Willa Cather Remembered

In 1973, on the centenary of her birth, the nation paid tribute to one of its greatest writers, Willa Cather. In Nebraska, a state that was the setting of six of her 12 novels and many of her short stories, the occasion was commemorated in a year -long series of events collectively designated as the Willa Cather Centennial Festival. The first of these events, fittingly enough, was held in Willa Cather's hometown, Redclod. Every spring since 1955, devotees and scholars of Willa Cather have gathered here in Redclod by the annual conference of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation, which in 1975 celebrates the 20th anniversary of its founding. It is thanks in great part to the activities of this dedicated organization that so much of Willa Cather's Nebraska world has been preserved and that Willa Cather herself provides among us as a living memory. This triangular

plot of Buffalo grass is the gateway to Catherland, the name bestowed on the western half of the city of New York. In August of 1966, two Redclod women, whom you'll meet later in this program, Mildred Rhodes Bennett, author of the Willa Cather and the late Carrie Minor Sherwood, Willa Cather's friend for more than 60 years, participated in the dedication of the Catherland marker. Here on the divide between the Republican and the little blue, live some of the most courageous people of the frontier, their fortunes and their loves live again in the writings of Willa Cather. In the Willa Cather's own words, the history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman. The history of this land began in the heart of Willa Cather. It might also be said that Catherland, as it exists today, began in the hearts of Mrs. Sherwood and Mrs. Bennett. In 1955, with a group of their fellow townsmen, they incorporated the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial. Over the years,

this organization has identified and marked more than 50 sites in Webster County, which are associated with Willa Cather's life and her writings. And they have made her hometown of Redclod into a unique, literary monument. Ranked with the Concord of Emerson and Thoreau and Mark Twain's Hannibal Mazarah as one of the most famous villages in American literature, Redclod annually attracts more than 5 ,000 visitors. They are drawn here not just because the town figures so prominently in Willa Cather's fiction, because it was here that she grew up, but because of the unstanding and imaginative efforts of the members of the Pioneer Memorial in perpetuating a worldwide interest in Willa Cather, in collecting and housing letters, first editions, not effects that belong to the author or her family, and in acquiring and preserving places made famous by her writings. The most important and interesting of the buildings owned and restored by the Pioneer Memorial is this modest, white frame

house at third and cedar streets, made in National Historic Landmark in 1972. Here the Charles Cather family came to live in the winner of 1884 -85. When Willa Cather was 12 years old. As the end of the gate, many visitors have a feeling that they must have been here before, for the house is described in loving detail in the novel, The Song of the Like. And in the stories, old Mrs. Harris in the best years, perhaps nor the spot in the world is so laden with memories of Willa Cather, even though her life began and ended and was mostly lived far away from this house. For example, she was born in Virginia. Willa Cather was born December 7, 1873, in Mc Creek Valley, Virginia. At nine, she came to the open prairies of Nebraska, where every tree was a

presence. This became her country. She wrote of deserts and ancient people. And she wrote of gardens and homes and families. She wrote of a growing land, fertile, productive, and humanized by man. Think of her first as a child in Virginia, then a tomboy growing up in Red Cloud, Nebraska, until she went to the University of Nebraska and graduated like a lady. She was a journalist in Lincoln and in Pittsburgh, published books of poems and short stories, and worked in New York as an editor of McClure's magazine. In 1912, she published the first of her dozen novels. By 1920, she was known as an important American writer. Think of her

working, intense in New Hampshire, and on the shores of the Mediterranean, traveling in Paris, or to the island of Grand Manin. Think of her successful, assured, in the 1920s. She received honors and degrees, and grew older. She died in 1947, and became what she had used and created. Find her in the leaves of her books and in the grasses and trees and clouds. But go first to Red Cloud, a little town in Webster County, Nebraska, where, in her childhood, trains whistled in and out, a small town where lives cross, close, and with feeling. Where there was a main street and a Baptist church, and the great music of history at the small Catholic church, now restored by the Willough Cather Pioneer Memorial. Go to the Cather House.

