THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 13, 1996 TAG: 9605130059
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
Samuel Talmadge Ragan, the poet laureate of North Carolina and a veteran newspaper executive, died on Saturday at his home in Southern Pines. He was 80.
He had been ill for some time, said Brent Hackney, a reporter at The Pilot, the newspaper in Southern Pines of which Ragan was publisher.
Ragan, known as Sam, was named his state's poet laureate for life by Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. in 1982. At his death, he had been publisher of The Pilot for 27 years.
Ragan, a tall man with flowing white hair, had a fondness for wide-brimmed fedoras and a voice that had been called a whisky baritone. Hackney described him as ``kind of a throwback'' and ``a Southern gentleman who looked and behaved every inch the part.''
Though Ragan was courtly, his poetry could be terse and wry. His poem ``The Election,'' which is included in the book ``Collected Poems of Sam Ragan'' (St. Andrews, 1990), consists of these nine lines:
``He didn't get drunk
But once every four years,
On Election Day.
He would rise early and go
To the polls, drinking hard
All day. By the time
The polls were closed
He would be passed out.
It was his way of expressing an opinion.''
``Poetry is first about feelings,'' Ragan observed, adding, ``I say in 20 words what it takes a novelist 100,000 words to say.''
He was born in Berea and graduated from Atlantic Christian College in Wilson in 1936. He was secretary of North Carolina's art, culture and history department in 1972 and 1973. He wrote five other books of poetry, including ``Listen for the Wind'' (1996, St. Andrews), and was the author or co-author of several books of prose.
KEYWORDS: DEATH OBITUARY by CNB