by Ron Hull (guest writer)
Mari Sandoz, our great chronicler of High Plains history, was fascinated by “will-to-power individuals” and her books are populated by these people. You’ll meet them in Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglala’, The Cattlemen, The Buffalo Hunters, and Miss Morissa.
I met her in 1957 while working with the Nebraska State Historical Society on a television series for Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) titled, “Yesterday in Nebraska,” but it was two years later that Sandoz and I worked together on seven half-hour programs, “Mari Sandoz Discusses Creative Writing.” We worked together for nearly three months, and it was in these planning sessions that she revealed her philosophy about writing and much about herself.
Her mantra for this television series was, “Anyone with the power of literacy can learn how to write well enough to publish.” She believed that and used herself as an example. Educated through the eighth grade, and after taking a few courses at the University of Nebraska, she literally willed herself to be a writer. She was always the first to tell students that each one of us has a great story to tell, and she did what she could to urge people to get started.
Over the years Mari and I worked on a number of television programs for NET, and we were friends until her death in 1966. When I would be in New York City, she always welcomed me for a visit to her apartment in the west village. After lunch or dinner at a small restaurant nearby, students, recognizing her, would come to our table and ask if she could look over their work.
It was not unusual for me to help carry manuscripts, poetry, essays, and other original efforts back to her apartment. She never turned a student down and was always hopeful she would be the catalyst for someone to achieve distinction as a writer. She had time for students and for her own writing, and that was her life. One afternoon, while walking past Love Library on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, we were talking about how she had no family of her own but had helped raise her brothers and sisters on the Old Jules homestead near the Niobrara River in northwest Nebraska, and she paused and turning to the library, she said, “My books are my children.” She has 22 of them in libraries throughout the world.
