ELLISVILLE- Jones County native, former New York City resident and current Athens, Georgia resident, Noel Holston will be returning to Laurel as the guest author for the Laurel-Jones County Library’s “Author Event.” The 1968 Jones County Junior College alumnus is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and critic, songwriter and photographer, who has recently published his second book, As I Die Laughing: Snapshots of a Southern Childhood. Holston will be sharing some of the stories he wrote about growing up “free-range” in Laurel, Ellisville and the Pendorff community at the Laurel-Jones County Library on Thursday, November 9, from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.
“As tickled as I am to have a chance to read chapters from As I Die Laughing to people I grew up with, what I really look forward to is the stories they’re going to tell me. Yarns will be swapped, I’m sure,” said Holston,. “I don’t go home as much as I once did now that my parents and extended family have all passed on, but I still get up that way every couple of years. I did a book signing at the library in Laurel in 2020, when my book, Life After Deaf was newly published. Any time I visit, I see my only sibling, my younger brother, (a JCJC graduate and retired professor at the University of South Alabama) Tim, who lives in Mobile. We drive up to Jones County for the day. It’s sort of a ritual: We visit our folks’ graves to pay respects, go by my grandmother’s old house on 5th Street in Laurel, drive by our family’s house in Pendorff, cruise on down to Ellisville, and eat chili cheeseburgers at Ward’s.”
Holston’s humorous account of his childhood adventures in Jones County with his boyhood friends, family and residents of Jones County in the 1960s, earned him the nickname, the “Mark Twain of Laurel” by reviewers of his new book. Some readers may remember the author’s relatives like his uncle, M.D. “Shorty” Holston who owned a car dealership in Ellisville and his first cousins, David and Dr. James Holston. Other friends he remembers fondly include, Freida Gunn Collins, Jim Clark and Eddie Endom.
“About half of the stories and sketches are things I’ve been telling for years as a ‘stand-up’ storyteller. Pretty sure it will amuse most everybody who came of age in the 1960s and ‘70s,” shared Holston.
The semi-retired writer’s first book was a memoir called, “Life after Deaf,” which chronicles his efforts to recover from a near total hearing loss in 2010. The book was published in 2019 and continues to sell and make Amazon’s Best Sellers List.
Ironically, the author of now two books and a long-time newspaper columnist at Newsday in New York City, was inspired by his JCJC teacher and campus newspaper/yearbook advisor, Hunter “Mack” Cole to change course and be a writer. Holston was in Cole’s English class his freshman year at JCJC. After finishing the semester, Cole recruited Holston to be the yearbook editor and to write a column for the student produced, Radionian newspaper. His assignment was to write what was “IN” at JC.
“I was supposed to suggest stuff that was ‘happ’nin’ at the school and elsewhere or what struck my fancy. My output included a review of The Beatles’ then new, ‘Sgt. Pepper’ album and columns about the blues music revival that was underway, the impact of the murder of Martin Luther King and silly stuff such as trying to calculate whether all the cigarette butts tossed on campus grounds would eventually bury the school. To my shock, I won a state student journalism prize for some sample columns Mr. Cole submitted without telling me!” said Holston.
The JCJC 1968 graduate never thought about being a writer before this chance encounter with Cole. He enjoyed “playing with words” but believed like his parents, that he should pursue a practical career, so he earned a finance degree at USM and then his MBA degree.
“The game changer was editing the USM yearbook, The Southerner, which was a paid position I got thanks to my JC Lair yearbook experience. I oversaw the 1970 and 1971 yearbooks which led to an invitation to a summer program at Harvard for students involved in campus publications. The encouragement I received there for my writing led me to seek a journalism job rather than something in banking or corporate management. My folks felt like I had run off and joined the circus, but I never regretted my choice. I got paid to write a popular culture, news, politics and social issues column for almost four decades, kind of like my ‘IN JC’ column but on a national scale.”
In 1972, Holston was hired by the Orlando Sentinel newspaper as a general assignment reporter. He later became a contributor and editor of its Sunday magazine a year later, and then was asked to be the paper’s TV-Radio columnist. Occasionally, he wrote about music, movies, theater, food, and visual art, but TV became his “meal ticket.” In 1986, Holston worked in Minneapolis and then New York, in 2000.
At Newsday, he reviewed TV shows, commented on the industry and the electronic media’s impact on society, as well as interviewed and profiled dozens of entertainment and news personalities.
“It was great fun, and it was great training for the writing I’m doing now,” said Holston.
Currently, Noel lives in Georgia with his wife, singer-songwriter, Marty Winkler and they have two sons, a stepdaughter, and a couple of grandchildren.