 Reece was a bright and solitary schoolboy, a graduate of Blairsville High School who grew up in such rural isolation, the story goes, that he never saw a car until he was eight or twelve (depending on the version).He attended Young Harris College and taught school intermittently between 1935 and 1942, producing poem after poem for small journals and newspapers even while his parents’ tuberculoses led him to take increasing responsibility for the family farm.During these years, Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill and Kentucky writer Jesse Stuart - themselves offspring of the rural Appalachians - early recognized Reece’s talent.