[3] In 1947 he won the O. Henry Short Story Award for The White Circle, originally in Harpers magazine.
"[3]: 428–430 He was survived by his wife and son, John Bell Clayton III, a West Point cadet, and a sister, Mrs. Mary Bartley of Deerfield, Virginia.
[3] Of the book, Richard Sullivan wrote in the Chicago Sunday Tribune that John Clayton was "a writer of high, bright excellence."
Martha's body was found on August 6, 1961, by her sister, Georgia, in the Beverly Hills house that their brother had bought for them.
Hoagy recalled in his autobiography, Sometimes I Wonder (Farrar, Straus, 1965), that after John Clayton's death Martha "gathered up his papers and manuscript and made another book for him, and then one night while still young and healthy, she quietly let go.