Several persons have asked if I’m related to the Sanora Babb featured in Ken Burn’s recent PBS “Dust Bowl” documentary. After reading her memoir, An Owl on Every Post, years ago, I was determined to meet the author of this wonderful childhood family story. We are distant cousins, and I was fortunate to get to know her in the last years of her life before she died in 2005 at the age of 98. I quickly fell in love with her, influenced no doubt because she looked like and reminded me of the Babb aunts whom I lived with in my early childhood. I miss her.
Sanora’s life story and her novel about the Dust Bowl victims, Whose Names Are Unknown, are part of the Ken Burns documentary. In it, he tells how she wrote her novel in the late 30s while helping Tom Collins set up the FSA migrant camps in California, but Random House reneged on their contract because a similar book, The Grapes of Wrath, had just been published. Her novel of the Dust Bowl and its devastating effects on farmers in Oklahoma and Kansas, where she was born and lived until she went to Los Angeles in 1929, reflects her personal experiences there and in the camps of California. Critics note the book’s authenticity, but more important for us readers are the compelling characters she brings to life.
She arrived in LA, incidentally, on the day the stock market crashed. The job she had taken with the Associated Press evaporated, and homeless she had to live for a while in Jefferson Park. She said the LA police checked the park at night to be sure the “campers,” many of whom were women, were safe. That’s not the picture of LA police we have today.
Through Sanora I got to know her long-time friend and literary executor, Joanne Dearcopp, whose personal mission is to gain wider recognition of Sanora’s work. Joanne is organizing the re-publication of her out-of-print works and seeking a producer for a script of Whose Names Are Unknown.
Recently republished, with a new Foreword by Pulitzer Prize author William Kennedy, is An Owl on Every Post, Sanora’s beautifully written memoir of her life as a child in Baca County, Colorado. There she lived in a dugout with her parents and grandfather for a couple of years during their failed efforts to raise broomcorn. Being republished this fall is her autobiographical novel, The Lost Traveler, of her adolescent years when her father was a small-town gambler.
Sanora wrote five books as well as essays, short stories and poems published in literary magazines alongside the work of Dorothy Parker, Ralph Ellison, William Saroyan, Katherine Anne Porter, and Ernest Hemingway. For more background see her website, a web exhibition with her sister Dorothy’s photos in the camps, and a recent article “Rediscovering a National Treasure” in Foreword Reviews. The picture at the beginning of this post is Sanora in the California worker fields in the 1930s.
I read Tim Eagan’s book twice a few years back and ave had wonderful conversations with mt dad who grew up in Tulsa….more and more do I realize how much that part of his life shaped him to this day and why he is the way he is….
fYI Ken Burns loves Telluride and premiers all of his films there for critiques and feedback before the final cuts and they Are distributed around the country- did you happen to see the film his daughter worked on regarding the rape that took place in Central Park- she is talented as well.
I have enjoyed reading your blogs- thanks to Ellen Colon! Patty
Thanks for the comments, Patty. I wasn’t aware of Ken Burns daughter’s film. Over the years I think his documentaries have made an enormous contribution to all of us.
I think you’ll enjoy Sanora’s book” Whose Names Are Unknown.” I grew up during the 30s in NW Mo and while we weren’t directly affected by the dust storms our relatives in Kansas and relatives of our neighbors were and some did migrate to California out of necessity. The stories those people told were like the ones Sanora tells in her book.
Frank
I think you’ll enjoy it.
Frank
Welcome back.
Seeing Sanora’s picture, and the life she had to endure, she was fit to be a top actress in Hollywood. If she only had met the right people and/or had the attitude/character.
I look forward reading her book..
I enjoyed your stories about Sanora, her early days in LA where I lived 25 years later and seeing her photo. She looks like a twin of one of my cousins. I will try to find one of her books on the dust bowl and its results.
“Whose Names Are Unknown” is a well written and moving story of this national tragedy that until Ken Burns’ program was largely forgotten. I also highly recommend “An Owl on Every Post” for Sanora’s upbeat recounting of her family’s tragic years in eastern Colorado.
Frank
Reading this past week of the drought in New Mexico (and seeing first hand the extensive loss of topsoil there) I wonder how soon the entire Southwest will be the next Dust Bowl. Visiting old relatives on my father’s side of the family, farmers in southwest Kansas, I heard recordings of the jackrabbit kills and saw photos of their personal woes. Your posts are always so thoughtful, Frank. And thought provoking! Jan
Thanks for commenting, Jan. In “Whose Names are Unknown” you’ll revisit the stories your relatives told of their hardships.
Frank
Just ordered the book and looking forward to reading it….thanks…Patty
Are you related to the Babbs who came in to New Hampshire in late 1600s?
Deborah,
I apologize for the delay in responding to your message in November. I thought I had, but of course hadn’t, and just discovered my error this morning.
I’m a descendent of Phillip Babb who came to the Isles of Shoals in the 1640s. His son Thomas was my ancestor and Sanora’s. Thomas lived for a time as a youth in Hampton, NH. When the Hussey family of that town moved to New Castle, Delaware, Thomas followed and married their daughter Bathsheba. The Husseys were Quakers and, feeling discriminated against, moved to Delaware which had a large Quaker community. From there his and Bathsheba’s descendants moved westward every two or three generations to Northern VA, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa from which my grandfather moved to northwest Missouri at the turn of the 20th century.
If you are a Babb, you might be interested in joining the Babb Association. Dan Babb is currently the President and family historian and genealogist. Dan lives in Dallas and his email address is daniel@dbabb.net . The Association blog is at http://babbunabridged.com .
If you have other questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to reply. My email address is frank@frankbabb.com .http://www.frankbabb.com/sanora-babb-and-ken-burns-pbs-dust-bowl/#.V2r1A9L2bOE