 |
|
|
|
|
Dr. Lea Newman of Bennington, Vermont is a founding member and Vice-President of The Friends. She retired in 1995 after a distinguished teaching career at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. As Professor of English, she describes her love for Robert Frost as a selfish one because she so enjoyed the response of students to this poet. Dr. Newman says, "Frost has always been a joy to teach because he is so accessible."
Dr. Newman's other literary loves include Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. She has served as President on a national level of both the The Melville Society and The Hawthorne Society, as well as published numerous scholarly articles on both these American authors. She published two books on the short stories of Melville and Hawthorne. In 2001, Dr. Newman was elected a Fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of her accomplishments as a scholar of American literature, a college professor of English and as an author.
In 1998, Dr. Newman turned her attention to the poet Robert Frost. Along with her scholarly interest in the poet, perhaps she was following an impulse of neighborly pride in this famous poet who is associated with southern Vermont and buried in the town where she lives. About the same time, the seed organization of what would become The Friends of Robert Frost was meeting to study what Dr. Newman long knew about Robert Frost - that he was a fascinating subject of study and discussion.
In her book, Robert Frost: The People, Places, and Stories Behind His New England Poetry, Newman brings her considerable knowledge and scholarship to bear on Frost's early poetry. Jay Parini describes the book in the Foreword, "With immense common sense and a firm grip on the available scholarship, she has provided readers with an amiable walk through thirty-six of the finest poems that he wrote - poems focused on the New England landscape that, for Frost, became the terra firma of his imagination." She received the 2001 Author of the Year award for the Frost book by the Friends of the Albany Public Library.
When the Frost family gathered at a memorial service for Lillian Labatt Frost and Malcolm Wilber in October 1998, the occasion brought together Friends founder Carole Thompson and Lea Newman. The two ladies casually started talking in the churchyard where Frost is buried and found they knew each other through mutual friends, but most of all through mutual interest in the poet. Thus began an association which developed as Newman's book took shape and Thompson began thinking in terms larger than a simple local study group.
In 1999, while Dr. Newman wrote the essays for her book, Ms. Thompson and her associates in the study group put together an exhibit to celebrate Frost's 125th anniversary which opened on March 26, at The Bennington Museum. The following September, both Newman and Thompson attended the Frost Conference at Ripton, VT, where they renewed their acquaintance with Frost's granddaughter, Lesley Lee Francis. The idea of a national organization to appeal to Frost's popular audience grew out of that wonderful weekend. Other friends made at Ripton became the core of the organization, notably Peter Stanlis and Robert Cotner.
In 2000, Dr. Newman published her book and the Friends of Robert Frost became an official organization. Frost once said that the height of metaphor was putting together two things in the universe. That's what poetry is all about; that's what thinking is about. The aim of the Friends is to do just that . Two things compared comprise a thought. Two people in the universe comprise a friendship. Two places, such as Frost's grave site and the Stone House, comprise literary history worthy of our attention and resources now to save for the next generation of Frost friends to come. Those connections are worth everything.