Everything a little on the slant, she said, roofs, windows, and doors. Inside, her grandmother's room has been recreated as she described it in stories, and the attic where the children slept, a baronial hall she called it. Her own room is still there, with paper she put on herself. Things far away come near, along with books, her collection of seashells. She admired a Turkish lady music box and put it into a book. But beyond that room, she found other worlds to recreate in her imagination. For all pioneers and my aunt and aunt, she thought of the flat and formless land she first knew in Nebraska. Not a country at all, she wrote, but the material out of which countries are made. The larks sang in that land, and she wrote,

there was a new song in that blue air, which had never been sung in the world before. There were wind and weather on the high prairie, and it last the furrows in the plowed land, heavy and rich and black, shaped for a growing life. The immigrant pioneers planted orchards. They came together in places like the Dane Church. It was a new civilization. Willockather began with Nebraska, where springs can still be found in Virgin Prairie. But there were outward movements, like the flow of the Republican River with its sandbar islands. And her art used other places too. Lake Michigan, its blue wrinkled with gold. She wrote of the people and maces of the southwest, where she said, the earth is the floor of the sky.

Along American history is caught in the cities of the mace of Eridie Cliff Dwellers, described in the professor's house. We understand other ways through the ancient church of Laguna, or the cathedral at Santa Fe, or the ruins of Peacus. All this is a story she tells, and death comes for the Archbishop. The order of the church is in the Quebec of shadows on the rock. And the great houses of the south are in Willockather too. The mill house and the mill, in her last book, Sophia and the slave girl. And the dogwood of a Virginia spring, where her life and her art began. On her grave in New Hampshire, is a quotation from my aunt and ear. That is happiness, to be dissolved into something complete and great. That is Willockather.

The Red Cloud Depot, another building acquired and restored by the Pioneer Memorial, figures in many of Willockather's novels and stories. In Red Cloud, as in all small Midwestern towns in the early days, it was a focal point of interest and activity. The railroad, Willockather Road, is the one real fact in this country. The sound of a far off train whistle was

a call to adventure for all young hearts. Among her special heroes were the railroad men, men like Captain Forrester in a lost lady, who had put planes and mountains under the iron harness, and had dreamed a railroad across half a continent. Of course, the depot figured in Willockather's own life too. It was a scene of many departures and homecomingies over the years. It was also where young Willock got her first glimpses of the town's most glamorous visitors, the members of the touring theatrical companies which played at the Red Cloud Opera House, and which stirred her imagination so strongly that 50 years later, their performances were still fresh and alive in her mind. Another real life event we remember here at the depot, an event which Willockather transmuted first into poetry and then into prose, was discussed by her younger sister, the late Elsie Cather, in a 1962 interview with Bernice Slote. Which of her sister's poems Miss Cather was asked? Did she especially like? I am particularly fond

of the one called the namesake, of course, which really refers to my mother's brother, who was killed in the Confederate Army, fighting in the Confederate Army, at the second battle of Manassas. Mother had only three brothers, and all three of them were in the Confederate Army. And this is called the namesake, was Willockather actually named for him. She wasn't actually named for him. He was William, of course, and she was Willock, but she was not named for him. She was named for a little sister of my father, who had died as a child. In a way she pretended that she was named for him. Did everybody call her Willock? Well, of course, nobody in the family called her Willock, and nobody in Red Cloud called her Willock. We always called her Willock, but as soon as she left Red Cloud, and came down to Lincoln, all the rest of her life, to the friends she made, after she came to Lincoln, she was always Willock. Well, then in the namesake, there was

a feeling, you know, William and Willock probably very much alike. Oh, yes. And we always referred to my uncle, William, as Uncle Willie. I never heard mother call him William. She called him Willock. So they really both were Willock. They both were. Yes. Well, I'm sure that this is something in the family that was a mental great deal to everyone. They thought of the uncle who died in the Civil War. And there is, in the poem, a feeling that reminds me of some things in her books, too, of young people dying. And the feeling of loss. Did you feel anything of this and the things that she wrote in her poetry? Well, yes. Of course, it's always easier for people when they're young to dwell on the idea of death, as they get older. And the actual fact is closer. That's true. And there is another poem, one of the

