Good Book: “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio”

“The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less,” by Terry Ryan, is not only a great book for writers, it’s a great book for anyone.*

It’s the amazing story of Evelyn Ryan, a 1950’s mother of 10, who supplemented the family’s meager income ($90 a week from her alcoholic husband) by entering and winning the many write-in contests they used to hold back then. Things like, “Finish the last line of this poem:"

The time of your life, you can win
With Dr Pepper, the flavor that’s in.
It’s distinctive and bright
It’s lively and light
There’s no time like NOW to begin! (Evelyn’s line)

Evelyn would enter these contests – and win them – constantly! She’d send in multiple entries using every possible form of her own name and sometimes her kids’ names, too. Once her 16-year old son got a phone call from some big company telling him he’d just won a brand new bike.

She also wrote little poems for the local newspaper, for which she was paid a dollar or two. But can you imagine raising 10 kids (all of whom wore glasses) on that? And of course, something was always breaking – like the dryer. She’d win an appliance and six months later it would be worn out from all the use.

But Evelyn never seemed to wear out. In fact, she lived to age 85. (Her daughter, Terry, the author and a writer herself, found all her mom’s notebooks in a trunk, which prompted her to write this book.) Terry says she never once remembers her mother sitting down at a family meal. The kids ate in shifts, the oldest five in the dining room, the youngest in the kitchen.

Anyway, this book is a great read from many perspectives – growing up in the ‘50s, living in a big family, etc. -- but if you’re a writer, it’s especially inspirational. Talk about dedication, this woman was a writing machine. Indomitable, industrious, tenacious, she never gave up. She'd just stand at her ironing board with a spiral notebook at her side, writing and writing -- and entering and winning -- hundreds of contests held by companies like Beechnut Gum, JC Penny, and Burma Shave.

Quite frankly, I don’t know how some of her entries won, they seem so bad by today’s standards. But the incredible thing is how often she did win and how she just kept at it and at it, day after day, year after year, the whole time her kids were growing up. And how often she miraculously came up with a win just in the nick of time!

Here’s another typical entry where she had to write the last line of a something a company had started (their lines are in bold; Evelyn’s are in italics.)

People who like people sometimes fail, wooing—
They fail to use Dial before billing and cooing.

And here’s one of her poems:

But Excuse Us

Folks endowed with
Luck, or virtue,
Get the tissue
To the kerchoo.

Anyway, if you want to read a good story about a writer, get this book—I found it randomly at the library.

*I just heard from my daugher that there was a movie made from it -- same title -- in 2005; I have no idea what it was like (Julianne Moore starred in it) but I must rent it.