Thomas Wolfe - Asheville, NC - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Tom Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina on October 3, 1900. He entered the University of North Carolina at the age of 15 as a self describe “awkward misfit,” and graduated as editor of the school newspaper “The Daily Tarheel.” He went on to study at Harvard, where he received his Masters Degree in Arts and Sciences. He was thought to be an accomplished playwright but abandoned playwriting to concentrate on novels and short stories. His most famous work was a novel called “Look Homeward, Angel,” which was an autobiographical novel that fictionalized his life in Asheville. The novel chronicled family, friends and the boarders at his mother's establishment on Spruce Street. In the book, he renamed the town Altamont and called the boarding house "Dixieland." His family was fictionalized under the name Gant, with Wolfe calling himself Eugene, his father Oliver, and his mother Eliza. In 1938, while traveling on the west coast, Tom was taken ill with pneumonia and returned to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for treatment where it was discovered that he was also suffering of tuberculosis of the brain. Thomas was died on September 15, 1938. His body was returned to Asheville where he was laid to rest next of his mother and father in Riverside Cemetery.

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Description: Thomas Clayton Wolfe was born on October 3, 1900 in Asheville, North Carolina. He was the 8th child of William and Julia Wolfe. In 1906 Julia Wolfe opened a boarding house in Asheville named “Old Kentucky Home,” where she and 6-year old Tom lived while the rest of the family continued to live a short distance away on Woodfin Street. Tom lived here until he left for college at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He was only 15-years old when he entered the University and boldly predicted that his portrait would one day hang near that portrait of Governor Zebulon Vance in New West Hall, which it does today. While in College Wolfe served as editor of the “Daily Tarheel,” and won the Worth Prize for Philosophy for his essay titled “The Crisis in Industry. In June of 1920, Thomas Wolfe graduated from the University of North Carolina in the fall entered the Graduate School for Arts and Science at Harvard. In 1922, he received his Masters Degree but continued to study under the tutorage of noted professor George Pierce Baker. During a 1926 trip to Europe, he began writing down his early memories of Asheville. He abandoned playwriting, and after three years of writing, revision and editing, published Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life. Look Homeward, Angel, considered one of the great coming-of-age novels in the English language, follows the story of Eugene Gant, a sensitive, intelligent boy growing up in a small Southern mountain city. The book's success allowed Wolfe to leave his teaching job to travel and continue writing. Six years later, Wolfe published Of Time and the River, which continues Eugene's adventures as a young man at Harvard, and in New York and Europe. Wolfe divided the next three years between writing and travelling in the United States and Europe. In 1938, he turned his mountainous manuscript over to Edward C. Aswell, his editor at Harper & Brothers, and left for the West Coast. While in Seattle, he was taken ill with pneumonia. He was brought across the continent for surgery at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, where he died of miliary tuberculosis of the brain. Thomas Wolfe who is regarded as North Carolina's most famous writer, died on September 15, 1900 and is resting just a few yards from the grave of Governor Zebulon Vance in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina. Date of birth: 10/03/1900 Date of death: 09/15/1938 Area of notoriety: Literature Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Daylight Savings Time Daily - 7 a.m. - 8. p.m. Winter Hours 7 a.m - 5 p.m. Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log   08/22/2013 NCDaywalker visited it