Coal miner, Marine, boxer, poet, artist, author, surveyor and engineer — John Minnich Wilson was clever and versatile. Born on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma Jan. 8, 1898, he lived at
various mining camps in Oklahoma and Arkansas with his parents Commodore and Frankie Ellen (Smith) Wilson before the family moved back to Indiana, to Jasonville, in 1909. Three generations of Wilsons were miners. When money was needed for a younger sister’s medical bills, “Jock,” as he was nicknamed, became a 13-year-old “digger” with his father at the Hamilton Mine in Sullivan County, IN. Though he could not attend school, he received special consent to take examinations. Wilson poignantly recounted these mining experiences in The Dark and the Damp, winner of the 1951 Avery Hopwood Award in American Literature. During a strike in 1914, Wilson enrolled at Jasonville High School in Jasonville, IN, excelled in the classroom and played football and basketball. He enrolled at Garfield High School in Terre Haute, IN in 1915 and shined shoes at Fritz Roberts’ barber shop. Seasoning in Jasonville helped him excel on the gridiron that fall, the first year Garfield defeated Wiley, 7 – 6. Before graduating in 1917, student-athlete Wilson earned an unsolicited Congressional appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. He rejected the offer, instead enlisting in the Marines. Upon his release, he returned to the mines, wrote poetry, took boxing lessons and studied surveying at Rose Polytechnic Institute in Terre Haute, IN. The first poem he submitted was published in Poetry magazine. Hein, produced two books of poetry, Pan With a Pick (1930) and Black Diamonds (1947) and was known nationwide as “the Coal Miners Poet”. Restless, he reenlisted in the Marines in 1919, serving until the Armistice. Soon after his discharge, he befriended Garfield schoolmate Laurentia “Lenny” Lyman, then an Indiana State student. They were married April 20, 1920. Meanwhile, he became a mine surveyor for Shourds-Stoner Engineers and pursued a brief pro boxing career under the tutelage of “Pop” Weldele and Charles “Bud” Taylor. After being gravely injured in a mine explosion at Riley in 1922, he avoided underground work but became a registered civil engineer and Vigo County, IN surveyor. Discovering that he enjoyed painting, Wilson enrolled in the Detroit School of Fine Arts and the Haywood Academy of Fine Arts in Michigan, winning several state and regional awards. Besides sketches which illustrate his books, Wilson’s best known creation was “The Spirit of 7–6,” an oil painting solemnizing Garfield’s 7–6 triumphs over city rival Wiley. In 1924 he gave the painting — now owned by the Vigo County Historical Society — to his alma mater. Jock and Lenny had four children: Libbyann, William Keene, Lenny Lou and Mary Ellen. After another Marine stint during World War II, Jock enrolled at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1952, shortly before his eyesight faltered. Remarried twice, Wilson lived in Ann Arbor until his death March 11, 1961. With his third wife, Mary Margaret Burnett McGregor Wilson, he had a son, Perry, named after Jock’s brother, a celebrated bacteriologist.
