Phil Stong
STONG
Posted By: Volunteer - Rich Lowe
Date: 11/1/2002 at 13:10:46
Phil Stong
Novelist
1899-1957--
Philip Duffield Stong attended his first Iowa State Fair in 1908 and got lost trying to find his parents' tent on the campgrounds.
He never got lost at the fair again, and 24 years later became famous for his novel "State Fair."
Stong was born at tiny Pittsburg, near Keosauqua. His parents were Ada Evesta Duffield and Benton Stong, the operator of a general store. As a boy, Stong loved to read, especially works by Mark Twain, and decided to be a writer in his teens when he sold his first magazine story for $1. He was a student at Drake University at the time and graduated in 1919.
Register File Photo
Mr. and Mrs. Phil Stong, shown in 1946, walk among their memories at the Iowa state fair grounds. Absent from the state fair scene for many years, the Stongs, like many other out-of-state Iowans, made that year's centennial exposition a homecoming.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stong taught school in Minnesota and Kansas, then returned to Iowa to teach journalism at Drake University. He worked as a reporter for The Des Moines Register in 1924 and 1925, and met his future wife, Virginia Swain, a reporter on the Register's sister newspaper, the Tribune. They married in 1925 in New York and pursued careers there.
"State Fair," about a family's adventures at the fair, was Stong's 13th novel and the first to be published. It was first made into a movie in 1933, and in 1945 became a movie musical with Rodgers and Hammerstein songs. In 1962, it was remade once more, but set in Texas. More recently, the 1945 version became a stage musical that toured the nation before opening on Broadway in 1996.
With the money he made from writing "State Fair" and selling the film rights, Stong was able to purchase his pride and joy, the 400-acre Linwood Farm near Brunswick, which had once been owned by his grandfather.
Stong wrote more than 40 novels, and he lived the last 24 years of his life on a farm near Washington, Conn. He died of a heart attack, and his ashes are buried at Oak Lawn Cemetery at Keosauqua.
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Famous Iowans by Tom Longden
Des Moines Register
http://desmoinesregister.com/extras/iowans/stong.html
Van Buren Biographies maintained by Rich Lowe.
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