Victoria Wilcox has been married to local dentist Dr. Ronald Wilcox for many years, but there’s another man in her life—ironically another dentist. Fortunately, her husband doesn’t mind that she’s in love with another man—a much, much older man—John Henry Holliday, better known as Doc.
Victoria’s affair with the man who became a legend after his gunfight at the OK Corral has procreated an award-winning historical fiction trilogy, “The Saga of Doc Holliday,” and most recently a history, "The World of Doc Holliday: History & Historic Images.” During a book tour in Colorado, where she traveled the same train route Doc had traveled and enjoyed the view he had seen, she was inspired. “By the time I got back to Georgia it had turned into this whole book about his railroad travel all over the country,” she said, adding that her research revealed things about the last days of his life and his battle with consumption that no historians had written about. Earning the nickname “Doc’s Lady,” Victoria’s knowledge and expertise about Doc has garnered her fame with her seven grandchildren, who are impressed that they can Google her name, as well as a large online following of fans. Not only has her writing earned numerous awards, including a Georgia Author of the Year, she also co-wrote a 2016 documentary, “In Search of Doc Holliday,” and has been featured in the TV series, “Legends & Lies: The Real West.”
More than a casual fling, Victoria and Doc, a native of Griffin, go way back. After moving to Fayetteville, Victoria learned the home of Doc Holliday’s uncle, Dr. John Stiles Holliday, where Doc had been a frequent visitor, could face demolition. A life-long history lover, she heard the antebellum home whispering its untold stories. Her research revealed that “Gone With the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell had patterned her character, Melanie, after an old nun whose funeral Mitchell attended in Fayetteville. That old nun was Mattie Holliday, cousin of Mitchell’s grandmother Fitzgerald as well as the cousin and sweetheart of Doc. Through Victoria’s efforts the historic home, now the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife-House was saved, and she became the founding director of the museum it houses. The connection between Doc and “Gone With the Wind” also inspired her first historical fiction, “Southern Son.”
During years of research and the writing of her first three books, Doc Holliday became part of the Wilcox family’s lives. The couple and their four children even cared for the Holliday and Fitzgerald graves once cared for by Mitchell. “We don't have family nearby, so we tended to their graves,” she said. Although Victoria wouldn’t want to live during Doc’s time, she knows they would be close if they were contemporaries. “He would love me,” she said. During commutes, she admits, “it was like he was riding in the car next to me and I could talk to him and so I understood his attitudes about things.” Once, seeing a fancy red sports car, she thought, “He would love that!"
“They're dead but they're not far gone, and they want their stories to be told. As a writer, once you have imagined that character, especially a character based on reality, you have them firmly in your mind and heart and they’re with you all the time.”
Ten years into writing about Doc, she realized that much of the history written about him was incorrect. Although he knew how to protect himself in the rough, wild, west where gambling was part of the culture, Victoria said, “He didn’t have a slew of shootings as the legends try to portray him. He didn’t have a death wish.”
One of the most fascinating aspects of Doc’s character for her is the juxtaposition of what he knew was right and what he did. He was only 14 when his very religious mother died, leaving him her written testimony. “She knew she had trouble with this boy,” Victoria said. “He’d been a member of the Methodist Church and the temperance league in Texas. He knew to go to church and yet he did things he knew were wrong.” Calling him a “typical Victorian man in the South,” Victoria added, “He was sexist, he was racist, he was bigoted, and he was good with a gun. I wanted to write his story in such a way, however, that you could dislike very much the things he did and his attitudes but understand where they came from. I would very often push back from the computer and want to slap him, because of these things, and yet by the end of his life, he’d learned where he was wrong.”
As a dental student in Pennsylvania, Doc became acquainted with Northerners and during his travel West, he met people from many different walks of life, including a former slave who ran a string of successful hotels. And although he had been antisemitic, he lived off the charity of a Jewish saloon owner during the last years of his life.
As much as she knows about Doc, there are still specific questions Victoria would love to ask him. One involves an 8-foot-wide piece of property he owned in Las Vegas, New Mexico, deeded to a “said” wife with initials not matching those of his mistress Kate Elder or any woman known to be affiliated with him.
Even if Doc had never entered her life, Victoria would still be writing. She already has another book in the pipeline, “Sea of Destiny,” a historical fiction novel about the founding family of Destin, Fla., her own families’ favorite vacation spot. “I write my books to save history,” she said. “I try to reveal history and save it for the future. If we don’t remember our history, we lose our history and then we end up making the same mistakes all over again.”
Victoria’s books are available on Amazon or wherever books are sold. For more information visit www.victoriawilcoxbooks.com.