Copyright © 2011 by Dean Faulkner Wells

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of

Random House, Inc.

Parts of the Christmas story on pages 102–5 first appeared in Mississippi

Magazine, December 1987.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wells, Dean Faulkner.
Every day by the sun: a memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi / by Dean
Faulkner Wells.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Faulkner family. 2. Wells, Dean Faulkner. 3. Wells, Dean
Faulkner—Family. 4. Faulkner, William, 1897-1962. 5. Faulkner,
William, 1897-1962—Family. 6. Mississippi—Biography. I. Title.
CT274.F377W45 2011
920.0762—dc22 2010031684

ISBN 978-0-307-59104-3
eISBN 978-0-307-59106-7

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Lauren Dong

Title page photograph © Buddy Mays/CORBIS
Jacket design by Jennifer O’Connor
Jacket photographs: © Kevin Fleming/CORBIS (house), courtesy of the author (portraits)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

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 Prologue

T he best and the worst thing that could have hap-

pened to me took place on November 10, 1935, four
months before I was born, when my father, a barnstorming pilot,
was killed in a plane crash at the age of twenty-eight. The best,
because it placed me at the center of the Faulkner family; the
worst, because I would never know my father.
He was Dean Swift Faulkner, the youngest of the four
Faulkner brothers of Mississippi: William, the future Nobel
Prize winner in literature; Jack, an FBI agent; and John, a painter
and writer. All four were pilots. Dean was the baby of his genera-
tion as I am in mine. His death defined my position in the family.
I became more than just another granddaughter or niece. I was
the last link to my father, and since he was gone, the people who
loved him so dearly cared for me in his stead; they did the best
they could for me. Due to an accident of birth I belonged to
all of them, but it was Dean’s oldest brother, William, who felt
the heaviest responsibility for me. He encouraged Dean to learn
to fly, paid for his lessons, gave him a Waco C cabin cruiser—
William’s own plane—and with it a job at Mid-South Airways in
Memphis, Tennessee.
After Dean’s death, William suffered from grief and guilt I
imagine almost every day of his life. He attempted to assuage
the pain by offering me security, both emotional and financial,

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 2 ⁄ Dean Faulkner Wells

whenever he could. It was as if William made a vow to Dean that

November afternoon when he saw his unrecognizable body in
the wreckage of the plane: He would tend to me in Dean’s place.
He fulfilled his promise, and I grew up calling him “Pappy.”
Cherished by my family as an extension of my father, I have
had to struggle to find my identity. My search for who I am
started when I began to research my father’s life. His influence
on me could not have been stronger had he lived. And as Pap-
py’s fame grew, of course we were all touched by it.
In 2010, I became the oldest surviving Faulkner in the Murry
Falkner branch of the family. My father’s first cousin, Dorothy
“Dot” Falkner Dodson, daughter of Murry’s brother, John, died
January 23, 2010. We were the only remaining family members
with firsthand memories of the long dead people who shaped and
supported the man who is arguably the finest American writer of
the twentieth century. Now I am, one might say, the last pri-
mary source—and I don’t like anything about it. By the time I
reached seventy, I expected to be transformed into Miss Haber-
sham, Aunt Jenny, Granny Millard, or, if I was lucky, Dilsey. I
believed with all my heart that to grow older was to grow wiser. I
am living proof that this aint so. (Note that throughout I’m using
Pappy’s preferred “aint,” without the apostrophe.)
My relatives were private people, building walls not only to
shield themselves from outsiders but from one another. This
vaunted Faulkner privacy, which has been interpreted as any-
thing from crippling shyness to arrogance to paranoia, may have
evolved as a safety hatch in light of our eccentric and sometimes
outrageous behavior.
Over the generations my family can claim nearly every psy-
chological aberration: narcissism and nymphomania, alcoholism
and anorexia, agoraphobia, manic depression, paranoid schizo-
phrenia. There have been thieves, adulterers, sociopaths, killers,

