James F. Hoy
Born: El Dorado, Butler County, Kansas, December 15, 1939. Married: Catherine June Thompson in 1967. Died: Emporia, Lyon County, Kansas, February 23, 2025.
James Franklin Hoy was born to Kenneth Lee and Zola Marteil (Rice) Hoy, in El Dorado, Butler County, Kansas, in the Flint Hills. He grew up on a stock ranch near Cassoday in Butler County. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Kansas State University in 1961; a master’s degree from Emporia State University in 1965. He married Catherine June Thompson in 1967 before pursing his doctoral degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1970.
Hoy taught in the El Dorado schools and in Idaho before joining Emporia State’s English department, where he served as chair for 10 years. In 1990, he resumed teaching full-time as an English professor at Emporia State. Hoy was president of the Kansas Historical Society in 1999, and continues to serve as a member of the Kansas Historical Foundation Board of Directors.
Hoy’s research includes medieval English literature, Western American literature, Australian Outback folklore, and Great Plains folklore, with emphasis on the folk life of ranching. He has published several articles and books, including the weekly newspaper column Plains Folk and the book Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales of the Tallgrass Prairie.
Hoy and Dena Kleinsorge organized a cowboy poetry gathering in Strong City in 1989. He served as master of ceremonies for the program. Participants were all cowboys who wrote and delivered their own poems, including Wilbur Countryman, Jack Hurlburt, Tom McBeth, and Jerry Wright. At this event, Hoy first read his poem “Elmer’s Advice” excerpted here:
Some horses pitch, some just hop, and some will flat-out buck;
It helps to know which one does which, not just rely on luck.
Now Elmer Cooper was an old-time hand who could ride anything with a hide.
If he said, "Why, anybody can ride him," you could get right on and ride.
But you better take a good strong hold, deep down in your old saddle tree,
If Elmer shook his head and drawled, "Well, he never has thrown me."
Hoy worked most recently on a book of Francis Marion Steele, a frontier photographer.
He made many other contributions to Kansas history. He was first elected to the Kansas Historical Foundation Board of Directors in 1992 and was elected to the executive committee in 1998. He served as president in 1999-2000. He contributed articles to Historical Society publications, Kansas Heritage, Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, and Kansas Kaleidoscope. He was named Kansan of the Year in 2015 by the Native Sons and Daughters of Kansas.
He died in Emporia, Lyon County, on February 23, 2025.
Entry: Hoy, James F.
Author: Kansas Historical Society
Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.
Date Created: April 2012
Date Modified: March 2025
The author of this article is solely responsible for its content.
