‘Pancho Villa’ Collaborators

To Visit Library

 

By Shannon Hicks

Don and Darlene Jackson were married for 47 years at the time of Mr Jackson’s death five years ago. The couple, who moved into Newtown in 1969, had pets through the course of their marriage, often with cats and dogs sharing the space where the Jacksons also raised their children, Dale and Amy.

An award-winning journalist and author, Mr Jackson’s published works tended to be on the serious side. His first big story was a cover article for Life Magazine about Lee Harvey Oswald following the assassination of President Kennedy.

Having written for Time-Life Books and various magazines before finishing his career as a contract writer for Smithsonian Magazine, a new collection edited and just released by his widow offers a look at the lighthearted side of Mr Jackson’s personality.

The Secret Adventures of Pancho Villa: Poems and Memories of Other Beloved Pets (Trafford Publishing, paperback, 36 pages, $20) is a collection of Mr Jackson’s pet-themed writings. Coordinated by Mrs Jackson a few years after her husband’s death in February 2006, the book offers fiction (Don’s take on a fantasy life lived by the book’s title character, the couple’s first cat), nonfiction (a touching essay about their collie, Holly Golightly), and seven poems honoring cats.

“I wanted to share Don’s work, and it’s also sort of a memorial to our pets,” Mrs Jackson said this week.

In the opening lines of the foreword she put in The Secret Adventures of Pancho Villa, Mrs Jackson said she also published the book “to share the joy that our family pets past and present have brought to us … and to have a permanent record of the witty, loving, and sensitive words of my late husband, Donald Dale Jackson.”

The collection was initially published in a very limited run that was shared with family members and close friends.

“I had 20 copies, but people kept telling me they enjoy it,” said Mrs Jackson. “I had people asking for more copies.”

Don Jackson and Joyce Darlene Hall met while both were students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Each grew up with family pets, so it was a natural step that the couple had their own once they were married. It didn’t take long, either. As Mrs Jackson also shares in her foreword, the couple found their first dog, a white beagle they named Dinky, shortly after they were married. Dinky’s untimely death led Don Jackson to write a poem that shared how the dog’s death affected the young couple, which Mrs Jackson believes was his first writing about a family pet.

Mrs Jackson enlisted Koren Harpaz to illustrate the collection. A family friend who is now a senior at New Milford High School, Mr Harpaz was 13 years old when he was approached to create illustrations of cats in various lifestyles, including five secret identities taken on by the book’s title character.

“I’m quite pleased with the illustrations,” Mrs Jackson said this week. “He took the script and read it, and then came forward [with his drawings]. There were just a couple of little corrections, but that was all.”

Mr Harpaz, who is now 17 and has been accepted into Pratt Institute, used colored pencils to create the illustrations in Secret Life of Pancho Villa.

“It was pretty easy,” he said this week. “She gave me the names, and I did a little bit of research and put everything together.”

In the story of Pancho Villa, told from Don Jackson’s point of view, it is discovered that the feline is taking on different identities every Monday through Friday. Mr Harpaz did illustrations of Pancho Villa the housecat, his house (which includes clues that began to give his owners a hint at his secret life), and the feline’s five different identities, including Baron Phil von Laca, Millionaire Playcat.

“That one was my favorite,” Mr Harpaz said. “I got a kick out of his clothes.”

“It’s funny,” the artist continued. “I hadn’t seem these pictures for a few years now and there are things in there that annoy me a little, things I would do differently today. But the finished book, it’s good.”

The Secret Adventures of Pancho Villa also features color photos of Jackson family pets, including one of the writer seated at his desk. Mr Jackson’s manual typewriter is on the desk in front of him and Dugan, the couple’s frisky red tabby of 17 years and an inspiration for many poems, is seated on the desk next to the typewriter.

Mrs Jackson and Mr Harpaz will be at C.H. Booth Library on Saturday, January 28, from 1:30 until 3 pm. Copies of the book will be available for purchase ($20 each), and the two will be available to meet readers and animal lovers of all ages. The program will be in the lower community room of the library, at 25 Main Street.

Reservations are not needed, but additional information is available by calling 203-426-4533.

If you are unable to make it to the library this weekend, copies of The Secret Life of Pancho Villa can also be ordered through Amazon.com.