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 Ever y Day by the Sun ⁄ 3

racists, liars, and folks suffering from panic attacks and real bad
tempers, though to the best of my knowledge we’ve never had a
barn burner or a preacher.
The only place we can be found in relative harmony is St. Pe-
ter’s Cemetery in Oxford, Mississippi. Yet there we can’t even
agree on how to spell our name. It appears as “FALKNER” on
several headstones; in the next plot “FAULKNER”; in the main
family plot both “FALKNER” and “FAULKNER,” buried next
to one another; and one grave marker reads “FA(U)LKNER.”
It is obvious that though there were not many of us to begin
with, we’ve never been a close-knit family. We are prone to
“falling-outs,” quick to anger, and slow to forgive. Whereas most
families come together at holidays or anniversaries, ours rarely
has, at least not in my generation. With the exception of our im-
mediate kin, we’ve been derelict in keeping up family ties.
Pappy tried. On New Year’s Eve in the 1950s, he liked to
host small gatherings for family and friends at his home, Rowan
Oak. Dressed to the nines, we met shortly before midnight in
the library, where magnums of champagne were chilling in wine
coolers, and crystal champagne glasses were arranged on silver
trays. As the hour approached, Pappy moved about the room and
welcomed his guests. When our glasses were filled he would nod
at one of the young men standing near the overhead light switch.
Then he would take his place in front of the fire. When the lights
were out and the room was still, with firelight dancing against
the windowpanes, Pappy would lift his glass and give his tradi-
tional New Year’s toast, unchanged from year to year. “Here’s to
the younger generation,” he would say. “May you learn from the
mistakes of your elders.”
I’m still learning.

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 1—
My Father’s Death

I t never occurred to me that it could have been pilot

error, that the plane crash that killed four young men—
including the pilot, my father—could have been his fault. He
had been taught to fly by the best. He had a commercial pilot’s
license and hundreds of hours of flight time and complete confi-
dence in himself. When I began to search for answers, his fellow
pilots told me that he was a natural, a pilot’s pilot, that there
was no aircraft that Dean couldn’t fly, that his instincts for flying
were almost mystical. The crash, the old barnstormers insisted,
was caused by factors beyond his control. It could not have been
Dean’s fault.
He loved performing in air shows, and several days before his
last one, in November 1935, he flew to Pontotoc, a small town
in north Mississippi, where he was scheduled to put on an Ar-
mistice Day exhibition. He flew the Waco C cabin cruiser, a gift
from William, a fire-engine-red biplane with tan leather seats
and ashtrays on the armrests. An elegant aircraft, it seated four
in comfort.
As usual, Dean had written all the promotional copy for the
air show, had flyers printed, and flew over the town making low
passes to drop the leaflets. Down they fluttered like confetti
onto streets, trees, and rooftops. It was supper time on a Friday.
At the sound of the plane’s engine, people ran outside, children

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 6 ⁄ Dean Faulkner Wells

first, clapping their hands in excitement, pointing at the sky,

their parents close behind, all caught up in the moment, pluck-
ing the flyers out of the air.

MAMMOTH ARMISTICE DAY AIR PAGEANT

Two days—Nov. 10–11, Two O’Clock.
Featuring Dean Faulkner and Navy Sowell.
THRILLING EXHIBITION OF STUNT FLYING
AND AERIAL ACROBATICS.
Death-defying parachute jumps by Navy Sowell.
See Pontotoc from the air. Long rides, one dollar.
Landing field west of Pontotoc.
In case of inclement weather show will be held
the following week.