home poems that deals with the death of a young man. The night expressed. Do you remember anything about it? I remember very well. It's always been one of my favorites. It describes so accurately and so clearly, the approach to Red Cloud along the Republican River as the train comes in. I remember, well, the night that will erode the poem, a young man who was one of the boys of the town had died somewhere away. I don't remember where. And we all sat out in the yard. And you heard the story then. That is, you heard the news? Yes, we heard the news of the... No, we listened to the train as it actually came in and we knew that the body was on it. In the poem, the scene is at the station, don't you? But we were... I suppose some people did. We didn't. We were all there in the yard. And we heard the train pull in. We knew that the young friend was

on the train being brought home. And Willa went upstairs then to her bedroom and the rest of us stayed in the yard. And I remember watching the light in her bedroom and she just wrote the poem then and there. From out of the Miss Cloud Meadows along the River Shore, the night expressed train whistles with eyes of fire before. The train that brings two mothers the news of sons who roam, shoots red from out the marshes to bring a roger home. Just to the west of the Cather House on Sword Street is the home of the minor family. Mr. Minor was a prosperous merchant here in Red Cloud and he's portrayed in the short story Two Friends. Mrs. Minor appears as Mrs. Harling in Mayantania. The four minor girls, Carrie, Irene, Margie and Mary, were close friends of Willa Cather and her brothers and sisters. In Jason's to the Cather and Minor Homes, the children had a play tone, Sandy

Point, made of packing boxes from the minor store. And the minor house was frequently the scene of amateur theatricals. Another member of the minor household was Annie Pavellka. In a 1921 interview, Willa Cather said that one of the people who had interested her most as a child was the Bohemian hired girl of one of our neighbors who was so good to me. And I always had it in mind to write a story about her. Well, that story was Mayantania. In 1966, Esther Montgomery went to Red Cloud and talked with one of the sons of Mayantania, Emo Pavellka. I'd like to talk to you first about your memories of the two women we've been discussing most today, namely Willa Cather and then your mother, who, in my estimation at least, is the grand climax of all of this. First place, you knew Willa Cather from your earliest boy who it didn't you? Yes, we got personally acquainted with her from

our trips that she made out to the farm to visit her mother. You probably then don't remember the very first time you ever saw her. Probably not, but we were kind of introduced through mother's description over before she came off to the farm. Now, she had gone to New York before you children were born, hadn't she? Yes. And then she came back for visits. Did she come back quite often? There. I know her at the last she didn't. At first she didn't come, but usually as she came, she always stopped and paid mother a visit. Very seldom that she passed by and not stopped. And what was your association whether when she did come? Did she seem like a big company or did she seem like a member of the family coming in? She seemed more like a member of the family.

She didn't make you feel out of place. She was very common and just felt like one of ours. She thought of you as almost belonging to her too and I know she admired you boys. She had a liking for the family. Yes. I believe this has been printed that she commented that you boys had manners of dukes. And she was so proud of the way you behaved. I think mother saw to that that we always behaved when Willa was out. You were a large family, weren't you? Yes. There was a family of 13. 13. And they all left to grow up? No. There was ten of the children that grew up and three died in infancy. And do they live around red cloud here now? Most of them live in the media territory. I'm the only one in red cloud. I have a

brother in Lincoln, one in Hastings, a sister in Pauline, and one in Blue Hill, one in Blayden, one in Wichita, and one in Oxnard, California. Oh, one really got away. Well now speaking of a family and new in particular, when the book Maya Nia was first written, what was the effect on you? Did you realize all of a sudden that your mother was the heroine of a novel? Yes. To a certain extent, but as time went on, we realized the importance of it more than we did at first, that we were very proud. Well, I should thank you, would be. Well, I think that's characteristic of the book itself. I think on the first reading, one doesn't get the following back. There's so much there that isn't on the surface. That's right. You think first it's in the rather, and it's easy reading. Yes, it's intensely interesting reading. And then you begin to see sentence

