GAINESVILLE -More than 125 years after the death of legendary Georgia-born Old West gunfighter and gambler John H. "Doc" Holliday, Brenau University will host a special program Tuesday, March 3, that explores the continuing prominence in popular culture of Holliday and others whose principal claim to fame was a 30-second gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, Oct. 26, 1881.<br />
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Free and open to the public, the program features Georgia "Author of the Year" Victoria Wilcox, who has produced a trilogy of novels based on the life of Holliday. The Last Decision, the third book in the Wilcox series titled Southern Son: The Saga of Doc Holliday is scheduled for publication in May. Wilcox will sign copies of the first two books, Inheritance and Gone West, following the program in historic Pearce Auditorium on the Brenau Gainesville campus. Signed copies of The Last Decision can be pre-ordered that evening as well.<br />
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Noted film critic Eleanor Ringel Cater, a self-acknowledged Doc Holliday aficionado, joins Wilcox on stage for a wide-ranging discussion of the Holliday story in fact and fiction.<br />
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Members of the audience are encouraged to dress up in Western attire and take advantage of an old-timey photo booth, stocked with some extra western-style accessories for selfies and other photos to post on a special webpage for the event.<br />
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Brenau students will get into the act as well with some events leading up to the main program, including a screening of the film, Tombstone, in Thurmond McRae Lecture Hall on the Brenau Gainesville campus at 7 p.m. Monday, March 2, and some fun instruction in learning the mathematical and critical thinking concepts applied in Doc Holliday's favorite game: poker. Wilcox also will appear at the Gainesville Rotary Club meeting at noon Monday, March 2, at First Baptist Church.<br />
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Wilcox, founding director of the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House Museum, which opened in 1996 in the historical Fayetteville, Georgia, spent close to two decades on what would become the research for her fictional trilogy.<br />
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"I didn't start out to be a novelist," said Wilcox, who has become over the past two decades arguably the leading authority on Holliday. "I was just answering TV and newspaper reporters' questions about the people behind the Holliday House. But every time I was interviewed, the reporters got their facts wrong. So I made up a fact sheet for their reference, and they still got it wrong. Then I wrote out an eight-page handout, detailing dates and names
