Beckley Post-Herald
Former Post-Herald Man Poet Laureate
October 12, 1946
Charleston, Oct. 11 - (AP)
Roy Lee Harmon, Beckley newspaper columnist and author of many poems about mountain folk, was renamed today by Governorr [sic] Meadows as Poet Laureate of West Virginia, a position he held until several years ago.
Harmon, who w[i]ll serve at the will and pleasure of the governor, succeeds James Lowell McPherson of Charleston who was appointed by former Governor M. M. Neely on November 2, 1943, but who has since moved out of the state.
Harmon was first appointed Poet Laureate by former Governor Homer A. Holt, but resigned in 1941 and at the same time relinquished his post as state director of the WPA writers' project.
He served for a brief time as secretary of the Mount Hope Junior Chamber of Commerce and then rejoined the Beckley Post-Herald as sports editor, a position he held for a number of years. Many of his poems occupied his sports page column, and were later published in volume entitled "Hillbilly Ballads."