after sentence that comes out there. Your mother, what was her reaction to? She was very proud of it, and she was very proud that will I thought enough of her to write about her, and she wondered about the different characters in the book, and it pleased her very much. Well, I should thank you at Wood, and her personal satisfaction, too, to think that she could have been the inspiration for a book like that. Yes. And she wretchedly deserved the honor that came to her. Well, we're certainly happy to have had you with us, Mr. Provelka, and now as we close here, let's talk just a bit about the minor house, and your mother's association with this. She worked here, right in this house, didn't she? Yes, she worked here for several years. And I understand that she and the minors were very good friends, too. They were very close, very close. Much more so

than just an employer and an employee. Yes, more as one of the family, probably than any other way you could put it. And one of the minor girls is still living, isn't she? Yes, Mrs. Sherwood lives right across the street from this house. And I believe that they have brought her over, so that we can talk to her, so let's go in and do that. Well, here we are again, Mrs. Bennett. This is getting me a habit with it. And incidentally, it's a habit I like. I certainly enjoy working with her. And here is the woman we were talking about when we were outside the house. Mrs. Carrie, minor, Sherwood. Now, I hope you noticed the word minor. And this is the minor house. This is the girlhood home of Mrs. Sherwood. Now, Mrs. Sherwood and Mrs. Bennett have been friends for many years. And they've traded many stories

about Willa Cather and about Anna Provelka and other people who live here in town. So I'm going to give the microphone to Mrs. Bennett. And we'll just listen to them trade some more of these stories. Mrs. Sherwood, this is your home. This is your old home. Will you tell us what the childhood memories you have of Willa in this house? Well, I wish very much that the house could talk because it could give us 83 years of good stories better than I can do. The house was built in 78 and it was our home. And it was also the headquarters for Willa Cather. She lived only a block away. And I think she was here

at this house as much as she was at home. She always went home at night but I wouldn't be sure about her being home in a day time. What did the children do in this room that where we are right now? Well, I don't know how we ever got started on it but the three or four girls started to be giving plays. And there was more or less difficulty. Of course, we always invited people to come in. That was what the plays were for. It was for the entertainment. And we, when they wrote the play, the doctor. And she herself took the part of the physician. And she had

my father make her a, my mother make her a suit with long tail coat so that she looked like a professional man. And I don't remember what the story was about. The doctor but anyhow, we thought it was a good story. And we invited about 10 or 12 couple of business people that were friends of Willie's and of ours to come and the girls used this front room where we were sitting as a stage and the audience sat in the back next room. And of course, they were double doors between the two rooms and those were used as a curtain. And the hall at the south side of this room was used as a dressing room. And it was always a great success. The plays were always very well received.

The children had a lot of inventive plays. What? The children invented a great many things. What about their village? Sandy Point. Oh. Well, I don't know why they started Sandy Point. I suppose they had something to do, had something to do. And the Catholic home was so near to the business part of town. Perhaps the lobbyist suggested the Sandy Point was that they should be in business as well as the downtown part. And it was the day when all goods were shipped by Frate, our holiday and one of the other. And it came in great immense wooden boxes, big enough for the children to stand up in, big enough for grown people to stand

up in. And as the boxes were unpacked, the store turned the boxes over to the girls and each one had a box for a home. And one little girl who was a little bit more ambitious than the others wanted to be a milliner and she wanted to have, so she asked for a box to be placed on top of the other one because she was going to have a milliner shop upstairs. Who was the mayor of Sandy Point? I really was the mayor. And the chief inventor of most of the ideas. She was? The chief inventor of the ideas. Willow was the inventor. Oh, yes. She was the center and the mayor and the general boss. I think she regulated everybody. What did they do about the people who were suffering from the blizzard of 88?

