David Lane Wright was born on May 22, 1929, in Bennington, Idaho to Conover and Lenora Rich Wright. He was a descendent of LDS Apostle Charles C. Rich. He spent his childhood in Bennington, and from the time he was a young man he kept copious journals. He loved sports, especially baseball and football, and enjoyed exploring the terrain around Bennington and Montpelier, which figures prominently in his work. When he was seven his brother Rich, to whom he had been very close, died from an acute appendicitis and this event continued to influence David for the rest of his life. Character’s based on his brother often appeared under different names in many of his writings. In fact his most prominent piece, a play first produced in 1956 called “Still the Mountain Wind,” was about Rich’s death.
Wright started attending Utah State University (then called Utah State Agricultural College) in 1946 at the age of seventeen on an athletic scholarship. He studied English under the tutelage of Professors A. N. Sorensen and Ira Hayward both of whom encouraged him to write and publish. He also was a sports writer for the student paper. Throughout his life his dream was to become a full-time writer, but he also prepared to become an English teacher. For the first three years at college he was on the track team and played football. His final year he quit football to spend more time writing.
After graduation Wright held many jobs as a teacher throughout Idaho. On October 22, 1950, he married Nancy Johnson, one of his students from Rexburg. He changed positions several times and eventually ended up back his home town working at the elementary school. He entered the Air Force and was called into active duty and continued write, winning several Air Force story contests and producing his work, “Still the Mountain Wind.” Also during this time he was stationed in various places throughout the United States as well as the world including South Dakota, Florida, Alabama, and Iceland.
In 1963, Wright was able to pursue his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Iowa while still in the Air Force. He completed it in February 1964. Later, while stationed in Alabama during this time, he became involved in the civil rights campaign. In 1965, Wright was sent to Saigon, Vietnam. There he performed mostly administrative and diplomatic duties, earning a Bronze Star and he was later promoted to the rank of Major. When he returned from Vietnam in December, 1966, he and Nancy divorced with Wright maintaining custody of the children. In February of 1967, he suffered a heart attack. He recovered somewhat and returned to his home in Montgomery, Alabama where he lived for the next four months. On June 26, 1967, he suffered a second heart attack and passed away at the age of thirty-eight.
Sources:
This addendum to the David Lane Wright collection (Mss Coll 2), contains further writings, correspondence, and journals, as well as some Air Force material from the Idaho writer. The collection has been organized along the same lines as the original collection with boxes devoted to correspondence, his writing, his career in the Air Force, and his journals.
Boxes 1 through 7 contain incoming correspondence from family, friends, and publishers organized chronologically. A few folders organized by date but containing correspondence from specific people or institutions were retained since Wright had organized these himself. The last part of box 7 and all of box 8 contain more correspondence, incoming or outgoing as noted, which Wright organized into specific collections (such as correspondence with his friends Vosco Call and Jim Miller, as well some people he knew in Vietnam), or which had no date. Since Wright generally kept copies of his own letters, boxes 9 and 10 contain outgoing mail organized chronologically. A great portion of this correspondence, particularly that from 1955 and 1956, contain information on Amos Wright, David Wright’s great-grandfather, who figured prominently in Idaho and early-Mormon history and about whom Wright was writing a biography.
Boxes 11 through 19 contain publications and drafts of Wright’s work. Box 11 is specifically devoted to published versions of his writings in journals and pamphlet form. Boxes 12 through 15 contain drafts, notes, and compilations of short stories as well as some miscellaneous composition books and free writing. While the attempt has been to organize the writing to make research easier, for the most part the content of the folders reflects how Wright organized them. Thus, some folders which contain untitled manuscripts or miscellaneous writing are as Wright organized them in order to preserve what order he ascribed them. Box 16 contains poetry, poetry compilations, and essays, while boxes 17 through 19 are devoted to Scripts and Novels, containing notes and drafts of both. Box 20 contains miscellany such as newspaper clippings, photographs, and programs, including those from the original production of “Still the Mountain Wind.”
Box 21 has items from college, primarily the University of Iowa, and box 22 is devoted to Wright’s Air Force career and contains photographs, manuals, notes, and official records. The rest of the collection, boxes 23 through 27 contain Wright’s numerous and detail journals as well as three audiorecordings. There is some overlap in the journals as Wright apparently would start one before he had filled up another and then later would return and finish the others. He frequently used notebook paper and letters to fill in for days when he did have his journal with him. Finally, because this is an addendum to the Mss Coll 2 with which it frequently overlaps, numerous cross references have been added to aid the researcher in locating all relevant material.
Overall the collection documents and life and work of a voluminous writer who only began to receive national recognition for his work shortly before his death. That much of his writing is still relevant is evidenced by posthumously published poetry and continuing performances of his best known work, “Still the Mountain Wind,” performed as recently as 1995, nearly thirty years over his death. Wright’s work documents life in a small, Mormon community in Southern Idaho, in addition to his research into the life of Amos Wright. This collection has value, not just for the literary works, but also for how it documents life and relations in southern Idaho.
See also:
Box 1: Incoming Correspondence, 1941 – 1956 (see also Mss Coll 2, Box II, Fd 1 - Box IV, Fd 17)
Box 2: Incoming Correspondence, 1956 – 1957 (see also Mss Coll 2, Box IV, Fds 17-19)
Box 3: Incoming Correspondence, 1958 – 1960
Box 4: Incoming Correspondence, 1960 – 1961
Box 5: Incoming Correspondence, 1961 – 1964 (see also Mss Coll 2, Box V)
Box 6: Incoming Correspondence, 1963 – 1965 (see also Mss Coll 2, Box V, Fds 8-12)
Box 7: Incoming Correspondence, 1965 – 1967 (see also Mss Coll 2, Box V, Fds 8-12)
Box 8: Miscellaneous and Undated Correspondence
Box 9: Incoming Correspondence; Outgoing Correspondence, 1947 – 1951 (for outgoing see also Mss Coll 2, Box I, Fds 1-3)
Box 10: Outgoing Correspondence, 1951 – 1967 (see also Mss Coll 2, Box I, Fds 4-17)
Box 10a: Outgoing Correspondence, 1962 – 1967 (see also Mss Coll 2, Box I, Fds 4-12)
Box 11: Publications with writings by David Lane Wright
Box 12: Composition Books and Notes (see also Mss Coll 2, Box VII, Fds 7-15)
Box 13: Early Drafts and Short Stories Chronologically Arranged (see also Mss Coll 2, Box VII, Fds 7-15; Box XI, Fds 1-21)
Box 14: Short Stories and Miscellaneous Writings (see also Mss Coll 2, Box VII, Fds 7-15; Box XI, Fds 1-21)
Box 15: Short Stories and Miscellaneous Writings (see also Mss Coll 2, Box VII, Fds 7-15; Box XI, Fds 1-21)
Box 16: Poetry and Essays (for poetry see also Mss Coll 2, Box XI, Fds 22-27; for essays see Mss Coll 2, Box IX, Fd 18)
Box 16a: Novel Draft, Short Stories, & Poetry
Box 17: Scripts and Notes for Novels (for scripts see also Mss Coll 2, Box IX, Fds 1-18)
Box 18: Novels