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Notes on Research
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157 Notes on Research Typically, when a scholar presents information that is contrary to previous knowledge and/or belief, an explanation is required . How did everyone else get it so wrong, for instance? The ghosts of biographers past are not really scowling at me on this one, however. Chuck Taylor had no biographers . But there was a Converse, Inc. archivist, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Converse’s own web site, and so on. Were they all wrong? The reporting on Chuck Taylor had simply been reduced to the level of advertising copy writing in recent decades. Every recent newspaper column and every story on the Internet I found on Chuck was entirely derivative, meaning they just copied what someone else had written. As always, primary sources were the key to this new narrative of Chuck Taylor’s life. For me, that meant nding pre–World War II newspaper clippings and people still alive who personally knew Chuck as far back as possible. My big break came when I received an e-mail from a former employee of the Lumberton, North Carolina factory that was the last in America to make the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star shoe. She had written to tell me about her collection of 500 pairs of 11ChuckResearch.indd 11/18/05, 3:02 PM 157 158 Notes on Research the shoe—all different styles—and how she was doing in an employment training program the state had sent her to. She was fty-three at the time. This woman also told me that Chuck Taylor’s widow used to send her shoes. I immediately asked for the address. Maybe the widow was still alive. I obtained the address, but no phone number could be found. Several letters to an address in Port Charlotte, Florida went unanswered, so I had the idea to send a certied mail letter with return receipt. If my earlier letters were not being returned, that meant someone was picking them up. I received no response to my certied mail letter, either, but I was able to check the signature of the person who had picked it up. It turned out to be the widow’s full-time nurse, and I found her phone number on switchboard.com. The nurse had received all my letters and had forwarded all of them to the widow’s son (Chuck’s stepson; Chuck had no children of his own). I contacted the man and eventually was allowed into the widow’s home to personally review all Chuck’s extant papers and artifacts. I could not interview the widow, however. She had suffered a stroke several years earlier, was uncommunicative , and her son only let me into the home after she died. Another break came when Converse, Inc. allowed me into their archives. I always felt that Converse, Chuck’s longtime employer, had les on the man. Besides, I had found a letter from a Converse executive thanking Lucy Taylor Hennessey, Chuck’s widow, for all the newspaper clippings and photos she had provided the company! I made several calls to Converse ofcials in 2001, to both the old and new management teams, and it was in July 2003 that I was granted access to the company ’s archives. My best nding in North Andover was Aurilla Taylor’s scrapbook with several dozen old newspaper clippings. None 11ChuckResearch.indd 11/18/05, 3:02 PM 158 [18.209.66.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:45 GMT) 159 Notes on Research was dated; none had a dateline. They were just the barest newspaper clippings glued or stuck into an old leather-bound scrapbook, the kind tied along the spine with what looks like shoestring. How to date them? Where did they come from? One clipping spoke of Chuck playing ball in Richmond and Seymour. Well, I knew that Richmond and Seymour were in Indiana. What year, though? I saw on the back side of one loose clipping from this same set an ad for a new 1927 automobile . It was fairly straightforward to search the Richmond, Indiana newspapers during the basketball season for 1926–27. From there, I found clues to other newspapers in other cities, and so on. About 90 percent of my newspaper citations are fairly complete, and by that I mean they at least have title and date of publication, and most of those have headline, author, and page and column information, where appropriate. Some clippings remain undated...