Hello, everyone, and welcome to then again, podcast at the Northeast Georgia History center. I'm Liba Beecham, director of operations, and today I have a special guest with us, a longtime friend of the History center, Phil Hudgens. Phil Hudgens is a distinguished figure in journalism with over 50 years in the newspaper business, notably as a news training officer for community newspapers of Athens, Georgia. He's an accomplished author with works including Today's Topic, Grace and Disgrace, which was published in 2023. He's also a co author of travels with Foxfire, and his academic accolades include being a 1964 graduate of the University of Georgia and 1974 Neiman fellow at Harvard University. Phil, thank you so much for coming to, then again, so happy to have you here.

Thank you, Leba. Glad to be here.

And so this is a really interesting episode because we're not going to reveal too much information about today's very compelling topic because we have an upcoming forum where you will be presenting on the topic of your book, Grace and Disgrace. Now, before we dive into the event and the book itself, tell us a little bit about your most recent work in the community in Gainesville. I know that you continue to write and research, but I know that you've also been really interested in local stories. So talk to us about some of your other work that has dealt with local history and local stories here in Gainesville, in the area.

Well, of course, I worked for the Times for many years and consider myself a storyteller. I don't know how good I am, but I am a storyteller, and I'm still telling stories through a column that I write for a bunch of newspapers in northeast Georgia, North Florida, and western North Carolina. That column can be any subject that I choose. I say usually on the light side, but sometimes on very serious side. And I've written three books. Actually, I wrote one that you did not mention, called I took the fork.

That's right.

The story of Lesie Smithgall.

Oh, yes.

Who was one of the founders of the times in Gainesville. Great lady, wonderful sense of humor. She and I met every Thursday about 04:00 after her nap, and we talked for hour 2 hours, however, how long she felt like speaking, and she called it our rendezvous. So I had a rendezvous with Leslie for like eight months.

She was such a treasure in this community. I had the pleasure of interviewing her for our oral history project, and she was just such a bright person, a very sharp wit about her, so much confidence, and just such a charming woman with so many adventures to share.

She really had a great lot of great stories to tell. She was a wonderful storyteller herself. She told some funny things, some of which I couldn't put in the book.

But.

She had a great sense of humor. And people are interesting. If you just listen to folks, you can get all kind of stories out of them because everybody has a story.

Absolutely. I love that everybody has a story because that's something that with our oral history project, I've often gotten the comment of, well, who would want to hear about little old meme? Well, a lot of people, because can you imagine just talking to anybody, anybody 100 years ago, 200 years ago or even 50 years ago? Doesn't matter if you think you don't have a compelling story, because you do. Every human story is going to have something to connect with and everybody's got something to share. And of course, sometimes those stories are going to be light hearted and jovial, but there's also going to be some really challenging experiences that you hear through oral history. And that speaks to the topic today in your book, grace and disgrace. This is a really compelling story of a very challenging situation, especially for a woman of this era. And the circumstances that she's placed in that are largely out of her control. Could you tell us a bit of some context about grace and disgrace? What is the book largely about when it comes to the history of it? And then we can talk about what it's really about, where the reader, what they take away from the Book.

The book is actually written in the voice of, most of it is written in the voice of Ruby Nell Burt, the woman who was married to Billy Sunday Burt until he went, well, she was still married to him when he went to prison in 1974. She eventually got a divorce from him while he was in prison, but she stuck with this guy. The story is how she lived through this horrendous life, married to a murderer who killed 50 something people, at least.

Wow.

Who knows how many. He said he didn't remember how many he killed. So she was a month short of 13 years old when she married this guy. He was 1313.

Wow.

Yes. And he was almost 17.

And what era is this?

This is in the mid 50s.

Mid fifty s. Yeah.

She is now 81. He died in prison in 2017. So the story is kind of a story of redemption, a story of violence, a story of forgiveness. She forgave him. She forgave all of his girlfriends. There's a lot of forgiveness in this woman.

Yeah. And resilience, it sounds like.

And resilience.

Absolutely. So give us some context as to who was Billy Sunday Burt? And what was his connection to this Dixie mafia, as they were known?

Well, somebody coined that phrase, Dixie Mafia. It's not like the Mafia you have up north, northeast. They're not that organized. They're very loosely organized. Bunch of guys who took whatever, quote, job that came along, whether it was a hit on somebody, a contract killing or robbery, or burning someone's house for insurance or robbing a bank, they did it all. And Billy Sunday Burt was kind of the ringleader of these guys. He was the toughest one of them, I would say. And he started at a pretty dog on young age, late 60s, would probably be the first time he killed someone. And he continued that until 74, when he went to prison for the last time. Why he turned out the way he did, I don't know. I know that he had a very bad speech impediment, and he was made fun of in school. Kids would laugh at him when he talked, so maybe that was enough, but I doubt it to make him a killer. But he was a complex individual. There was good side. His wife Ruby said there were two people in that one person. There was good side to him. He would go out and give groceries to someone who needed them. He would take on a husband who was mistreating his wife, teach him a lesson, and yet he would, at the drop of a head, he'd go kill somebody. So explain that.

