income for the remainder ofhis life,” as the will put it.

But then what? It’s hardto say. Because — oddly forsomeone who prided herselfon the accuracy of her de-scriptions — Marjorie’s willwas vague. As a result, it’sbeen the subject of severalcourt cases (the most recentbeing in 1995).

For example, she left herCross Creek farm to the Uni-versity of Florida, where shehad once taught a course.And she named the Universi-ty Foundation — then calledthe “University of FloridaEndowment Corp.” —co-executor of her estate.

Happy, at first, to letNorton take on the task, UFlater put in a claim for thecopyrights — and the royal-ties. At a 1955 hearing, aFlorida court decided forArthur and Norton. The uni-versity had to be satisfiedwith the papers Marjorie hadwilled to the library archives.

Marjorie had envisionedCross Creek as a retreat forbudding novelists andthought the royalties wouldmaintain it. But after theproperty became run-down,UF transferred ownership inthe 1970s to the state Divi-sion of Parks and Recreation.

The university, however,wisely hung on to the manu-scripts, which have become akind of cash cow. Today, theUniversity Press of Floridapumps out new collections ofher letters on a regular basis,most of them edited by Uni-versity of Illinois English pro-fessor Rodger L. Tarr, whogrew up near Cross Creek.

Of course, it takes moneyto make money, and the li-brary’s endowment arm, theHowe Society, loosens itspurse strings when neededto buy letters as they comeup for sale. The Special Col-lection acquired 300 lettersfrom Philip S. May Jr., theoctogenarian son of Marjo-rie’s Cross Creek lawyer anda longtime friend of Nor-ton’s, and some from Tarr in2002.

After Norton died peace-fully in 1997 at age 95, agreat-grandniece, Judith Ol-iver, sold a batch of 1,400 let-ters to the Collection — forhow much, it will not say.

Today, Norton’s heirs —who include Oliver’s brother,Joseph Ellis of New Brun-swick, N.J.; Arlene Ellis ofGainesville; and Sara “SallyB.” Hooker of Trenton — al-so share something else withthe university: all of Marjo-rie’s royalties.

■

The writer’s blood rela-tives, on the other hand, getnothing.

Besides Jeff, Arthur hadtwo daughters by first wife,Luca. Barbara, now 72, livesin Bountiful, Utah. MarjorieBatchelder, 78, resides withher husband, Robert, inMount Vernon, Wash. It wasshe who cared for Arthurduring his final battle withcancer and who then took re-sponsibility for his 10-year-old son, Jeff. It was not, ap-parently, a happy experience.

She’s a soft-spoken wom-an, careful not to say toomuch.

“Yes, we took Jeff in andgave him a home. He wasjust a young fellow. He wasvery disturbed at that partic-ular time. . . .”

After Arthur died, shesays, Norton offered to help,“but I thought it was betterto just leave Jeff be.” Jeffrey,she notes, was the same ageas her youngest son.

But when he turned 18,Jeff and the Batchelderswent their separate ways.Marjorie Batchelder doesn’treally want to talk about it.She will only say: “We havetried to keep separated fromhim. There was a concern forour safety.”

Neither Jeff nor his half-sisters have ever benefiteddirectly from Marjorie’s orNorton’s wills.

“The only thing that wereceived from Marjorie Rawl-ings was $300 when Bob andI were married. That was in1943,” says Batchelder. But,she says, “we’re gettingalong all right.”

Asked about the relation-ship between Marjorie andArthur, she’ll tell you, “Well,I know that she saw to it thathe had money when he want-ed it, along with the (threePhoenix) aunts.”

■

On the other hand, “SallyB.” has vivid memories ofher famous aunt.

The first beneficiary toNorton’s literary trust, whichcomes to her through herlate father, Tom, Sara BaskinHooker is a special-educationteacher who lives with hus-

band, James, about 30 mileswest of Gainesville.

“My favorite experiencewith Aunt Marjorie,” Sallysays, “was when her goodfriend Edith Pope was goingto a mother-daughter lun-cheon in St. Augustine andsaid, ‘Why don’t you bringSally along?’

“Aunt Marjorie called upmy mother and said, ‘I’d liketo take Sally out to lunch.’Well, she arrived carrying anenormous box with a big sat-in ribbon. Inside was a greenvelvet dress with Irish lace, amatching purse and shoes.She wanted to make sure Iwas dressed properly.

“So we go to this lunch,and I’m sitting at the table,and I start rubbing the vel-vet. You know how you canmake it turn different colors?

“Aunt Marjorie, who wasa stickler for manners, turnsto me and says, ‘Sally B.,stop petting your dress!’

“Believe me,” she laughs,“I stopped.”

Norton and Marjorie, Sal-ly says, “had a very strangemarriage. They lived apartmuch of the time, but he re-spected her privacy.”

After his wife died, Sallysays, Norton stayed at Cres-cent Beach until about 1960.“Then he was robbed, andUncle Norton moved to abayfront home in St. August-ine. After he got older, hemoved into a cottage at Vic-ar’s Landing,” an upscale re-tirement community in near-by Ponte Vedra Beach.