Barnstorming shows were circuses, carnivals, vaudeville

shows, and county fairs rolled into one. As a plane would thun-
der over, spectators would gather in a field to watch female wing
walkers make their way from the cockpit to the struts, as sure and
as precise as ballet dancers. Jumpers with parachutes clutched to
their chests would plunge out of the planes, feeding the chute
out to catch air as they plummeted toward earth. The real stars,
however, were the daring young men in their flying machines.
Reeve Lindbergh once wrote me that her father thought of the
early aviators as members of a select fraternity, “the brotherhood
of the air,” drawn together by the love and danger of flight.
Dean had flown into Pontotoc from Memphis on Friday. He
was at work early Saturday morning taking up fifty or sixty pas-
sengers before stunt flying in the afternoon: figure eights and
loop-the-loops and heart-stopping stalls. One of his passengers
that morning was a young farmer, Bud Warren, who had never

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 Ever y Day by the Sun ⁄ 7

flown before. As soon as the plane landed, Bud knew he was

coming back the next day with two of his cousins. He wanted
them to see their farms from the air. Bud Warren had had a real
good time.
Sunday, November 10, 1935, was just right for flying. Dean
went out early that morning to check on the weather. He rubbed
his bare feet in the moist grass, licked his finger, and held it up
against the wind. Perfect.
He was at the landing field west of Pontotoc by ten o’clock
dressed in khakis, a white shirt, boots, a leather helmet with gog-
gles, and a white silk scarf around his neck. He began, as he had
on Saturday, taking passengers for rides, charging a dollar for ten
or fifteen minutes in the air. Dean’s wife, Louise, arrived unex-
pectedly around one o’clock, having driven down from Mem-
phis. He was delighted to see her. They chatted briefly before
he went back to work. Louise was five months pregnant with me
and had recently been grounded by her doctor until she came
to term. She had logged so many hours, Dean teased, that she
could have been a pilot herself.
The line for rides was a long one, and it was nearly one thirty
when Bud Warren, who had been waiting patiently, came for-
ward with his cousins Henry and Lamon “Red” Graham. Dean
recognized Bud from the day before. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s
go see those farms.”
Bud and Henry settled themselves into the back seats. Red,
probably because he was a student pilot with several hours of fly-
ing time, sat up front with Dean. As they taxied down the field
to get ready for takeoff, Dean returned Louise’s wave. The red
Waco took off into the sun.
Louise stood by the airfield eating an apple, wishing she
were flying. As she waited for the plane, her sister, Clara, and
brother-in-law, Roger Caldwell, showed up. Louise sat in the

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 8 ⁄ Dean Faulkner Wells

front seat of their car, chatting through the open door with Navy
Sowell, the parachutist who was to make a jump that day. A
young man delivered a ham sandwich that Dean had ordered
from a café. Louise paid him and said, “Just hold on to it and
take it out to the plane. He’ll be hungry when he lands.” Thirty
or forty minutes passed. Someone in the crowd remarked,
“Those Grahams are getting a first-class ride.” Dean must have
been rewarding them, Louise reasoned, for having waited so
long. Then another onlooker: “I bet they’ve crashed.” It was past
two. The crowd was restless, complaining that the show should
have started. Louise began to worry.
Louise, Clara, Roger, and Navy drove down a narrow gravel
road where Dean’s plane had last been seen. A pickup truck
came barreling toward them. Passengers stood in the truck bed,
shouting, “We saw it. We saw it go down. Over there just past
that stand of pines. In the pasture. The plane’s buried in the
ground.”
Navy and Roger ran across the field, leaving the car doors
open. Louise struggled against Clara to get out. The men van-
ished into the pine thicket. When they reappeared moments
later Clara could read the agony in their faces. They had found
the Waco. Dean and his three passengers were dead.
Louise collapsed. Roger held her as Navy turned the car
around and headed back to Pontotoc. News of the crash had
reached the airfield by the time they returned. Spectators raced
toward their cars. Two of Dean’s friends and fellow pilots, Murry
Spain and C. D. Lemmons, were waiting. They took Louise to
C.D.’s home, where Lemmons’s first phone call was to his fam-
ily doctor to come take care of Louise. The second was to 546 in
Oxford—William Faulkner’s number.
When the telephone rang at Rowan Oak, William was out-
side in his yard putting up a trellis for a grape arbor. His wife,

