Touched with a Sunset: The Letters of Terrell Maverick and Walter Prescott Webb A Love Story

Walter Prescott Webb speaking at Wayland Baptist College (now University) in Plainview, Texas, on January 21, 1963. Walter Prescott Webb Papers, di_05325, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University ofTexas at Austin. Touched with a Sunset: The Letters of Terrell Maverick and Walter Prescott Webb A Love Story Edited by Betty Hannstein Adams* Denver, Colorado May 22, 1962 Dear Terrell: There is really very little reason for this letter, except the pretty constant desire to communicate with you when we are separated . . . This trip has convinced me as to the Alaska trip.1 I will not make it alone! Ifyou will behave yourselfand garner your strength you should be OK byJune 18. Our time is too limited to be spent apart and to hell with fame and fortune. . . . Ever yours, Walter Prescott Webb College, Alaska June 23, 1962 Dear Terrell: It seems incredible that I left home yesterday and that I am in Alaska. . . . I went to bed about 9:30 and slept right through to 10:30 this A.M. In the afternoon I took a taxi with some other people to College, some 6 miles from Fairbanks. Found Dean Boswell who fitted me up with a * An audior of books on Latin America, Betty Hannstein Adams was a friend of bodi Walter Prescott Webb and Terrell Maverick. Her friendship widi Terrell lasted well beyond Walter's deadi in 1963. For full biographical information on Adams, please see dieJuly 2009 issue of die Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 1 Sen. Ernest Gruening had invited Webb to teach a summer course at die University ofAlaska in Fairbanks . According to Terrell Maverick Webb, "We were bodi excited at the thought of seeing sometiiing new to bodi ofus, but unfortunately my heart began to act up and Dr. Steinberg said I was not to go along on the trip to Alaska. My life has never'followed any planned course." Vol. CXIII, No. 4 Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril 2010 480Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril small apartment in a Faculty Apartment house. It is all new and quite modern. Has one big living room, kitchen, a bedroom and lots ofclosets . They had reserved for us a two-bedroom deal which I am sure would have been very pleasant. I am not sure that I regret your staying in Texas. For one thing, the trip is exhausting. We could have made it, but it would not have been good for you. The main point is that there is nothing worth seeing in Fairbanks or here, and both dwell in complete isolation. It is 400 miles to anywhere. Even with a car, there is no place to go. 500 or 600 miles to White Horse, and almost as far to Anchorage andJuneau. There are no roads save the Alean Highway and it is not paved. I can look across the valley and see Fairbanks, and it's beginning to look like a Metropolis, and I'm thinking I'll go in there for a weekend just as I used to go to London from Oxford. There is not even a drug store in this place. . . . Prices here are high. I paid $2.00 for a breakfast I could have at Austin Hotel for $1.15. Papers and magazines cost 5 cents more than the marked price. If you were here, and well, things would look quite different, but I know there would have been risk. For example, I have to go down a considerable hill to the Cafeteria, and climb back later. . . . I hope you will order your life so as to do what is needed. But use your common sense, and see people when you are lonely. You know your limitations, but don't feel that you are cut offfrom all diversion. I love you and will be damned glad when this stint is finished. Ever yours, Walter College, Alaska June 24, 1962 My dear Terrell: Perhaps you will be amused at my changing reaction to this far-off place. When I arrived in Fairbanks on Friday I thought it the most God forsaken place I'd seen in a long time. Then I came here, and found myself in this partially furnished apartment. No ashtray, wastepaper basket, drinking...