Editing Walker Percy (section)

== Early life and education ==
Percy was born on May 28, 1916, in [[Birmingham, Alabama]], the first of three boys to LeRoy Pratt Percy and Martha Susan Phinizy.<ref name="unc">{{cite web|title=Walker Percy|url=http://www2.lib.unc.edu/rbc/percy/percy.html|work=Walker Percy From Pen to Print|publisher=UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries|access-date=7 May 2014}}</ref> His father's [[Mississippi]] [[Protestant]] family included his great-uncle [[LeRoy Percy]], a US senator, and [[LeRoy Pope Walker]], a pro-slavery secessionist in Antebellum America and the first [[Confederate States Secretary of War]] during the [[American Civil War]].<ref>{{cite web|title=LeRoy Pope Walker|url=https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/leroy-pope-walker/|publisher=Encyclopedia of Alabama|access-date=28 June 2023}}</ref> In February 1917, Percy's grandfather died by [[suicide]].

In 1929, when Percy was 13, his father died by suicide.<ref name=unc /> His mother took the family to live at her own mother's home in [[Athens, Georgia]]. Two years later, Percy's mother died in a suspected suicide when she drove a car off a country bridge and into [[Deer Creek (Mississippi)|Deer Creek]] near [[Leland, Mississippi]], where they were visiting. Percy regarded this death as another suicide.<ref>Samway, Patrick. ''Walker Percy: A Life''. (Loyola Press USA, 1999) p. 4.</ref> Walker and his two younger brothers, LeRoy (Roy) and Phinizy (Phin), were taken in by their first cousin once removed, [[William Alexander Percy]], a bachelor lawyer and poet living in [[Greenville, Mississippi]].<ref name="NYT-Book Review-03231941">{{cite news |last1=Brickell |first1=Herschel |title=The Revealing Memoirs of a Southern Planter |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/03/23/issue.html |access-date=24 May 2023 |work=New York Times Book Review |date=March 23, 1941 |page=9}}</ref>

Percy was raised as an [[agnostic]], but he was nominally affiliated with a theologically liberal [[Presbyterian]] church.<ref>O'Gorman, Farrell. Extract from "Walker Percy, the Catholic Church and Southern race relations (ca. 1947–1970)", The Mississippi Quarterly, Winter, 1999/2000.</ref> William Percy introduced him to many writers and poets.<ref>{{harvnb|Elie|2003|p=18}}: "Percy was already being raised on books by his Uncle Will."</ref>

Percy attended [[Greenville High School (Mississippi)|Greenville High School]] and the [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]], where he majored in [[chemistry]] and joined the Xi chapter of [[Sigma Alpha Epsilon]] fraternity. He wrote essays and book reviews for the school's ''Carolina Magazine''. He graduated with a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] in 1937.{{sfnp|Tolson|1998|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6XHf0N6lzxQC&pg=PA3 3]}}

=== Friendship with Shelby Foote ===
After moving to Greenville, Mississippi, in 1930, [[Shelby Foote]] became Percy's lifelong best friend. As young men, Percy and Foote decided to visit [[William Faulkner]] in [[Oxford, Mississippi]]. However, when they arrived at his home, Percy was so in awe of the literary giant that he could not bring himself to speak. Foote and Faulkner had a lively conversation.
{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?77879-1/the-correspondence-s-foote-w-percy Interview with Foote on ''The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy'', December 8, 1996], [[C-SPAN]]}} 
Percy and Foote were classmates at both Greenville High School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Although Foote was not permitted to join Percy's fraternity because of his partly Jewish heritage, he and Percy stayed close friends during their two overlapping years. They went on dates together, made regular trips to nearby [[Durham, North Carolina]], to drink and socialize, and journeyed to [[New York City]] during one of their semester breaks. When Percy graduated in 1937, Foote dropped out and returned to Greenville.{{sfnp|Tolson|1998|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=6XHf0N6lzxQC&pg=PA4 4]}}

In the late 1940s, Percy and Foote began a correspondence that lasted until Percy's death in 1990. A collection of their correspondence was published in 1996.<ref name="Men of Letters">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/01/books/men-of-letters.html|title=Men of Letters|newspaper=The New York Times|date=December 1996|last1=Wilson|first1=Robert}}</ref>