigured in alphabetical order. Picking out the keys of the computer with a pencil eraser, he managed to write about a page-and-a-half a day and to do so with the energy and gusto that was always his trademark. Clyde Rice died in 1997 at the age of 94. For the memorial service, poet Gary Miranda, Clyde's editor and long-time friend, wrote and delivered a eulogy that presents a portrait of the man and the writer, as well as some excerpts from Clyde's unpublished works. You can find it HERE. |
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Virginia ("Ginny") Rice
Virginia Rice (née Lee) was born on October 16, 1920 and lived in north Portland until her family moved to a home in Carver on the Clackamas River. For many years, she worked for Lawrence Leather Company in Portland as a secretary. She married Clyde in 1946, when she was 26, and later took on the Herculean task of deciphering Clyde's handwriting and typing up all of his manuscripts.
Ginny was an avid reader and an accomplished artist in her own right, though she was always happy to let Clyde have the limelight. Well into her eighties she could still be seen making the walk down to the Clackamas River, flippers in hand, for a swim. Ginny died on July 17, 2012 at the age of 91. The Fall 2012 issue of the Friends' Newsletter commemorated Ginny with a eulogy, photos from her memorial service and of her paintings, and comparative facsimiles of Clyde's handwritten and Ginny's typewritten first drafts. You can find it HERE. |
VIRGINIA RICE
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