After my father, Charles Postell, slouched towards nirvana in 2008, I had a hell of a job on my hands. I’d already been the primary custodian of his work archive, which he had taken no interest in for years. When his death entitled me to the entirety of it, thus began a major endeavor – cataloging, organizing, and figuring out how best to preserve it.
Since I’ve been working on a book of my own, a kind of summation of what his own work had built over the course of nearly 40 years, I didn’t want to lose any of it to time or unintentional negligence.
Then, the UGA library – the university where he had attended the Grady School of Journalism – contacted me and expressed interest in acquiring his work archive, however much of it I was willing to part with, to include in their collection as a repository.
Since his book DEAD MAN COMING, based on the 1973 Alday murders in Donalsonville, Georgia, had become something of a cult classic (unbeknownst to my father or me until the murderer considered the ringleader of the heinous mass murder was executed by lethal injection in 2003), I’d been getting frequent calls, sometimes weekly, asking for copies. I had one copy, and upon searching the internet, discovered the rare, now out-of-print remaining copies were going for between $150-450. I bought two $150 copies for myself and have since been on the look-out, and keeping close tabs on the interest level – which has now waned in the least.
Planning on reprinting the book, my first task must be organizing and negotiating with the UGA library about their proposed acquisition.
This will servce as an informational blog to accompany this grand endeavor of multiple ends.
To the story that never ends….
R