Beacons of the early years
Phebe K. Warner, a Claude doctor's wife, was one of the founding members. She wrote editorials from
1916 to 1935; wrote features about country life for 15 years and for 8 years was a columnist in leading
Southern dailies and weeklies. She campaigned hard to make Palo Duro canyon into a state park, and
lived to see that dream fulfilled..
Loula Grace Erdman was the other great guiding light for PPW. She came to Amarillo in 1927 to teach in
elementary and high school and ended up as a professor at WTSU. By 1972 she had published 21
books. *The Years of the Locust* won Redbook's $10,000 prize.
Evelyn Pierce Nace of Pampa, a most prolific member who joined in the 1940s, published more than 50
novels and more than 300 fact-crime articles,love-pulp stories, detective fiction, and confession stories.
She also wrote a column, "Mending Mature Marriages," for the Amarillo Daily News.
Cleo Tom Terry was a working ranch woman as well as a writer.
Mildred Cheney, who died in 1955, was for 30 years business manager and editor of a newspaper she
and her husband established: The Panhandle Weekly, later called The Southwest Plainsman. Her
husband called her "The Colonel." Many of her editorials were reprinted in larger papers.
Minnie Timms Harper rode with her husband, a U.S. Marshall, on brand inspections, and took notes.
Sophia Meyer, as society editor for the Amarillo paper, "ruled the social scene gently and recorded it
elegantly," according to the 50th anniversary book.
Laurene Chinn's novel "The Unannointed" was a Literary Guild selection.
The 1972 anniversary book listed 31 members who had had a total of 109 books published.
Still to come on this website: the lofty achievements of more recent members:
Nova Schubert Bair, Ivon Cecil, Wanda Evans, Kimberly Holt, Jodi Koumalats, Marianne McNeil Logan,
Doris Meredith, DeWanna Pace, Pauline Durrett Robertson, Mildred Crabtree Speer, Dr. Ellen Whiteley
--and more.
To keep up with accomplishments of our current members, become a member and read all about them
in our newsletter, "The Window."
Our founder
PPW's long line of excellent writers and interesting characters began with founder Laura V. Hamner,
hailed as the Panhandle's first historian. As a 20-year-old, fresh out of Peabody College in Nashville,
she stepped down from the train in Claude one day in 1981. She was eager to see her parents and her
sister, that's all -- she had no notion that before she died she would exert her influence on the cultural
awareness of Panhandle people as few others have done.
She was your quintessential spinster, caring for her parents (and a nephew who died at age four),
teaching school, serving as postmistress and Potter County school superintendent, and delaying her
full-fledged writing career until she was past 60.
In 1935 she published "The No Gun Man of Texas" about Charles Goodnight. It was the first
self-published book to be adopted by the State Board of Education. She also had four other books
published.
Miss Hamner wrote and recorded at least 430 "Light N Hitch" radio programs on KGNC, telling the
stories of the Panhandle pioneers. And she wrote two columns for the Amarillo News-Globe -- "Talk to
Teens" and "Spinster on the Prowl" -- for about 30 years. She served as PPW president 4 different
times. She received many, many honors -- culminating with the Texas Heritage Foundation National
Medal presented at a PPW meeting on her 92nd birthday.
She died in 1968 at age 97. She has been memorialized in a mini opera, "Laura V," written by Gene
Murray under the auspices of the Amarillo Opera. A number of grateful modern-day PPW members were
in the audience for the premiere production at the Gem Theater in Claude in June 1998.
PPW books
In 1941, PPW celebrated its "coming of age" birthday (21 years!) with the publication of a hardback
anthology called "Pen Points" containing works by 57 PPW members. Copies of this are available in
the Amarillo Public Library.
In 1972, the members learned that the founding date was 1920 rather than 1922 as they had been
claiming. So they celebrated 50 years plus 2 with the publication of a chock-full little golden book under
the direction of president Pauline Robertson, with research help from a committee: Mildred Speer, Nova
Bair, Rosemary Kollmar, Dora Davis, and Glenna Wilson.
The book listed biographical sketches of all 52 members, with photographs of most. Pen Women were
located in 16 area towns in 4 states. Also included was an incomplete list of nearly 240 former members.
