Local writer makes history with his best-selling books
Those of you who know me personally will know that I love tales of the supernatural, especially when it comes to ghost stories. Along with my collection of books involving Texas history, I have a small library of books involving Texas ghost tales and legends. One book I’ve read more than once and that I’ve owned since my teenaged years, “Ghost Stories of Texas” by Ed Syers, was recently damaged in a tragic accident involving my cat, Shreddy McBitey, and an unattended cup of coffee.
Ed Syers' First Book
After accepting that the treasured book was a complete and horrific loss, I went online to see if I could find a replacement for the book, even though it was published several decades ago. To my surprise and excitement, I discovered the book was written by a man who lived in Kerrville and shared a lot of my own interests, including history, road trips and dogs.
Not only was I able to purchase a replacement book, I finally had a subject for this week’s column. (Inspiration can be found in the weirdest places, even in a puddle of spilled coffee caused by an ill-tempered feline.)
William Edward Syers, author of nine books, was born in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1914. Not much is available about his early life. Sometime during his youth, his family moved to San Antonio, where Syers grew up and graduated from high school. He went to the University of Texas at Austin, where he became the editor of the Daily Texan.
While at the university, he met Mississippi native Margaret Thompson. They fell in love, and Ed and Margaret were married in 1939. After his college graduation, Syers went to work for the Houston Press and eventually went into public relations.
When the U.S. entered World War II in 1940, Syers enlisted in the Navy. He went to sea in 1942 as an executive officer aboard a Navy Patrol Craft and eventually earned the command of the vessel. While aboard ship, he kept a journal, where he jotted down the experiences he lived through or heard about from other seamen. He felt that these experiences would make a good book one day.
After his discharge from the Navy at the end of the war, Margaret and Ed settled in Austin, where they had three children, Susan, William Jr. and Molly. While in Austin, Ed Syers helped found the radio station KVET and re-entered public relations work, which included spearheading the campaigns for 41 political candidates. One of his most notable clients was Lyndon Baines Johnson when he ran for senate.
Ed Syers
Life kept Syers busy, and always, like a lot of aspiring authors do, he wished he had the time to write the novel he felt compelled to write.
In 1958, he visited the Diamond K Ranch in Kerrville, owned by his friend Marvin Kennedy. Kennedy challenged Syers to sit down and weave the anecdotes in his wartime journal together and write that novel. It was on his friend’s ranch, away from the distractions of city life, that he put pen to paper and wrote his first book, “The Seven: Navy Subchaser.” In one interview about the novel, Syers said he didn’t just pull from his naval experiences in writing the book, he based a lot of the characters in the story on people he got to know while he was writing here.
He found Kerrville to be the right atmosphere to keep the creative juices flowing, and in the latter part of 1958, he moved his family to a home near Ingram to become a full-time writer. “The Seven” was published in 1960 by Duell Sloan and Pearce and, by 1961, it was the No. 1 book sold in Texas. Not only did the book receive endorsements from Lyndon Baines Johnson and Admiral Chester Nimitz, it was also the most popular book to check out in the Kerrville Library for several years. (Yes, the newspaper reported on the most popular books checked out at the local library back in those days.)
“Writing is like anything else — hard, disciplined work,” he said. “But after you batter down the door and get a novel published, it’s not tough to go on from there.”
It wasn’t long before he was working on his next book.
Syers loved Texas history, and his friends called him “a walking encyclopedia of Texas heritage.” He also loved traveling the backroads of Texas and would roam around the Lone Star State in a pop-up camper van, covering virtually “every road in Texas.” He enjoyed learning about the small communities he found during his travels, learning about their cultures, legends and histories. He said he preferred camping to staying in a hotel during those trips, noting “I want a feel of the land, not a change of wallpaper.”
These road trips were chronicled and eventually became the subject of his second book, published in 1963, “Off the Beaten Trail.”
“Off the Beaten Trail” was considered by critics to be the most diverse and authentic collection of Texana ever assembled, and it inspired a regular newspaper column of the same title. His “Off the Beaten Trail” series appeared in major newspapers in the 1960s and ’70s, including The Kerrville Daily Times. Some of the columns were taken
from chapters in his book, others chronicled travels taken after the book’s publication.
From El Paso to Jefferson, Syers found humorous events, history and characters to write about. The book and columns were so popular with readers that there were soon volumes 2 and 3 of “Off the Beaten Trail” published. The volumes were later all combined into a final edition of “Off the Beaten Trail” in 1972. During the years of travel and camping in Texas communities, Syers put more than 100,000 miles on his camper van.
In 1976, Syers wrote his second novel, “The Devil Gun.” The book was a fictionalized tale about the development of Texas and New Mexico between 1861-62 and was called “one of the most powerful novels to come from the American West.” The novel was followed by “Texas, The Beginning, 1519-1834” a non-fiction book published in 1978.
Syers wrote a best-selling state travel guide, “Backroads of Texas” in 1979, which was cited for its “awesome knowledge of Texas presented in a style reserved for novelists.”
The book that inspired this week’s column, “Ghost Stories of Texas,” was published in 1981. The book took Syers two years to research and was a statewide success when it was published. Syers believed, like I do, that you learn a lot about an area through its legends and lore.
“You cannot separate culture from deep-seated, unspoken beliefs,” he said. “We are many cultures, each with our particular folklore. The supernatural is part of that. This book needed doing.”
When he was asked if he expected his collection of supernatural tales to be successful or achieve acclaim, Syers said, “With the imaginative — say the young at heart — yes. I don’t know about the skeptics, but then skeptics don’t have much fun. With this book, I did.”
The book was the first of it’s kind — a collection of otherworldly tales from across the state. Among the 50 chilling tales found within the pages of “Ghost Stories” include “The Headless Horseman,” “The Phantom on the Mountain” and “The Crypts of Old Waverly.”
When I was searching for a replacement for the book my grouchy cat destroyed, I discovered that “Ghost Stories” had what was considered a cult following and was highly sought after. In response to the demand, the book had been revised and published for today’s readers in 2016. The book is sold under a new title, “Supernatural Texas: 50 Chilling Tales from the Lone Star State.”
Syers’ final book, “Hardpressed, TX: The Luckenbach Showdown,” was published in 1986. The book was a humorous spoof of Hill Country folklore.
Syers died in September 1987, the morning after returning from a Colorado camping trip he took with his wife. In his obituary, his family requested that memorials be made to the Humane Society of Kerrville, stating that Syers loved his dogs. It was also noted that Ed’s “brace of Airedales” will remain with Margaret and their children, all of which will miss him.
Comments
Post a Comment