A Child of His Times: Retired Reynolds employee fulfills a dream and publishes a book of illustrated poems

Credit: Journal Photo by Jennifer Rotenizer

To keep himself "buoyant" in retirement, William Wolfe Jr. decided to write a book of poetry based on memories of his boyhood in Winston-Salem during World War II.

By: Kim Underwood | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: December 01, 2008

In 1943, William Wolfe Jr.'s father left the family home at 1616 Elizabeth Ave. and headed off to fight in World War II.

Before he left, he said to his 7-year-old son -- just like men do in movies -- "Son, you'll have to take care of your mother."

"Those were his exact words to me," Wolfe said.

Wolfe spent the next two years acutely aware of the void left by his father as he went about the business of being a kid with a dog during a war. He saved grease for the war effort. He drew birds. He scanned the skies for enemy planes and checked what he saw against an official chart. He wrung the necks of chickens for Sunday dinner.

When Japan surrendered, Wolfe's family went over to Trade Street to celebrate. There, with an arm still sore from his typhoid shot, he watched jubilant men climb telephone poles.

Wolfe's father came home, and Wolfe grew up to become a package designer for Reynolds Tobacco Co. In 1972, he was asked to come up with a design for an Old Joe camel character for the Camel cigarette line. Although his take on Old Joe wasn't accepted at the time, it bears a striking resemblance to the one that became so popular in the late 1980s.

"I sort of plowed the ground for it," Wolfe said.

Wolfe is now 72 and retired. Over the years, he has kept journals and drawn and painted in all sorts of styles -- portraits, landscapes, abstracts. A couple of years ago, he decided that he wanted to publish a book.

"After you retire, you need something to keep yourself buoyant," he said. "It's given me something to use as a target to aim at."

When he asked himself what his book should be about, memories of the war years came rushing back.

"Images began to flow," Wolfe said. "I felt like I was really there I could feel it so much."

He turned those memories into poems. To go with the poems, he drew pictures intended to look as if a boy had drawn them.

"I tried to make them fit the person and the time," he said.

Twenty-eight poems and the accompanying drawings made it into Poems 1616 Elizabeth Avenue: 1940-1945, which Wolfe self-published. In its pages, people can read poems about a kid with the Columbia Roadmaster bicycle, service-station men giving neighborhood kids rubber inner tubes to make sling shots, kids running from angry bees, and the time a 50-pound chunk of ice from Sunnyside Ice landed on a bare foot.

"I've heard the stories behind all the poems," Betty Wolfe said. "It's very real to me."

The Wolfes met shortly before the Army sent him to Germany during the Cold War to guard the border between East and West Germany. She wrote every day, and, with the way mail worked, he would sometimes get a bundle of letters so thick that he could hardly hold it in one hand. When that happened, he would let some of the men with him who weren't lucky enough to get letters read one.

"They read these wonderful letters that Betty wrote," he said.

They went on to have two children and four grandchildren. 1616 Elizabeth Avenue can be found at the Winston-Salem Visitor Center and at Frame It!, a shop in Sherwood Shopping Center that carries Wolfe's art. In March, he's scheduled to be the artist of the month, which means his art will be displayed in the front window.

"I really liked it," said manager Craig Brannon. "I thought it was a creative insight into his childhood."

■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.