768 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-CREATION
modern reader may find the storytelling style a little florid and melodramatic,
the editors of this edition have chosen to reprint it exactly as it first appeared.
Mr. Dixon's passionate literary style also says something about how powerfully
affected the public of the day was by Alvin York's story of self-transformation.
In 1941 York's story was made into the motion picture Sergeant York,
starring Gary Cooper, a role for which Cooper won the Academy Award for Best
Actor. Alvin York acted as a consultant on the film, so the events portrayed are
not as overly dramatic or romanticized as many other Hollywood biographies.
Sergeant York is available on video and it still holds up as a well-made, powerful,
and affecting movie.FOUGHT FOR HIS RELIGION; NOW GREAT WAR HEROROTARIANS PLAN TO PRESENT FARM TO ALVIN YORK,
UNLETTERED TENNESSEE SQUIRREL HUNTER
by George W DixonHow Alvin Cullom York, an unlettered Tennessee squirrel
hunter, became the foremost hero of the American Expe-
ditionary Forces in France, forms a romantic chapter in the
history of the world war.
York is a native of Fentress County. He was born and
reared among the hardy mountaineers of the Tennessee woods.
There is not even a railroad in Fentress County. During his
earlier years he was reputed to be a desperate character. He was
what was known as a gunman. He was a dead shot with a
revolver, and his prowess with the rifle was known far and
wide among the plain people of the Tennessee hills.
One day a religious organization pitched its tent in the
community in which York and his parents lived. It was a
strange sect that came to the mountains looking for converts,