Our Diamond Anniversary Anthology, Volume I, was published in 1995 under the direction of editor
Lavern Hays. It included 21 stories, articles and poems selected by a committee from submissions by
members. (Publication of Volume II is still pending.) Copies are available for $7.95 from Ellen
Richardson, 806-372-9729 , jnerich@arn.net.
Celebration!
PPW's Diamond Anniversary "Celebration of the Written Word" began in May 1994 and lasted through
1995 with a series of special bimonthly programs. A number of Texas speakers were arranged for by
the Austin Writers League and funded by the Texas Commission on the Arts.
The writers invited other disciplines of the arts to join in their gala diamond anniversary event on April
22, 1995, at the Virgil Patterson Auditorium of Boatmen's First National Bank. Besides a slide-show
retrospective of PPW's history, the program included a mini-opera by Gene Murray and a short drama
by Jerry McDonough, both written in honor of PPW. Friend-of-all-the-arts Pan Eimon arranged for a
juried exhibit of paintings.
Bob "Pappy" Watson, legendary local radio man, played himself in a reprise of a 1950 radio program
featuring Laura V. Hamner-- and it was the last time he uttered the words "This is KGNC, Amarillo." (He
died a few weeks later.)
The group presented an honorary membership to Mary Kate Tripp, Amarillo Globe-News book editor
and champion of local authors, and paid honor to Life Members and past presidents of PPW. Editor
Lavern Hays presented the newly published anniversary anthology.
We had special greetings from President Clinton, Governor George W. Bush, Senator Teel Bivins,
Representatives John Smithee, David Swinford and Warren Chisum, and a proclamation from the
Mayor and City Council of Amarillo. Representative Swinford had drafted a resolution in our honor that
was passed by the House of Representatives of Texas.
We also had congratulatory messages from, among others, Tony Hillerman, John Erickson, Elmer
Kelton, Joye Swain, Bud Joyner, president of Amarillo College, and Dr. Russell Long, president of
WTAMU.
Anniversary General Chair Ellen Richardson said in 1995, "Women (and men) of perception have
persevered to guide PPW through its first 75 years. And when the organization is 100 years old, many
of today's younger PPW members, famous perhaps by then, will still be looking to the future. Writers,
you might say, of '20-20 vision.' That, of course, will be in the year 2020."
Venerable still!
Amarillo, incorporated in 1899, is younger than any of the 50 largest cities in the continental United
States. Yet Panhandle Professional Writers, a still-growing organization based here, is "almost" the
oldest continuously run group of its kind in the country.
The question came up when the Writer's Digest Book Club bulletin in March 1988 reported that the
Nebraska Writers Guild "was started in the 1920s and may be the oldest..." PPW program chairman
Sharon Drain (later the president) begged to differ, sending in the exact date when our organization
was founded as Panhandle Pen Women: April 20, 1920. A copy of her letter went to the Guild president,
who wrote back, "Congratulations on both your longevity and your vigilance."
The bulletin published this question posed by Sharon: "Will the oldest continuously run group... sign
in, please?" Ten years went by and no group replied.
But in 1998, president Deborah Elliott-Upton discovered that a similar group in Norman, Oklahoma, was
celebrating its 100th anniversary.
Oh, well, second oldest ain't bad!
And while we're getting older, we're getting bigger, too. With about 300 members at the close of 2000,
about a third of whom live outside Amarillo, the group seems to ratify the words of Loula Grace Erdman
in 1969, quoted in the Amarillo Globe-Times: "There is a greater percentage of writers per capita in this
area than anywhere." She believed it was in large part because of the creative atmosphere the
Panhandle Pen Women had helped bring about.
Forebears of FIW
PPW's writer's conferences have a long and distinguished history.
In 1927 and 1928, the group sponsored series of lectures by Willard E. Hawkins of Denver and Blanche
Y. McNeil of the University of Colorado. In 1931 PPW sponsored a six-day short course in writing by
Mrs. McNeil and, in 1933 and 1934, a six-day short course by Frank Clay Cross, a Denver writer and
lecturer.
In 1947, 1948, and 1949, it was a week-long short course in fiction and feature writing, under the
direction of Loula Grace Erdman. Attendance was 64 in 1947. After 1950 the conference was officially
called the WRITERS' ROUNDUP.
