Eulogy: WILLIE MORRIS

It was early in 1968 when I met WILLIE MORRIS in New York. Morris was the editor of Harper's and had been a Rhodes scholar. I wrote to him shortly after I got my Rhodes, and to my surprise, he agreed to see me. He was wonderfully wry and funny--the classic Southerner. He wrote a great book about his dog. He wrote a fascinating book about the role of football in the South and the racial barriers, The Courting of Marcus Dupree. You know, most Southerners thought they'd be looked down upon if they went up to the Northeast. The cultural elites would all think they were hayseeds--although that was kind of phony; the New York Times was largely run by Southerners--but there was always this sensitivity about how you'd be seen. Willie gave us another way of thinking about the South.

You know, for most of my generation of Southerners who went north, the book that stuck in their minds was [Thomas Wolfe's] You Can't Go Home Again. Willie's North Toward Home was a beautifully written, evocative portrait of one person's love for the South who had profound regret over the racial situation. It helped a lot of people like me who wanted to see the world and do well up north but also come home and live in the South. He showed us how we could love a place and want to change it at the same time. It was really an important thing he did for me. He showed us we could go home.

--BILL CLINTON, President of the U.S.