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 Ever y Day by the Sun ⁄ 9

Estelle, called him inside and handed him the phone. His fea-
tures went smooth with shock. “How far from Thaxton? At what
time? Was he alone?” He turned to Estelle. “Dean was killed
in a crash at Thaxton.” He began to place calls, first to Judge
John Falkner, his uncle, asking him to get the operator to block
calls to 15, the telephone number of his mother, Maud Butler
Falkner. He phoned his brothers, Jack and John, and told them,
“Come home. Mother will need us.” Then he called the police.
Thinking Louise was in Memphis, he asked them to set up a
roadblock to detain her in Byhalia, Mississippi, and bring her to
Oxford. “She must not be allowed to go to Thaxton.” He was
soon on his way to his mother’s house.
One of Dean’s fellow pilots had just heard the news. He had
flown with Dean the week before and could not believe he was
dead. He picked up the receiver and asked the operator to con-
nect him to 15. After a long pause, the operator explained that she
had orders not to put through any calls, but “just this once—”
Maud was waiting on her front steps when William pulled
into her driveway. She gripped her handbag and gloves, rigid
with grief. William reached out and she took his hand. They
stood together in silence. Then he helped her into the car. They
drove to Pontotoc without a word passing between them. High-
way 6 was filled with traffic as Dean’s friends raced to the scene
of the crash. William drove to C. D. Lemmons’s house and went
inside. Maud stayed in the car, a small, erect figure.
Louise was in bed, groggy from a sedative the doctor had
given her. William and C.D. helped her to the car, and C.D.
tucked a blanket over her lap. She sat in the backseat, staring
out the window. Then they began the drive back to Oxford.
Maud spoke only once. “Did I ever do anything to make him
unhappy?”
At Maud’s home they were met by family members. Clara

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 10 ⁄ Dean Faulkner Wells

helped put Louise to bed in Dean’s old room. Before dark,

Maud’s second son, Jack Falkner, an FBI agent in North Caro-
lina, would fly home in his yellow and black Aeronca. Her third
son, John, was delayed in Lambert, Mississippi, when his crop
duster nosed over on takeoff. He was now driving to Oxford with
his family. The Falkners were banding together.
William drove by himself to the crash site at Thaxton. He
found men working with blowtorches and hacksaws, racing
against darkness to remove Dean’s body from the wreckage.
The Waco had been almost completely destroyed, its nose bur-
ied deep. It had gone down in an open spot in a wooded area
about ten miles from the Pontotoc airfield. Under a towering
oak, the bodies of the Graham cousins and Bud Warren lay on
a flatbed truck. They had been hastily covered with bedsheets.
William went to the plane and looked inside. The impact had
driven the engine through the cockpit and smashed it into the
passengers. When William saw what the crash had done to his
brother, one of the Graham kinsmen overheard him say, “Hell,
Dean, is that you?”
At five o’clock that afternoon, after the bodies had been
taken to the funeral home in Pontotoc, a crowd was still standing
around the plane, many of them Dean’s fellow pilots, staring at
the crash site in disbelief. Part of the red fabric covering the top
left wing had ripped away.
On Armistice Day, November 11, 1935, the story of the crash
appeared on the front page of the Memphis Press-Scimitar. The
article stated that “an unofficial investigation disclosed that the
control was on the right side and the wheel in the lap of Red
Graham [which] would indicate that the student-pilot had taken
control.” The story ran with pictures of the Waco and of Dean’s
pilot’s license photograph. He was twenty-eight; Red Graham

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 Ever y Day by the Sun ⁄ 11

was twenty-four, Henry Graham and Bud Warren were both

twenty-one. Red, Henry, and Bud were buried the day after the
crash in Sand Springs Cemetery, “the cemetery near where the
wing fabric fluttered to earth.” Finding fault for the crash is be-
yond mortal consideration.

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