His hobby? “Aunt Marjo-rie,” says Sally B., thoughshe adds that “he loved totravel and meet people. He’dgo to Europe quite oftenwith a bunch of his friends.”

■

The second group of ben-eficiaries includes retiredNew Jersey accountant Jo-seph Dalby Ellis, who stayedwith Norton his senior yearof high school. “My dad wasin the Navy. It was supposedto be just for the summer,but it turned into a year.”

Ellis, whose father wasthe direct recipient, gets afifth of a share, along withhis sisters and stepsisters.

“I just got my royaltycheck, and it was a verymodest sum, under $1,000,”Ellis tells you. “I guess Mar-jorie’s books just aren’t sell-ing that well anymore.”

Upon hearing that, ac-cording to Simon & Schusterpublicity director Tracy VanStraaten, The Yearling sold arespectable 40,000 copieslast year, and Cross Creekabout 3,000, Ellis is sur-prised. “Of course,” he says,“there are a lot of fees.”

■

The final beneficiary isArlene Ellis, a gracious,white-haired woman wholives in Gainesville in a homeshe and her late husbandbuilt in the ’50s.

Back in the ’30s, shewaited tables at the MarionHotel, where Norton intro-duced her to his nephew —her future spouse.

The royalties, she says,“are divided into three parts— the same three named inthe will. We get a checkonce a year. In March.”

Arlene cared for Nortonafter he had a heart attack.Then her own husband took

ill, and Norton went to live atVicar’s Landing, where, ac-cording to the director, he

paid a$177,000 en-trance feethat, after hisdeath, was re-funded backto his estate.

After liv-ing for yearsin a $3,500-a-month patio

home at Vicar’s, Nortonmoved to the health-carecenter. “He didn’t want to bealone,” Arlene said. “He hadaround-the-clock care. Thenurses told me he didn’t real-ly need it, ‘but if he can af-ford it, and wants it, he canhave it.’ ”

■

John Sundeman wasNorton’s accountant. In away, he still is.

The St. Augustine officeof the accounting firm ofMcGhin, Calhoun & Sunde-man’s is on Arricola Avenue,just around the corner fromNorton’s big bayfront houseon Dolphin Drive.

Sundeman was not onlythe personal representativeof Norton’s estate, he alsowas named trustee of theNorton S. Baskin LiteraryTrust, which is where theroyalties from Marjorie’sbooks flow into from twoNew York firms: Simon &Schuster, which publishesthe Scribner titles, andBrandt & Hochman LiteraryAgents, which distribute roy-alties from the foreign trans-lations and movie rights.

Charles Schlesinger, aBrandt employee since 1956,never knew Marjorie, but heknows her books. “We basi-cally do still represent herwork. The Yearling has neverbeen out of print. Cross Creek,too. That’s still in print.”

There was one book,however, that almost didn’tget printed.

Back in 1990, Sundemanhelped Norton sue the Seajayliterary society of Columbia,S.C., over a manuscript ofMarjorie’s that Norton feltbelonged to him.

The heirs of Julia Scrib-ner Bigham (who was thedaughter of Charles Scrib-ner, Marjorie’s publisher,and her literary executor)had found the “lost” first nov-el by Rawlings in their moth-er’s attic. Seajay bought it for$12,500.

Anne Blythe Meriwether,a South Carolina scholar andSeajay member, shared thenews about the find at the1988 meeting in Gainesvilleof the brand-new MarjorieKinnan Rawlings Society,which included Rodger Tarrand Philip May Jr., andwhich is having its 18th an-nual conference this week-end in Crystal River.

Norton was there, too.But instead of congratulatingher, “he was in my face,”Meriwether recalls. “He wasangry. ‘You have been dupedby a slick New York bookdealer,’ he told me. ‘He is afraud, and you are a fraud.’But I knew Marjorie’s hand-writing.”

Once Norton acknowl-edged the manuscript wasreal, “he said I should ‘returnit’ to him. He asked for aphotocopy, to be placed inthe rare books room (at UF).Something told me not to

give it to him in entirety, so Itook some pages out, photo-copied and sent it to him. Ofcourse, he immediatelycopyrighted it with the Li-brary of Congress. He wasgoing to go ahead with thepublishing plans, when theydiscovered it wasn’t com-

plete.”Norton,

in Meriweth-er’s view,“was like thedragon whosat on thetreasure.

“I was un-der contractto the Uni-

versity of Florida to publishthe book. But when Nortonsued, the contract was re-scinded on both sides. AfterNorton died, the UniversityPress contacted me and in2001 reopened negotiations.”

The book, an autobio-graphical work written in1928 that was basically ahate letter to Marjorie’s over-controlling mother, was pub-lished in 2002. “How muchmoney has it made? It hasn’tbeen very much,” Meriweth-er says. “But I’m verypleased with the book. It’sgoing to stay powerful.”

■

Marjorie thought that, af-ter she died, a scholarshipfund would be set up in hername at UF.

But that didn’t happenuntil 1997, after her hus-band’s death. Perhaps it wasthe fact that it requested aportion go to a “Negro stu-dent.” (Her will, you’ll recall,was written in 1949, morethan a decade before the uni-versity was fully integrated.)

