In Ahead of Her Time, The Trailblazing Life and Literary Legacy of Ann Head, Nancy Thode tells the story of her mother with as much unfailing accuracy as possible for a woman who lost that mother fifty-seven years ago when Nancy was only twenty-seven years old and has relied on memory and archives. It would not be an easy story to tell because Nancy basically left home at age fifteen and was not able to be a first witness, and before that she was a young girl who was not focused on her mother’s life. That the two of them shared a mutual admiration is unquestionable and the work and research it took Nancy to tell this unflinching story is beyond admirable.
When she was nine years old, Ann was sent from Beaufort to live in Boston with her maternal grandmother for the next nine years, only returning to Beaufort for summers and holidays. Grandmother Stratton was both formal and prideful. Ann once asked to bring a friend from school to her grandmother’s home to play: “Grandmother Stratton got out the Blue Book and, as young Ann stood by anxiously, she slowly turned the pages, before announcing: ‘No, I am sorry Ann. They are not in the book.’”
A lonely child in Boston, Ann relied on her imagination to entertain herself – she made a world with paper dolls. Their conversations and interactions led her to pen her first romance, “Cynthia Hurst,” when she was about eight years old. However, it was not until twenty years later that she was first published in Cosmopolitan.
Ann was a prolific writer who first wrote for magazines because they paid the most and she was writing to support herself and Nancy. During the 1940’s her stories focused on marriages, affairs, and family life including love lives, sex lives and also on a sense of duty or the lack of it, and fear of dying. Later, Ann wrote novels when time and finances allowed. In 1957 she published her first novel, Fair with Rain, and in 1967 her novel, Mr. And Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, was published and made into a movie. All in all, Ann published over fifty works including short stories, essays, novelettes, serials, and novels.
A study in contrasts and very much her own person from an early age, Ann didn’t cotton to convention and it seems she felt that rules were made for other people. Ann most certainly was a woman ahead of her time and Nancy learned at her knee.
Nancy Thode
Nancy recalls, “As for me, I rather enjoyed ‘standing out,’ as a result of having lived up North; however, the last thing I wanted was to have a mother who did. Unlike the parents of my friends, most Southern Baptists, my mother was unmarried, divorced, and she was sophisticated – not necessarily a compliment back then. She read The New Yorker. Her house was filled with books and records. She smoked cigarettes through a Dunhill cigarette holder and drank at cocktail parties and wore wide-brimmed hats.”
Nancy’s story cruises through Ann’s first marriage to Nancy’s father Howard Head. (Her parent’s marriage ended in divorce before Howard became famous for inventing the metal ski and oversized tennis racquet.) Ann had several affairs prior to meeting and eventually married Dr. Stanley Morse after she wrangled him away from his wife.
In an interesting turn of events, before she married Dr. Morse, Ann became pregnant by him, causing her to make up a story about going to work in New York City for six months. She took herself and Nancy to the northeast, had Nancy’s half-sister, Stacey, went back to Beaufort where Ann had Stacey placed in foster care, and then proceeded to adopt her. This was in 1954; in 1939, Ann created almost the same scenario for her best friend who found herself in similar circumstances.
Also woven into the story of Ann’s life, are stories about her friends, her escapades, her lovers, stories about her stories, and at the end of the book there is an appendix of the correspondence between Ann and Pat Conroy, as well as the reprinting of several of Ann’s stories.
Those of us here in Beaufort, SC, are most enthralled by Ann’s connection to our beloved Pat Conroy. Ann surreptitiously mentored Pat when he was a student at Beaufort High and his father forbade him to take her class. Their relationship continued with letters and visits until the time of her death, after which he placed a single rose on her grave every time he published a book.
As it turns out, Pat was the first person who asked Nancy to memorialize her mother’s story. She recalled a conversation they had at her house on Fripp Island in the late 1990’s:
“As we spoke, Pat told me he regretted there was no memorial to Ann. ‘Nothing was ever written about your mother. She has never been acknowledged as a South Carolina author. She was very modest about her accomplishments. I didn’t even know about all her magazine stories and years of supporting herself and you.’”
A seed was planted but didn’t germinate until 2017 when Harlan Greene, Head of Special Collections at Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston, asked Nancy if she had her mother’s papers. One thing led to another until Jonathan Haupt, Executive Director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, joined the mission and the book was born.
Even if you’ve never heard of Ann Head, you will find Nancy’s telling of her story fascinating as well as Ann’s stories in the back of the book.
Leave a Reply