Well, I don't remember whether they did anything. They were putting on the play Beauty and the Beast. Do you remember that? Oh, yes. Well, the plays in the house were so successful that many of the people asked the children to get up and play and take it to the opera house, which they did. And I think Willow wrote the play Beauty and the Beast or if she didn't write it out, I don't know where she got it. And it was a very touchy story. And it was a great success. And they made about $25 for charity. And Willow took the principal part of a man. And after the play was over,

one of the audience said who was the boy that had part in the play. And I said, Willow, it was Willow's gather. Oh, no, it wasn't Willow's gather. I know a boy when I see him, it wasn't Willow's gather. But it was, though, just the same because Willow's gather. So she made a very good boy. She had a very good voice for one thing. Tell us about your friendship with Willow, your particular friendship. Well, of course, that's pretty hard to account for because I was four years older than Willie. And I think it was largely because I went with an older crowd, a crowd who had young gentlemen, S -carts. And I sometimes think that because I was in the store and in the office that Willie was very interested

in me because I had a conversation with all the commercial people, all the traveling men and the traveling men were more important in those days. I go to them than they are now. And of course, I could tell her a great deal about the traveling man because I knew them all. You were the fellow student of human nature with Willow. Yes, that is the way she gave me a book for Christmas and she wrote in to Carrie, my fellow student of human stories. Since Mayantania is full of characters that you knew, tell us something about your mother, for instance. What kind of person was your mother?

Mrs. Harling of Mayantania. Tell us about your mother in the tramp. And who? And the tramp, your mother in the tramp. Well, I'll tell you, my mother was a very interesting woman and she was very interested in everybody and everything. And she was interested in all her neighbors. And we had a very few of them in those days because this house was the only house on the street. And one day a lady that lived south of us came rushing up with her dust broom in her hand and crying. And she said to Mrs. Miley, she wished that she would come down, that there was a man lying on the north side of the house down there. And she said, I think he's a tramp and he's asleep. And she said, I'm afraid of him. I'm all alone and I want you to come down and make him get up and get away. So my mother

went down and it was just about her and was quite a block away. And she went down and she was cleaning house the same day. It must have been on a Friday, I think. And my mother had her broom in her hand and she poked the fella in the side. And she said to get up and get out of here. She said, you're worrying this woman. And he raised up and looked at her, did the same thing. And she says, I mean it, get up and get out of here. And he finally got up and started away. And a house just west of us. We only had the two neighbors close. And by the time mother got through talking with Ms. Kenny, why she came back home and here came the neighbor from the west. And she was carrying a little girl for five years old. And both of them were crying. And she said, there's a man lying on the north side

of our house up there. And he's a drunken tramp. And I want you to come up and make him get away. So my mom took her broom and went up. And she drove him away. And after she talked a little while and comforted the woman, she got home and found her lying on the north side of this house. And she said, I want you to get up and get away. And he raised up and put his hand up to his head. And he says, say, lady, where in hell do you live anyway? Now, just to block up the street from the cathart house, here at Thurden Webster is the minor store. It's in good shape, it's still standing and it's in use today. Of course, the interior is nothing like it was when the cathars came here in 1884. But this soft side of the red brick building still bears tangible evidence that even as a little girl,

Willa Cather was determined to make her mark and in just the way that most children do. Well, I can't find anyone who will swear on a stack of Bibles that it was young Willa Cather who took a nail and scratched WC into these bricks. But in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I for one, am going to go on believing just that. At any rate, we do know for certain that it was in this store that Willa Cather first met Carrie Minor Sherwood, and as we're about to hear. Mrs. Sherwood, would you tell us about the first time you saw Willa Cather? Well, the first time I saw her was in the store and she was sitting on the base shelf back of the shoe counter having a pair of shoes fitted. And she was a very attractive child and apparently quite reserved and principally occupied with

answering her father's questions which he was playing her with. As most parents, he was trying to show her off, I suppose. And I think maybe that I was as much attracted by her costume as I was by her face. She was dressed in those days, you know, they didn't have fabrics looking like fur, like they do nowadays. But Willa had on a coat and a hat that looked like leopard skim and of course that was very unusual in those days. What year was this, Mrs. Sherwood? 1883? About 83, I suppose. And Willa would be 83 or 4. She would have been 9 or 10 years old then. Yes. What questions was her father asking her? Oh, he was asking her questions about the history of the colonies in Virginia and he was a great historian himself and I think he had her pretty well posted and

