Dear List,

It is with great sadness that I write of Jerry Leath Mills’ death last night, of an apparent heart attack.

I do not have the wherewithal to write a proper obituary here.  Jake spent his career at Chapel Hill before retiring and coming out east to ECU, where he was a treasured colleague.  He was editor for many years of Studies in Philology and an early corresponding editor of SpN.  He was an acknowledged authority on Sir Walter Raleigh’s literary works, including an entry on Raleigh for DLB, and his work on Spenser’s House of Temperance is cited in Hamilton’s FQ edition.

A native of rural North Carolina, he was an avid sportsman and immensely knowledgeable about Southern literature, including Thomas Wolfe.  He wrote a very witty and influential essay, “Equine Gothic:  The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature of the Twentieth Century” for Southern Literary Journal 29.1 (Fall 1996).  A bar, “The Dead Mule”, was named after it in Chapel Hill and is still in operation, as is an on-line literary journal, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature (http://www.deadmule.com/).  He was much loved by his students and colleagues.

Sincerely, Thomas Herron