Wilcox County, Alabama poet passed away in California in 1938

The Wilcox Progressive Era has some of the best and smartest readers of any newspaper in Alabama. If you want to know the answer to a question, just ask, and chances are someone in the reading audience will know the answer.

Back in early October in this space, I asked about the ultimate fate of Wilcox County poet, Sara Elizabeth King. A couple of readers were able to shed some light on the subject, but I’ll get to that a little farther down the page.

For those of you who missed the story in October, I began pondering King and her poetic exploits after reading a front-page story about her in the Oct. 8, 1936 edition of The Progressive Ear. Under the headline, “Recognition For Poetry Of Sara King,” the newspaper reported that she was the author of several poems that had been “complimented” by the Alabama Poetry Society. Another of her poems had been selected for inclusion in an anthology called “1936 Contemporary Women Poets of America.”

The newspaper printed two of her poems. The first was titled “Ubiguity” and read as follows:

God walks in forests where pine needles grew,
And in the tumult and motor cars meet.
He breathes thru a still world that’s wrapt in snow;
Then brings spring with its white blossoming sloe.
In the midst of the waving tall grass sweet,
In laughing curves of the ripe golden wheat,
The heart alone attuned to God can know.
Perhaps in starlit lonely mountain ways,
Or in the friendly city near a mart
In a cathedral’s light of candle rays;
Or where fantastic shadowy waves start
To break on grim shores, can the same soul praise Jehovah.
He walks in the human heart.

The other poem of King’s printed by The Progressive Era was called “Spiritual Old Age” and read as follows:

I saw you once
In the face of
An old preacher.
He needed to
Say no word.
He was a sermon.
Thru him you speak
Of turning death
Into morning.

The newspaper article also noted that King graduated from Judson College in 1911 and in October 1936 was living at 347 Magnolia Ave. in Auburn. She was a relative of one of the Judson College’s founders, General Edwin D. King.

She was also the daughter of Paul and Clementine DeLoach King and was the granddaughter of William Douglas and Rebecca Singleton King. She was also the great-granddaughter of James Asbury and Elizabeth Caroline Goode Tait and the great-great-granddaughter of Judge Charles Tait, who was the first federal judge of Alabama.

Despite my best efforts, I was unable to find out what became of Sara King, but a couple of newspaper readers came to my rescue. According to their information, King passed away at the age of 46 on May 17, 1938 in Sawtelle, California. Her obituary said that she had been ill for several years.

Her obituary noted that she was a native of Lower Peach Tree and after graduating from Judson, she went on to graduate from Touro Infirmary in New Orleans. During World War I, she served as a Red Cross nurse at Camp Beauregarde, La. and overseas. She had also taught school at Rock West, Canton Bend and near Vredenburgh. She was buried in the Los Angeles National Cemetery, and her headstone denotes that she was an Army nurse.