The copyrights were sup-posed to go to the university,too, but that also only hap-pened recently.

The reason? The sameone that explains whyArthur’s heirs don’t receive ashare of the copyrights, asNorton’s do.

And that is a clause in theU.S. Copyright Law givingwidowed spouses exclusiverights to authors’ works. Atthe time of Marjorie’s death,it said that if an author diedduring the first of two 28-year copyright terms, thesurviving spouse could re-new the copyright. That isexactly what Norton did, andkept on doing, effectivelytrumping his wife’s will.

The copyrights — thanksto the Sonny Bono Term Ex-tension Act of 1998 — havenow been extended to the au-thor’s lifetime plus 70 years.

Beyond that, however,it’s hard to know much aboutthe copyrights. After Nortondied, they were poured into atrust, which is confidential,as Norton’s trustee, Sunde-man, will tell you.

The University Founda-tion isn’t much more forth-coming. The private nonprof-it, which administers giftsthat the 150-year-old land-grant college receives,stalled for weeks before re-vealing the existence of ascholarship fund.

According to Foundationspokesman Chris Brazda, aMarjorie Kinnan RawlingsBaskin Scholarship Endow-ment was started sometimebefore 1998, from a trust. Itscurrent value is $692,985.69.

Pamela Gilbert of the En-glish Department would notsay who has received the ap-proximately $2,000 annual

scholarship but confirmed itgoes to “a deserving gradu-ate student.”

Almost $700,000 soundslike a grand sum to be madeavailable to deserving gradu-ate students — until you con-sider that probate recordsfiled in St. Johns County byJohn Sundeman and Dayto-na attorney Janet Martinezshow that the taxes alone onNorton’s estate came tomore than $1 million.

Florida estates are taxedanywhere between 18 and 49percent. So, the appraisedvalue of Norton’s estatecould be close to $5 million.Where did the money go?

John Sundeman is tight-lipped. “I have the responsi-bility of managing her copy-right,” he will tell you. “Halfwas gifted to the Universityof Florida.”

And the other half? “Icannot go into the actual de-tails. It’s a private entity.”

Asked if he contactedMarjorie’s nieces and neph-ew after Norton died, Sunde-man responds: “They werenot heirs that (Norton) left.They were not mentioned inhis will.” Norton’s estate at-torney, Janet Martinez, didnot return phone calls afterrepeated attempts to contacther.

With Norton gone, Sun-deman considers himself thekeeper of Marjorie’s flame.“Some people can say thingsabout Marjorie, and somecannot. We ran into a copy-right infringement a fewyears ago. The Seajay Soci-ety. Just Google me — Goo-gle John Sundeman. Thatcase will shoot right up.

“I protect her image.Maintain the quality of herimage. I give precedence toeducational institutions,sales, requests to publish ex-cerpts, to quote passages ofthe books,” Sundeman says.“My chief role is to act as abusiness manager.

“There is continued inter-est in her work, especiallyamong universities and inthe public. Her work is socentral to Florida. It’s ofgood caliber and quality. It’sgood, clean literature.”

Sundeman’s right. Goo-gle him, and the Seajay case— which he and Norton lost— does shoot right up.

■

You log off the computer.A stack of Marjorie’s bookssits nearby — books whoseproceeds go to her hus-band’s relatives, not hers.

One particular dust jack-et seems hard to ignore. Itbelongs to the Seajay-published novel, the oneNorton tried so hard to makehis own, even as he madesure he controlled the restfrom the grave.

You read the title, andshiver at the irony.

The name of the book?Blood of My Blood.

Staff researchers SammyAlzofon, Krista Pegnetter andLelia Boyd Arnheim; ThadPoulson, editor of the SitkaSentinel; and Marsha Milroy,news researcher for the SeattlePost Intelligencer, contributedto this report.A margaret_mckenzie@pbpost.com

Photo by MARGARET McKENZIE

Sara ‘Sally B.’ Baskin Hooker of Trenton is Norton Baskin’s niece. She splits the royalties from Mar-jorie Kinnan Rawlings’ books with other heirs of Norton. His hobby, she says, was ‘Marjorie.’

Photo courtesy of Galen Paine

Jeff Kinnan (left) hugs dog Teak in theoffice of his Sitka Public Defender GalenPaine. For the past 20 years, Kinnanhas lived on derelict boats and in thewoods of the Alaskan town. Back in1952, a 17-month-old Jeff was brought

by his father to thesummer home of hisfamous Aunt Marjorie,who was so taken bythe blond toddler, shebegged her husbandto consider keepinghim. Norton talkedher out of it, and Jef-frey was brought backto the Pacific North-

west, where he basically dropped out ofsociety. First located by a reporter in1981, he was tracked down again byThe Palm Beach Post last summer.

Norton in 1988

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/File photo

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at Cross Creek, circa 1940. The author’s books The Yearling and Cross Creek are still in print, generating royalties.

A. Ellis

S N THE PALM BEACH POST • SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2005 7D