Burke Davis’ first love was biology, and he set out to study forestry in college.

But when, in a circuitous chain of events, he found himself at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his third year of college, he fell under the influence of famed journalism instructor Walter Spearman and changed his major to journalism.

“Had he not followed that new course, North Carolina letters would be immeasurably poorer,” Davis’ son, Burke Davis Jr., said Sunday.

The elder Davis became a sportswriter who, his son said, “was the first to go into the dressing rooms and interview the athletes. He wrote color in sports stories before we knew what color was.” With another nudge from Spearman and the offer of $700 from a publisher, he went on to write a novel — the first of 60 books of fiction and history, for young people and adults.

Sunday, the 87-year-old Davis was one of five writers to join the North Car-olina Literary Hall of Fame in a ceremony at Weymouth Cen-ter for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines. His son presented the award to Davis, the only one of the five inductees present.

Others inducted into the Hall Sunday were A.R. Ammons, Helen Bevington, the late Olive Tilford Dargan and the late Robert Ruark. Their induction, in the fourth annual ceremony to be held at Weymouth, brings the Hall’s total membership to 31.

The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, a program of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, began in 1993 under the leadership of Sam Ragan, who was then the state’s poet laureate and editor/publisher of The Pilot.

A.R. (Archie Randolph) Ammons, born in 1926 on a farm near Whiteville, has published 31 volumes of poetry. He also taught poetry for many years at Cornell University.

“Archie is rooted in the fields of Columbus County — but he is also a migrating, nomadic spirit … who hums the constant universal assimilation,” said Emily Wilson, who presented Ammons Sunday for the Hall of Fame. Vida Cox of Whiteville, Ammons’ sister, accepted the award and read a note from Ammons in which he congratulated “the writers of North Carolina, who have grown so in number and eminence in recent years.”

Helen Bevington, born in 1906 in upstate New York, began her career as a writer when her husband, Merle, joined the English faculty at Duke University in 1942. She began writing, she said, “because of the particular pleasure of living in the country in North Carolina.”

She wrote light verse, serious poems, essays and four books of autobiography and also taught English at Duke. She now lives with a son in Chicago. Melissa Malouf, who presented Bevington for the Hall of Fame, told of visiting Bevington at her country home and saying, “You mean you live here alone?” Bevington responded, “By yourself or surrounded, that’s neither here nor there. It’s living itself that’s the mystery.” Betty Hodges accepted the award for Bevington.

Olive Tilford Dargan (1869-1968) was “one of our great literary treasures, from a period that we hardly ever think about as a great period of literary history in our state,” said Roy Parker, her presenter. Parker said he met Dargan toward the end of her life but didn’t know who she was, since she had written her most celebrated novels under a pen name.

“I had no idea,” Parker said, “that she was the ‘Fielding Burke’ who wrote wonderful books of social protest against conditions in Appalachia.” Dargan also wrote several volumes of poetry and a book of short stories, “Highland Annals,” which many consider her best work and which has recently been reissued in paperback. Bob Anthony accepted the award for Dargan, saying he hoped the recognition “will renew interest in her work.”

Robert Ruark (1915-1965) “was visited early in his life by great fame and great fortune,” said his presenter, Bland Simpson. “He lived well and he lived hard, and early he left us.” Born in Wilmington, Ruark worked as a newspaperman in Hamlet, Sanford and Washington, D.C., writing a nationally syndicated column. He began publishing novels in 1947, and his novels included the best sellers “Something of Value” and “Uhuru.”

He also published a regular column in Field & Stream magazine and collected the columns in the books “The Old Man and the Boy” and “The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older.” Referring to Ruark’s burial place in Spain, Simpson said, “In Spain there is a spot where, having left us all something of value, the old man’s boy rests — a spot that is forever North Carolina.” A cousin of Ruark, Dr. Robert Schultz of Alabama, accepted the award.

The Hall of Fame awards this year were ceramic dogwood blossoms fashioned by Cathy Kiffney of Carrboro.

Those who attended the ceremony, under a tent on the Weymouth grounds, heard readings from the work of the five new inductees. Readers were Alex Albright (Ammons), Linda Hobson (Bevington), Sally Buckner (Dargan), Jan Hensley (Davis) and James W. Clark (Ruark).

The Hall of Fame also recognized several beginning writers Sunday. Jennifer Galimore of Greenville, who won the Writer’s Network’s Student Poetry Award, read her poem, “Claude Monet’s ‘Woman with Parasol.“ Her name is engraved on a permanent plaque in the Weymouth Center.

Winning honorable mention were Abbie Abija of Greenville, Courtney Beck of Gastonia, Megan Brantley of Sanford and Martin Toy of Charlotte. Evalyn P. Gill presented the award certificates.

Simpson, who is a member of the Red Clay Ramblers musical group as well as an English instructor at UNC-Chapel Hill, was master of ceremonies. He sang the “Welcome” kicking off the induction ceremony.

Poet Shelby Stephenson read his own poem commemorating the centennial of Thomas Wolfe’s birth.

Parker paid tribute to the late Sam Ragan.