Hunter, Kermit

Kermit Houston Hunter (1910-2001) was the author of 42 outdoor historical dramas.

Kermit Houston Hunter was born on 3 October 1910 in McDowell County, W.Va. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1931. He later studied at the Juilliard School of Music. In the 1930s, Hunter worked on two newspapers, was secretary of two chambers of commerce, business manager of a professional baseball team, and organist and choir director of a Methodist church.

During five years in the United States army, beginning in 1940, Hunter rose to lieutenant colonel, became assistant chief of staff of the Caribbean Defense Command, and was awarded the Legion of Merit. After World War II he was for two years (1945-1947) the first business manager of the North Carolina Symphony Society.

Hunter began to study playwriting seriously when he enrolled in 1947 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill for graduate work under Samuel Selden, chair of the Department of Dramatic Art and director of the Carolina Playmakers. Three one-act plays by Hunter were produced by the Carolina Playmakers, and, in 1948, when the Cherokee Historical Association was seeking an author to write a play about the history of the Cherokee Indians for presentation at the Mountainside Theatre then under construction at Cherokee, N.C., Selden recommended Hunter for the commission.

Completing the play, Unto These Hills, early in 1949, Hunter offered it as his M.A. thesis and won the Joseph Feldman Playwriting Award for the same year. Also in 1949, the North Carolina Legislature appropriated $35,000 for the production of Unto These Hills, which opened the Mountainside Theatre on 1 July 1950.

Remaining at the University of North Carolina as an instructor in English while studying for a Ph.D. degree, Hunter wrote traditional drama, poetry, and fiction, as well as outdoor plays. Hunter completed the Ph.D. in 1955.

Kermit Hunter died on 11 April 2001 in Dallas, Tex.