very proud of her being able to answer his questions. Well then you watched her grow up in Red Cloud from that time on. Would you tell us what kind of little girl she was? Well of course, in a very short time they moved into our neighborhood and I found her quite reserved in a way and also very free. She was like two people. She was one to me and another to the children. She associated with my sisters who were one younger and one older than she and they were playmates. But with me she was a companion. What did she want from you? What was her aside from the companionship? What was she continually trying to find out from you? Well I don't know. She was always asking questions. She was

constantly asking questions and she used to walk with me to the store and we'd stand outside the door of the store and talk and one day my father said, what under the sun do you spend so much time with that child for? She's too curious and so that was trouble. What did she always asking for questions? What did she want to know about? What sort of thing? All about the people. The store was always filled with foreign people and if she saw them then she wanted to know about them and she'd have questions to ask about them. Some of these people she used later on in her books. They came back to life in her writing, for instance, like Silas Garber. I never knew what she was asking questions for but as long as she was interested I always tried to answer her. About that time Annie Pavellka or Annie Sedgillac came to your place

to tell us something about the sort of girl Annie was because later on she became my aunt Nia. Well Annie was a very beautiful girl. She was about 16 years of age and she had a wonderful complexion and beautiful hair and a very stately position for a girl, for a young girl. She was interested in everything and everybody and she was unusually kind. She was just about my own age. So we really enjoyed Annie and I think she enjoyed us and I was always interested in her because of the way she took hold of everything that Mama was trying to teach her in her American way. Of course your mother was the Mrs. Harling in my aunt Nia. Do you think that Annie was pretty much the way Willock Heather described her

in my aunt Nia? You think that's an adequate picture of her and adequate one of your home life too? Yes, very, very. It was very true. She compared it to Mama. She thought that Annie was one who liked to feed children and see them in comfortable warm beds. That was Annie. In fact, your brother even had a favorite hickory cake that's mentioned in my aunt Nia and I understand you still have the recipe in the family for that hickory cake that Annie used to make. Well, the important part of that cake was picking out the nuts. And I suppose the children did that in the kitchen. Well, hickory nuts, you know, were not easy to... They were in the first place. They were hard to crack. And then after they were cracked, they were hard to pick out of the shell. Sometimes took Annie a week to pick enough for making a cup full for a cake. We would think that was a very tiresome job now. We'd go to the store and buy them. Tell

us about Willock Heather's visits back to Red Cloud after she became famous. What did she want to do, mainly? What things did she remember and want to repeat? Oh. Visiting over at Governor Garbers and going out in the country, the places that she had lived when she first came to town and meeting the people that she knew for so many years. What was her favorite method of traveling on these trips if it was possible? Horse and buggy. She liked the horse and buggy days. And she just liked an automobile very much and she didn't have very much confidence in one and she had less confidence in the drivers usually. Tell us about the time she came in the winter and went up to visit Annie and it was such bad weather. Oh, she was bound to get out there that she sent out into the country for somebody to put the runners on their wagon

box and make a sleigh out of it. And so she could go over the snow. And that would have been at least 14 mile, a 14 mile trip, wouldn't it? Just about 14 or 14 or 15 miles. Yes. Or bad roads too. Tell us how Annie entertained Willa when she came. How Annie felt about Willa? Well, of course, Annie was a marvelous cook and she always had good food and she saw it to it that the children all got in and got seated at the table and were served and that the things were prepared that she knew that really cared most for. Tell us what Willa said about Annie's children. Her sons, particularly. Well, one day after we left the house and were on the road homes, she said, all those boys of Annie's, she

says they were worthy to be the sons of the grand douche. She says, one is always standing. They're always at this side when I get into the car. One holding my shawl and one holding my purse and all was ready to wait upon me and help me. Tell us the one thing about life that Willa Kather hated the most. Her feeling about change. How did she show that when she came home? In her feeling about the countryside changing and the trees and the young people? Well, of course, she didn't like changes but then there was nothing she could do about it. She could talk about it, no, but there was nothing she could do, but she resented just the same. Well, what did she really hurt her? I think it really hurt her to see many of the changes because she liked the old ways. What did she feel about the children of the pioneers? Well, she didn't approve of