Yeah. When we see in pop culture and media representations of mobsters and mafia, the most compelling representations are those that do have that very complex humanity to them, and they're not just this shallow character. And so, at the same time, it's also like there is some kind of moral code, but it's very different from the average person's moral compass or moral code. Could you tell us some examples? Know, you mentioned that Billy Sunday Burt, he got into this pretty young. What do you think? Or what, from your research, do you think led him to this life? Because I could imagine it being something that may have been sort of a step by step toward becoming someone who can't even remember how many people they've killed in their life. But what do you know about him personally?

What I know is what I've told you, that he was a very complex person. Why he got into all this criminal stuff, I don't know. Although I know that he told his son, his son asked him, dad, how could you do all these terrible things that you've done? And he said, son, just to me, it was just a job. So that's the way he looked at it. And yet he could be tender hearted. He would not strike a dog or kill a bug that landed on him.

Wow.

And yet he'd kill a human being. So how to put him into some kind of category? I don't think you can't.

Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And so I'm curious, how did you get connected with this story? How did you discover this story and pursue writing about it with Ruby Nellie Burt?

That's a good question, actually. In 2018, before the Foxfire books actually came out, I got a message to call Shane Burt from a company that I had retired from in Athens. And a couple of days later, I gave him a call and found out what he wanted to do was write a book about his mother. This started out being a book totally about his mother, but every time we sat down to talk, we kept talking about Billy, Billy, Billy. So there was no way to tell her story without telling his story. So we've attempted to tell the story of a murderer and a very devout pentecostal woman living in the same house. And what they went through, mainly what she went through. It meanders a little bit because there's so many different facets to this story, but it's a book that I never thought I'd be writing. I can tell you that because most everything I've written, especially in the two books I've done, have been kind of upbeat. And a lot of this is not upbeat, but believe it or not, it does have some lighter sides to, I.

Mean, it speaks to, I'm sure, with Ruby's experience as well. It wasn't just this one sided thing. She's also a complex human in a very complex situation. Could you give us some examples of the situations that she was put in? Know, other wives and women of the household just would never expect to ever have these experiences. Can you share some examples of the situation she was in?

Well, Bailey had a lot of girlfriends, and there was nothing she could do about it. Apparently, she confronted him one day. He was with one of his girlfriends, and she was holding her little baby. She had five children, and she, Billy. She called him Bill. You make the choice. It's her or me. And he said, ruby. He called it pretty woman. Pretty woman. Nobody backs me into a corner and tells me what to do. So he got away with all this. She was afraid to do too much because she was also afraid of him.

Yeah. And I mean, living in that kind of situation, I want to ask, how did she survive? And I mean, that sort of on a day to day basis, you said that she had a really strong faith, and I would imagine that she had to rely on that. Did she share just how she was able to get by and be there for her children despite this extreme situation?

She actually lived for her children. She had five children. She was afraid that they were going to inherit his genes and become bad people themselves. But she worked five jobs to put food on the table, clothes on the backs of those five kids, and she became a respected member of the community. She served as president, PTA, served on the drug committee at school. The mayor of Winder asked her to help with his campaign, and she did. She was a very tough lady, really. I mean, she said, I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I got to get out and go to work. And she did. She worked from sun up to sundown. Even raised chickens. Oh, wow.

So was the community at all aware of her husband's reputation or involvement in the crime world?

Her involvement?

Her husband. I was wondering, was this something that she had to keep secret?

Like, outwardly she tried to protect her kids from this. When something would come on the tv about Billy Sundayberg, she'd go turn television off. But yes, the community knew. They didn't know what all Billy did, but they didn't know that he was a killer. Give you an example. He stole somebody's pony out of their front yard. And the people said the next thing they knew, it was in his front yard grazing. And I asked them, I interviewed this couple and I said, did you not think about going get your pony back? And the husband said, I didn't want to end up in the lake. No. So we just laughed about it. Wow, she was a real pretty pony.

Yeah. That's fascinating to live in a community. So we're talking about, like the 1950s and 60s also. We should.

Sixty s and seventy s. Yeah.

Sixty s and seventy s. And what location is this? Where?

Winder, Georgia.

In winder, Georgia. So we're talking about this community that has some knowledge of the.

Absolutely.

And everything. But what can they do? I mean, it's probably a pretty small.

Town everybody was afraid of.

Yeah. Yeah.

Even his Burke fella that I interviewed. He's a good guy. He and I have driven all over Georgia and part of North Carolina together. He even threatened him one time if he wouldn't get out of the house that he was living.

I'm wondering. It's really interesting to me that I would have expected someone in her position to not have such a public role in the community or be so tied into the community. But I could also see that being a way for her to survive as well, to have other relationships where she is valued and where she is doing good, almost, I could imagine, to counteract the bad of what she's associated with through her husband. I mean, through your interviews and through just getting to know Ruby. Describe her personality in her tenacity. I mean, what have you gathered from this woman and her drive and her resilience? And who is she? What is she like?

