Betty Hester

{{infobox person

| name =

| image = Betty Hester (Rose Library photograph).jpg

| caption =

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{birth date|1923|6|1}}

| birth_place = Rome, Georgia, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1998|12|26|1923|6|1}}

| death_place = Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.

| occupation = American correspondent

| alma_mater =

}}

Hazel Elizabeth Hester (June 1, 1923 – December 26, 1998)U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936–2007. was an American correspondent of influential twentieth-century writers, including Flannery O'Connor and Iris Murdoch.{{r|Tagami}} Hester wrote several short stories, poems, diaries, and philosophical essays, none of which were published.{{r|Young}}

Life

Hester was born in Rome, Georgia, and attended Young Harris College.{{r|Tagami}} She lived and worked in Atlanta before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1948.{{r|Köhler}} After five years in the service she had risen to the rank of technical sergeant{{r|Köhler}} and was stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, after World War II ({{circa}} 1948–53).{{r|Köhler}} She was discharged as "undesirable" for being a lesbian.{{r|Köhler}} After her discharge from the Air Force,{{r|Enniss}} she returned to Georgia.{{r|Köhler}} Hester spent most of her life in a small Midtown Atlanta apartment.{{r|Young}} She worked for an Atlanta-based retail credit company (Equifax), commuting every day by bus.{{r|Tagami|Köhler}} She struggled with alcoholism and bouts of depression{{r|Köhler}} but kept her sexual orientation a secret except to her closest friends.{{r|Köhler}}

Hester is best known for her nine-year correspondence and friendship with Southern fiction writer Flannery O'Connor.{{r|Enniss}} From 1955 to 1964, Hester and O'Connor exchanged nearly 300 letters, some of which are published in Sally Fitzgerald's 1979 compilation of O'Connor's correspondence, The Habit of Being.{{r|Young}} Hester, a very private and reclusive woman, asked that her identity be kept secret in the published letters; thus, she appears as "A".{{r|Young}}{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=89}}

Hester first wrote to O'Connor in July 1955,{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=90}} when O'Connor was working on her second novel, The Violent Bear it Away.{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=315|ps=: "Soon after New Year's Day, 1959, Flannery completed the first draft of her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away, on which she had been working for seven years."}}{{r|Young}} Eager to exchange thoughts and ideas with someone of equal intellectual caliber, O'Connor wrote back: "I would like to know who this is who understands my stories."{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=90}} O'Connor felt that she and Hester shared a spiritual kinship,{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=90}} and O'Connor would later become Hester's confirmation sponsor in the Catholic Church.{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=154|ps=: "I'll be real pleased to be your sponsor for Confirmation—that is, if I read that right and am not just inviting myself."}} Hester left the Church in 1961{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=451}} and turned to agnosticism.{{citation needed|date=May 2016}} This news was a grave disappointment for O'Connor,{{harvnb|O'Connor|1979|p=451}}: "I don't know anything that could grieve us here like this news. I know that what you do you do because you think it is right, and I don't think any the less of you outside the Church than in it, but what is painful is the realization that this means a narrowing of life for you and a lessening of the desire for life." who had engaged Hester in theological dialogues and tried to sustain her friend's faith.{{citation needed|date=May 2016}}

Death and legacy

Hester gave her letters to Emory University in 1987 on the condition that they be sealed for twenty years.{{r|Young}} They were released to the public on May 12, 2007.{{r|Tagami}}

Like her mother, Hester died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on December 26, 1998, in Atlanta, at the age of 75.{{r|Köhler}}

Notes

{{Reflist|refs=

{{cite interview

|last = Enniss

|first = Steve

|interviewer = Jacki Lyden

|title = Flannery O'Connor's Private Life Revealed in Letters

|work = National Public Radio

|date = May 12, 2007

|url = https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=10154699

|access-date = May 13, 2016

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160509125121/http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=10154699

|archive-date = May 9, 2016

|url-status = live

}}

{{cite news

|last = Köhler

|first = Nicholas

|title = The Mysterious Letter Writer Who Beguiled Flannery O'Connor and Iris Murdoch

|date = May 10, 2016

|newspaper = The New Yorker

|url = https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-mysterious-letter-writer-who-beguiled-flannery-oconnor-and-iris-murdoch

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160512105553/http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-mysterious-letter-writer-who-beguiled-flannery-oconnor-and-iris-murdoch

|archive-date = May 12, 2016

|url-status = live

}}

{{cite news

|last = Tagami

|first = Kirsten

|title = Flannery O'Connor Letters Going Public

|date = May 10, 2007

|newspaper = The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

|department = Arts

|url = http://www.accessatlanta.com/arts/content/arts/stories/2007/05/09/0510flannery.html

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070515091740/http://www.accessatlanta.com/arts/content/arts/stories/2007/05/09/0510flannery.html

|archive-date = May 15, 2007

|url-status = dead

}}

{{cite magazine

|last = Young

|first = Alec T.

|title = Flannery's Friend: Emory Unseals Letters from O'Connor to Longtime Correspondent Betty Hester

|date = Autumn 2007

|magazine = Emory Magazine

|url = https://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/2007/autumn/flannery.html

|access-date = May 15, 2016

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150926090832/https://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/2007/autumn/flannery.html

|archive-date = September 26, 2015

|url-status = live

}}

=Works cited=

{{cite book

|last = O'Connor

|first = Flannery

|editor-last = Fitzgerald

|editor-first = Sally

|title = The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

|publisher = Farrar, Straus and Giroux

|date = 1979

|isbn = 9780374521042

|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=zU9liqlCzmsC

}}

Betty Hester

Life

Death and legacy

Notes

=Works cited=

Further reading