The Arts "Make Us More Human," Says Bestselling Author John Jakes '53

June 23, 2008

June 23, 2008, Greencastle, Ind. - "A writer can finish a 900-page novel, as I did with North and South ... a poet can finish a sonnet, a composer a pop tune or an opera, but the work of supporting the arts is never finished," according to John Jakes. A bestselling author and 1953 graduate of DePauw University, Jakes recently received the South Carolina Art Commission's Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Governor's Award for the Arts for lifetime achievement. His acceptance speech is published in today's Hilton Head Island Packet.

The challenge of supporting the arts, says Jakes, "goes on, week after week, forever presenting challenges -- buildings to be built, outreach programs to be created and maintained, budgets to be planned -- and those inevitable shortfalls to be made up by everything from bake sales to strong-arming donors for 'a little extra.' Do I think it's important to do this -- to continually support the arts in every way necessary? Obviously I do. When we were trying to raise and justify an $11 million arts center on Hilton Head Island more than a decade ago, I constantly repeated this message from Scripture -- 'Man should not live by bread alone.' "

The author who has been called America's "godfather of the historical novel" asserted, "The arts enrich our lives. They widen our horizons. They often change our attitudes. They make us more human."

David Lauderdale writes, "John and Rachel Jakes have been Hilton Head Island landowners and arts patrons for 30 years, and he has produced many of his best-selling historical novels during the months they spend on the island each year."

Read the complete address at the newspaper's Web site.

Learn more about John Jakes -- who has sold more than 50 million books, including 18 consecutive New York Times bestsellers -- in this previous story.

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