Ruby is very inspiring. I thought if I was going to write another book after Foxfire, I would want it to be somewhat inspiring. And I thought, well, what can a wife of a killer, how can she be inspiring? But actually, she was. She is. She's the most dedicated, generous person I think I've ever known. When she goes to the doctor, she takes whatever kind of food he likes. When she went to the prison to see Billy, she would take biscuits and pieces of cake. And if it was a situation where they weren't allowed to come into the prison, she would hide them on her body, tape them to her leg. She's clever, too, and very kind, generous, loving woman. She withstood a whole lot of horrible times. Unbelievable. I mean, if you read the book, you can wonder, why didn't she leave this guy? Well, she was afraid to leave him, frankly.

Yeah, I know. That's the experience of many women still.

When they're in better relationship. Absolutely.

Yeah. And so I could imagine that this book could be really inspiring and for women in general to read, especially if you've ever experienced that kind of violence in a relationship. But it speak to her strength and her resilience. And I know that I don't want to prop her up on a pedestal as if she's superhuman, but I think it's even more amazing that she is just a human that made it through this situation. And the fact that she's willing to share her story, I think is pretty remarkable since you're essentially revisiting many not great times, not good situations. And so can you talk to us about, was it a challenge for both you and Ruby to tell this story? And what was the process like to get the information you needed and to share the experience through this book? Was it a series of interviews and what kind of research went into it and. Yeah. Curious about that process.

Yeah, over about four years.

Oh, wow.

I interviewed her. I interviewed Shane, of course. I interviewed a couple of other children. I also interviewed a lot of authorities, law, women, and it all kind of fell into place. Ruby, it was tough for her in a way, it might have been a catharsis for her. In a way, you're digging up bad memories. And sometimes, as far as my situation, I wanted to go home and watch Andy Griffith after some of these interviews. But she's a very godly woman, as I said, dependent on God to get her through everything she said. God and her friends and her family, those are the things, the people who got her through her horrendous life. But also, believe it or not, she considered herself a blessed person. Through it all, she thought she was blessed. Absolutely. I could never get her to say anything different.

Yeah, that really speaks to her faith and her perspective on the hardships that she's faced. Especially by sharing her story, she is adding a value to this world. It's not only just the intrigue of what was it like to be in this very different situation than any of us or many people have ever experienced. And we're all very curious about when it comes to true crime and this underworld story. But at the same time, this is a story that is compelling because of the strength it takes, especially as a woman during the with five children, she's not just a wife, she is also a mother. She's also this community leader and at the same time surviving through all of this. And to share her story, I just know that's going to be really meaningful to a lot of people, a lot of women in particular. But the book itself is absolutely fascinating for anyone to dive into. And we have a really exciting opportunity for folks to learn even more and from Ruby herself. So on Tuesday, January 9, we're going to have Phil Hudgens, our guest today, of course, present on this book, grace and disgrace, with Ruby, Nell, Burt and Shane. Burt will also be in attendance as well. This is largely going to be a Q and A, which is really exciting so that folks can go ahead, dive into the book before January 9 or pick up a copy there. You could even get it signed as well. And so we invite you all to come to our forum on Tuesday, January 9. That's going to be at 07:00 p.m. Right here at the Northeast Georgia History center. You can go online to pre register for tickets and also preorder a book. And I encourage everyone to if you can't make it to the event, go online to our online shop. You can also purchase Grace and disgrace there. You can also go to Phil's website, which we'll have listed in the event description. But before we conclude today, Phil, what do you look forward to at this event? On Tuesday. Has Ruby done many Q as before? Is this something that's a little different?

Yeah, this is different. We've done one like this, and she handled herself very well. I don't want her to take any tough questions about murders or anything. She knows very little about what happened after Billy went out at night. But she can tell about her life and her love of her kids and her love of God. And she's a very open kind of a person. She told me some things I didn't expect her to tell, actually. So I want it to be an event that kind of builds her up.

Yeah, absolutely.

Not Billy Sunday, Burt, he was not one to be admired, although he did do some good things. So I'd like to see the event just kind of give her credit for being the strong woman as she is.

Absolutely. I really look forward to our forum again, folks. That's on Tuesday, January 9 here at the Northeast Georgia History center, and it's largely going to be a Q and A. We'll have opportunity for you to buy grace and disgrace as a signed copy as well. And thank you so much, Phil, for not only being here today to share a little bit about the story, but for taking this on, as you said. I mean, this was a different kind of topic for you, a different kind of process, and I'm so glad that it's now in book form so it can be shared. And I'm really looking forward to a discussion on Tuesday, January 9. Thanks so much for being here today.

Thank you.

Leva Senegan is a production of the Northeast Georgia History center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by Andrews Giles. Our digital and onsite programs are made possible by the Ada May Ioster Education center. Please join us next week for another episode of then again, bye.