NOTABLE ARKANSANS

She was born in 1891, in Big Cypress Bayou, near Marvell (Phillips County), Ark., the first of 10 children. When she was 16, her father was killed in an accident. Despite having to help support her family, she graduated high school in the nearby community of Ohio, which has now disappeared. She taught in small schools in Phillips County while, with the help of her eldest brother, running the family farm. With money earned from teaching and proceeds from the farm, she was able to send her other siblings to college. Later, they returned the favor, paying for her college education. She studied English at Columbia University and received her master’s degree from Vanderbilt. She also studied the violin at Juilliard in New York.

After she completed her education, she returned to Arkansas to teach and to help run the family farm, which prospered and expanded. During her life, she rose from poverty to become a self-made millionaire farmer, gifted poet, photographer, musician, conservationist, environmentalist and patron of the arts. Her first collection of poems was published in 1964, The Green Linen of Summer. In the 1970s, long before it became popular, she became a champion of organic farming. Because of her philanthropy and love of the arts, Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., awarded her an honorary doctorate, in 1965.

In her desire to bring more culture to Arkansas, she brought the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra to perform in Little Rock in 1969, at a personal cost of $60,000. In 1971, Governor Dale Bumpers named her, then aged 80, as the state’s fourth poet laureate.