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Ralph Eugene Meatyard was a student, close friend and confreres of Van Deren Coke in his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky from 1954-55 until his death in 1972. Meatyard was a Midwesterner himself, from Illinois, working as an optician in Lexington, specializing in grinding difficult lenses.

Coke remembers him as a voracious reader, suggesting that perhaps the narrative sense of his work stemmed from the volume of books Meatyard consumed.