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Marlette received national attention in 2002 with a Tallahassee Democrat cartoon depicting an Arab driving a Ryder truck with a nuclear bomb and the caption, "What Would Mohammed Drive?"

When readers protested, Marlette wrote, "We don't need constitutional protection to run boring, inoffensive cartoons. We don't need constitutional protection to make money from advertising. We don't need constitutional protection to tell readers exactly what they want to hear. We need constitutional protection for our right to express unpopular views."

Marlette's cartoons consistently won awards, and the "Kudzu" strip -- featuring hero Kudzu DuBose and egotistical preacher the Rev. Will B. Dunn -- was syndicated in newspapers worldwide, including The News & Observer. Several weeks of strips already have been drawn, and "Kudzu's" syndicate had no word Tuesday on the future of the strip.

Bland Simpson, who as a member of the Red Clay Ramblers band collaborated with Marlette on the "Kudzu" musical, said Marlette "held everybody to a high standard of truth-telling and accountability."

Marlette's first novel, "The Bridge," was given a fiction award by the Southeast Booksellers Association in 2002. But it also caused resentment in the North Carolina literary community. One of the nation's top authors of literary fiction, Allan Gurganus, who also lives in Hillsborough, was hurt by a character in "The Bridge" who apparently was modeled after him, and not in a flattering way. Some of Gurganus' friends in the book world rallied against Marlette.

Marlette published a second novel, "Magic Time," last year, and he was about to begin bookstore readings to promote its paperback release. He was to appear in Raleigh in August.

It was at a reading of "Magic Time" in Oxford several months ago that Marlette learned of the local high school's plan to stage the "Kudzu" musical at the acclaimed Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. Tom and Dorothy Howorth, whose daughter is on the play's technical crew, attended the reading and told Marlette.

Marlette was immediately enthusiastic, and asked Simpson and Jack Herrick, another member of the Ramblers, to help him revise and shorten the play. Marlette, his wife and Herrick spent four days with the Howorths about three weeks ago to work on the musical.

"He was an incredibly generous guy," Tom Howorth said. "This was all for the kids and to make the production as good as it could be."

Oxford High Principal Bill Hovious said he visited Davenport in the hospital, where the teacher was being treated for a broken leg. He said Davenport was "probably an emotional wreck right now."

Hovious said the students in the play are upset, but he suspected they will still stage it in Scotland. "I think they will put on the best performance of 'Kudzu' that anybody has ever seen," he said.

Marlette leaves behind his wife and one son, Jackson, who is studying art in France. Funeral arrangements are pending.

(Staff writers Carolina Astigarraga and Sapna Maheshwari, and Charlotte Observer writers Peter St. Onge and Jeri Krentz, contributed to this report.)

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