REMEMBERING ARKANSAS: Miss Lily Peter lived three very full incarnations
By Tom Dillard
LITTLE ROCK I was reminded recently of the fleeting nature of prominence after one dies. In a discussion about the history of philanthropy in Arkansas, I mentioned how Miss Lily Peter of Marvell, in Phillips County in the Delta, had mortgaged her plantation to bring the Philadelphia Symphony to Arkansas in 1969, only to have several folks who should have known better ask me who she was. Before her death in 1991 at the age of 100, Miss Lily, as she was called by everyone who knew her, was known far and wide as a pioneering woman farmer, an environmentalist before it became popular to be one, a supporter of the arts, and a poet of no mean ability.
I got to know Miss Lily when she was already in her dotage, so I never knew her as the dynamic leader she had been. As she advanced into her 90s, Miss Lily never knew when to quit talking. At one particularly painful public event, as chairman of the meeting, I had to interrupt Miss Lily and try to bring an end to her stream-of-consciousness remarks - which had gone far beyond her allotted time. It was not an easy task, and five minutes later, I found myself still standing by Miss Lily, lightly touching her arm and trying to retake the podium.
A few years ago, former Arkansas Tech University English professor AnnieLaura M. Jaggers wrote a book-length biography of Miss Lily, and I was suddenly awakened to this remarkable woman of the Delta who carried on life in a way that would be considered adventurous even by todays standards.
Miss Lily said she had lived three separate lives, or incarnations, as she called it. My first incarnation, I was a schoolteacher. In my second, I was a farmer. I began my third incarnation in 1978 when I began trying to be a fulltime writer.
Miss Lily was not inclined to discuss her precise age, so many of us were surprised to learn in her obituary that she was 100 years old. She was born in Phillips County on June 2, 1891, one of five children born to William O. and Florence M. Peter. Her father, descended from German Moravian missionaries, moved to Arkansas from Ohio. Miss Lily grew up deep in the wetlands of Phillips County, at the confluence of Big Creek and Big Cypress Bayou.
Educated at home until the age of 10, she was sent to Ohio for a better education. Within her first year in Ohio, she faced the tragedy of her fathers early death. At her mothers urging, she stayed in school, and upon returning to Phillips County a few years later, she became a teacher. She taught for 40 years, a career that should satisfy anyone.
But, all the time she was teaching, she was helping her brother Jesse run the family farm. Eventually, the siblings accumulated more than 4,000 acres in Phillips and Monroe counties. When Jesse died in 1956, Miss Lily inherited half the farm, and she later bought the other half from her siblings.
Miss Lily was a natural farmer. She had always loved the land, and she viewed the farm as part of a largerlandscape. The busy little woman studied soils, the weather and the cycles of nature. Her award-winning photographs often portray the majestic cypress swamps she had come to love as a child.
Hiring competent managers, Miss Lily was able to keep the plantation going. Her cotton gin, which ginned not only her cotton but that of many neighbors, was also profitable.
In the early 1970s, Miss Lily read Rachel Carsons Silent Spring, a book that created conservationists across the nation and around the world - including Lily Peter. It was Miss Lilys 1977 decision to forgo most chemical insecticides that caused her to become an icon to the environmental community.
Miss Lilys third incarnation, as a writer, continued for the remainder of her long life. She had read widely during her entire life, and her academic life included study at Columbia and at Vanderbilt, where she received a masters degree in English. She wrote poetry from her youth, and as the years passed she delved deeply into the craft. In 1964, Miss Lily published her first book of poetry, and two years later shebrought out what many believe to be her classic epic on the great Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto, The Great Riding. Gov. Dale Bumpers named Miss Lily Poet Laureate of Arkansas in 1971.
Miss Lily, who liked the limelight, came to the attention of every Arkansan in 1969 when she brought the Philadelphia Symphony to perform free of charge in Little Rock. It was a gift to the state in honor of the 150th anniversary of Arkansas becoming a territory in 1819. The Arkansas Gazette ran a long front-page story on the arrival of conductor Eugene Ormandy, and the plan to perform a composition by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Dello Joio, Homage to Haydn, which Miss Lily commissioned. Newspapers around the world hailed the achievement of this cotton farmer from a place called Marvell.
Tom W. Dillard is editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture (www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net), and head of the special collections department at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. E-mail him at tdillar@uark.edu. This article was published Sunday, April 1, 2007.