the fact that they had forgotten about their parents and so ready to take on new ways. She brought that out in one of ours, I think, more than in any other book how she felt. At least after that time, one of ours was the book where she hated the mechanized ways of farming and the washing machines and so on that she told about. Tell us, I think, probably she, at that time felt like I feel today that there's too much of that sort of business you can't keep up with it. That's right, you can't keep up with it. Tell us more about the Catholic family, they lived just a block from your place. Yes, when they moved in to town, you might say next door neighbor there was just a vacant lot and an alley between their house and ours. And as a matter of fact, I think the Catholic children spent as much time at our house

as they did at home. Tell us a little about Will's grandmother, Boke, who seems to have been a great influence on her and of course she wrote about her in Ole Miss's Harris. Well, I really love Grandma Boke. She was a very interesting woman and she interested me because during the Civil War she was on both sides. She's right in the midst of both sides. One day she used to tell me one day she would go to one camp and the next day she'd go to the other one and carry food to the boys. Well, she was a very wonderful person. Oh, wonderful person. And had a great influence on Will, I think, from what she wrote about her. Well, I think she had a great influence on me. I was almost as curious in asking questions about Grandma Boke. Because Will was of me. Will a catharsis said several times and she said it in one of the letters to you that the things that impressed her the most happened to her when

she was a girl, that her whole life was influenced by what happened up to the time she was 15. In reviewing her work in your mind, do you think that's true, that what happened there in Red Cod were the important years to her? Oh, certainly must have been because it was her whole life. And that's what she used thereafter. Yes. Did you ever ask her about how she felt about her life work? And did she give you any answer about how she felt about her work? Oh, yes. Once when she was home, after she had written several books and done some very notable work, I said to her, were you satisfied with choosing literature as your profession? She said, oh, yes, Carrie. She walked up and down the floor. She said, oh, yes, yes. She says, with Antony, I feel that I have made a real contribution to American letters.

Will a catharsis friendship with Carrie Miner Sherwood endured all of her life? And she made many new friends, too. Among those dearest to her, were three extraordinarily gifted children. Yehudi, Hebsaba, Yalta Manuun. She first met the Manuun family in Paris in 1930. And she was soon known to Yehudi then in his early teens, but already a world famous violinist and his two younger sisters, as Aunt Willa. According to Miss Cather's friend and biographer, Edith Lewis, it was one of those rare, devoted and unclouded friendships that lighted all the years that followed. On December 7th, 1973, the three menuins came from London to the campus of Willa Cather's Alma Mater, the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, to perform a concert honoring the 100th anniversary of her birth. On the university campus, only one building still stands which was here in Willa Cather's day. Now, architectural hall, it was originally the library, completed in

1895, the year she graduated. The Willa Cather's Centennial Birthday concert was performed just across the street in Kimball Recital Hall. Hebsaba and Yalta played the Mozart double piano concerto on E -flat. Yehudi chose the Beethoven violin concerto, the same concerto he performed when he made his debut in 1926, at the age of 11, with the New York Symphony. At the conclusion of the concert, Yehudi Manuins spoke these words to the audience and to members of the University Symphony Orchestra, with whom he and his sisters had performed. I would like to say how happy I am and how happy all of my sisters are to be able to take part in the tribute to this great lady, the Willa Cather, who in a sense belongs right here to this

University which she attended so diligently and where she first began to make her career of writing. And I was thinking also as I was in some way the intermediary between Willa Cather and Willa as we used to call her and these young people who are part of the university today that I would like them to know to know something of those qualities which marked her of that fierce attachment to quality and to the diligent search for perfection. That really is the great thing because that is what marks the difference between the onlooker and the one who participates. If one doesn't do a thing perfectly

when remains an onlooker and I'm afraid of the days that are ahead of us for the whole world and I would like every one of them to be participants as far as they possibly can. And I was happy at this opportunity to be with them and to make this music together and to offer our joint tribute to Willa Cather. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.