It outgrew PPW's resources and management was assumed by West Texas State University. For a
couple of years it was a three-week course, and then a three-day conference. It continued until 1959,
still under Lou Erdman's direction.
In 1974 the Writer's Roundup was reinstated, and continued annually until 1979. In 1977 there were 109
people registered at a cost of $30 for all three days. Just a few of the well-known speakers they had in
those years were Elsa Russell with Reader's Digest; Norma Ainsworth, editor of Scholastic Magazines;
and Evelyn Schoolcraft of Good Old Days magazine; as well as Dr. Jack Williamson, Felix Phillips, Etta
Lynch, Lee Pennington, Jerry McDonough, Al Dewle, Lois Duncan, Carol O'Brien Sobieski, and William
D. Barney.
Our first 1-day conference in 1982 was the J. Evetts Haley Western Writing Seminar, renamed Frontiers
in Writing in 1983. Our 1999 conference was a great success, with attendance exceeding 100. Planning
is in process already for an even greater conference in June 2001.
Frontiers in Writing speakers have included John Erickson, linguist Richard Lederer, Elmer Kelton,
Thomas Clark of Writer's Digest, Shelby Hearon, U.S. Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov, Tony Hillerman,
Wallace Exman with Zebra Books, John M. Allen from Reader's Digest, Evan Marshall, Robert Flynn,
Mary Ann O'Rourk, Clay Reynolds, Bruce McGinnis, Sharyn McCrumb, Michael Seidman, Jodi Thomas,
D.R. Meredith, Ed Eakin of Eakin Press, Joyce Gibson Roach, Sam Brown, Marcia Preston, Peggy
Fielding.
We've changed!
In the early years, PPW meetings, in members' homes, were quite the hoity-toity social occasions. Many
members came by train wearing their fancy hats, and stayed in hotels. Well, sixty-some years went by
and lots of things changed in the world. In the '80s, most women writers also held down other jobs.
In January 1983, the PPW membership approved a change in meeting dates from Tuesdays to
Saturdays -- and right away our attendance increased. Currently our meetings are usually at the ASCA
Conference Center. And there's certainly no dress code.
Men had been welcome in PPW but, understandably, very few ever joined. Some of us began to realize
that our organization would be much stronger if it really included everyone -- and in 1987, there seemed
to be general consensus that we needed a new name.
Since everyone usually referred to the club by its initials we wanted to keep the same ones. No one
came up with anything logical to go with the second "P" besides "Professional," and that was
proposed to the membership. As President Doris Meredith editorialized in the PPW Window, "What was
once appropriate and proper becomes limiting. . . . I suspect Laura Hamner was farsighted enough to
recognize that times would change." She noted that PPW's constitution had never restricted
membership on the basis of gender, or anything else. But "its name, Panhandle Pen Women; did, and
does."
At the regular meeting in September 1987, members approved the bylaws change to "Panhandle
Professional Writers, originally Panhandle Pen Women." Our male membership has steadily increased,
much to our benefit. We pride ourselves on our many kinds of diversity.
What's in our name?
We often encounter hesitation by prospective members who think our name means that members must
have been published. And that's far from true.
In the earliest years, requirements were indeed strict: to sustain active membership, one had to write
30,000 words a year. Those who didn't were associate members. Nowadays, there are no such rules;
beginners are welcomed if actively writing. And unpublished writers are no longer relegated to
"associate" status.
Some of our most successful members had not published a thing when they first joined us. From the
start, the stated objective in our bylaws has been to bring together the "writers of the Panhandle of
Texas and surrounding regions to encourage them and others in attaining professional writing
standards."
Obviously the key word here is "attaining," and all of us, from the beginner to the most-published
writer, are continually trying to "attain" higher standards.
And so, certainly, we hope never to discourage our beginning writers. One of them might be an
about-to-bud Welty or Michener!
Who we are -
We're a diverse, interesting group of people with a common purpose: sharing information, stories, and
inspiration via the written word. Among us are some nationally known novelists and quite a few
beginners who are cautiously feeling their way. Most of us fall somewhere in between.
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