James A. Michener was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 1907, and soon after abandoned by his parents. His foster mother, Mabel Michener, a poor widow who made a scant living by taking in laundry and sewing, took him in and raised him to young adulthood. At fourteen, Michener began what would become a lifelong inclination toward travel when he went on a hitchhiking tour that took him through 45 states. That fall he entered Doylestown High School, where his chief interest was sports, especially basketball. Upon graduation in 1925, he won a scholarship to Swarthmore College. He graduated from college
summa cum laude in 1929 with a bachelor's degree in English and history. His first job was as an English teacher at Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where he worked from 1929 to 1931. He then received a Lippincott Travel Fellowship and, for the next two years, traveled in Europe. He studied in Scotland, England, and Italy, worked on a Mediterranean cargo ship, and toured Spain with a troupe of bullfighters. Upon returning to the United States in 1933, Michener accepted a teaching position at George School in Doylestown. While there he met Patti Koon; they were married in 1935. The following year, Michener was offered an associate professorship at the Colorado State College of Education in Greeley, where he taught until 1939. He also obtained his master's degree in English in 1937. His next move was to Harvard University's School of Education, where he was a visiting professor from 1939 to 1940. In 1940, he began a nine-year stint as a social studies editor at Macmillan.
In 1943, an event occurred that would drastically change Michener's life, although perhaps not in the way he expected. He had enlisted as an apprentice seaman in the United States Naval Reserve when World War II broke out and, in 1943, was called to active duty. He was sent to the South Pacific in 1944, where he traveled from island to island, learning about local culture and history and hearing stories from the residents. Michener developed an idea for a book and began to spend his nights tapping it out with two fingers on an old typewriter, using the backs of letters from home, old envelopes, and official Navy correspondence. Ultimately the recording of his experiences became his first well-known book,
Tales of the South Pacific, published in 1947. It paid off -
Tales of the South Pacific won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and was adapted by Rogers and Hammerstein into the popular musical comedy,
South Pacific in 1949. In 1948, Michener and his first wife were divorced and he married Vange Nord, an aspiring writer. The couple bought some property and built a new house, and Michener proceeded to publish several more books, including
The Fires of Spring (1949),
Return to Paradise (1951),
The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1953), and
Sayonara: The Floating World (1954). In addition, Michener began working as a roving editor for
Readers Guide, an endeavor he continued until 1970. In 1955, he and his second wife divorced and Michener married Mari Yoriko Sabusawa. Although they had no children of their own, throughout their 39-year marriage Michener and his third wife housed and cared for many underprivileged children.
With the publication of his first historical novel,
Hawaii, in 1959, Michener's writing career took on greater challenges. Like many such novels that were to follow, Hawaii was based on extensive research into the social, cultural, economic, and political history of a particular region and spanned generations of a family. Others of this kind included Caravans, about a romantic American girl in
Afghanistan (1963);
Centennial, which presented the history of Colorado from prehistory through the twentieth century (1974);
Chesapeake, a depiction of 400 years of history on Maryland's eastern shore (1978); and
The Covenant, a full history of South Africa (1980).
Poland (1983),
Texas (1985),
Alaska (1988), and
Caribbean (1989) were others among the more than 40 books Michener published.
Space, published in 1982, dealt with NASA and space exploration and was one of Michener's most popular books. His novels sold an estimated 75 million copies worldwide. Several were made into motion pictures, including
Tales of the South Pacific,
Hawaii,
Texas, and
Space. Despite the popularity of his novels, Michener received mixed critical reviews. Some called him mediocre and long-winded, relying too much on trivial historical detail and not enough on imaginative language and subtlety. Others praised his ability to mold the vast amount of research into a story that taught about cultural diversity. Michener first became active in politics when he was chairman of the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, campaign for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. In 1962, he lost his run for Congress as a Democrat. He served as secretary of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1967-1968, during which a new state constitution was written. Michener also served as a correspondent for President Richard Nixon during his 1972 trips to the Soviet Union and China.
Although Michener was best known for his novels, they were not his only products. His earliest work, which consisted of 15 articles on teaching social studies published between the years 1936 and 1942, provided examples of the way in which Michener used fiction as a teaching device. In his book
Return to Paradise (1951), Michener alternated essays about Asia with stories designed to exemplify the essays.
The Novel (1991), though fiction, taught about art and the craft of writing. Michener also wrote books about Japanese art, the electoral college, sports and the 1970 shooting at Kent State. He published his memoirs, titled appropriately
The World is My Home, in 1992. In 1994, he wrote
Recessional, about retirement life in Florida and gave readers insight into Michener's own thoughts and feelings at that point in his life. Michener is known for his generous contributions to various organizations, estimated to be at least $100 million. Examples include $7.2 million to his
alma mater, Swathmore College; $64.2 million to the University of Texas at Austin; and $9.5 million to the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. In addition, Michener designated the royalties from many of his books to various charitable organizations. In 1997,
Fortune magazine listed Michener as the previous year's twenty-first most generous philanthropist. Throughout his long career, Michener received numerous awards. Some of the most noteworthy include the Einstein Award from Einstein Medical College in 1967, the Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford in 1977, the Pennsylvania Society Gold Medal in 1978, the Franklin Award and Spanish Institute Gold Medal in 1980, and an award for Outstanding Philanthropist by the National Society of Fund Raising Executives in 1996. Another honor came in the form of a television series on PBS called
The World of James A. Michener, a program that explored some of the regions in which his novels were set.
In the midst of his professional achievements, Michener suffered a severe loss when his wife died of cancer in 1994. By this time Michener himself was in poor health; he had undergone hip surgery, major bypass surgery, and suffered from severe kidney problems which required dialysis treatments three times a week. Despite these ailments, Michener continued to write, publishing
This Noble Land: My Vision for America in 1996 and
A Century of Sonnets in 1997. He died in his home in Austin, Texas, on October 16, 1997, at the age of 90.
Source
Section 11
Austin Memorial Park Cemetery
Austin
COORDINATES
30° 19.949, -097° 45.192
Branch Tanner Archer, legislator and secretary of war of the Republic of Texas, son of Maj. Peter Field and Francis (Tanner) Archer, was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, on December 13, 1790. Peter Archer was a Revolutionary War officer. Branch Archer attended William and Mary College at Williamsburg in 1804, and in 1808 he received his M.D. degree from the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. After returning to Virginia he practiced medicine, served one or two terms in the Virginia legislature (1819-20), and was a presidential elector in 1820. On May 13, 1828, Archer killed his cousin, Dr. James Ottway Crump, in a duel fought with pistols near Scottsville, Powhatan County, Virginia. Archer arrived in Texas in 1831 and quickly joined a group in Brazoria agitating for independence from Mexico. He represented Brazoria at the Convention of 1833 and participated in the battle of Gonzales in October 1835. In November 1835 he traveled to San Felipe as representative of Brazoria and there was elected chairman of the Consultation. He urged the members to disregard previous factional divisions and concentrate on what was the best course for Texas. Although he favored independence, he voted with the majority, who favored a return to the Constitution of 1824. The Consultation then selected Archer to join Stephen F. Austin and William H. Wharton as commissioners to the United States to lobby for financial assistance, collect supplies, and recruit men for the Texas cause. 
