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SARAH MARCIA LOOMIS (b.1905 – d.1985)<\/h3>\n
Sarah Marcia Loomis, called “Sally,” was a teacher at the Little Laurel school from 1929-31. Little Laurel was a one-room satellite school for the Pine Mountain Settlement School, Harlan County, Kentucky. The remote rural area was a substantial shift for Sally.<\/p>\n
Born in 1905, Sally was a native of Elkhart, Indiana, and had been educated early in life in urban schools in Detroit, Michigan, and in Toledo, Ohio. She also spent time in 1923 in a school in Grenoble, France, near the borders of Switzerland and northern Italy.<\/p>\n
When Sally\u00a0came to Pine Mountain, she was 24 and had just graduated from Wellesley College where she distinguished herself as editor of the Wellesley College News<\/em> (1927-28) and where she had been inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honorary society.\u00a0<\/p>\n Education became her life-long career. She stayed for two years at the school in Harlan County, Kentucky. One of the most remote of Pine Mountain’s satellite programs, Little Laurel was approximately five miles from the administrative center at Pine Mountain Settlement School. Teachers at Little Laurel worked out of and lived at the Big Laurel Medical Settlement<\/a> in between Pine Mountain and Little Laurel.<\/p>\n Tea on the lawn at Zande House [Dogwood Breakfast ?], 1930. (l. to r.) Sally Loomis, a visitor Miss Taylor, Dr. Alfreda Withington, Miss Burbrick, Mrs. Burns, Miss Melville, Mrs. Barti…, Miss McDavid, Mrs. Bo… [X_100_workers_2541.jpg]<\/p><\/div>\n Sally left her Pine Mountain appointment after two years in 1931 to continue her education at Radcliffe College where she sought and received an M.A. in English. She then held a variety of teaching positions including secondary schools as well as colleges. She was briefly at the Western College for Women, the University of New Hampshire\u00a0(1946-47), and last, back to Wellesley, her alma mater, to teach in the English department in 1947. She showed an early\u00a0interest in American culture and found time to study for her PhD. in the History of American Culture at the University of Chicago. Though her preliminary exams were completed, she never obtained her degree from Chicago.<\/p>\n In 1957 she took a position with the\u00a0Fogg Museum of Harvard University where she worked with noted archaeologist George Hanfmann as the\u00a0administrative and financial secretary for the Harvard-Cornell Archaeological Exploration of Sardis under Professor Hanfmann’s field direction. She remained in this\u00a0position until her retirement in 1967 when she returned to Cambridge. While in retirement in Cambridge she returned to her American culture studies and pursued research for a book about the African American Quaker merchant, sea captain, and trader,\u00a0Paul Cuffe<\/strong> (1759-1817), who lived in\u00a0Westport, Massachusetts. Cuffe has recently garnered interest among\u00a0scholars for his early work to return freed blacks to Africa, later called the Back to Africa Movement. Cuffe managed to establish a colony in Sierra Leone that began the difficult process of emigration of blacks to the colony. Sally Loomis died in February 1985 before she was able to complete her research and her book. Her papers related to her research on Cuffe were given to the New Bedford Whaling Museum Archives Library<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sally never forgot her formative experiences teaching children in a one-room school in the Kentucky mountains, living at Pine Mountain Settlement School’s medical extension at Big Laurel, and later assisting the staff on the PMSS campus. She corresponded with the School regularly, keeping in touch with the latest news and sending donations. She wrote in one of her letters that, “…my heart is there still.” <\/em>In another letter, she recommends her aunt, <\/span>Miss May D. George<\/b>, as a qualified music teacher and tutor for PMSS, who was subsequently hired by the School.<\/span> In 1933, Sally arranged for an exchange of correspondence between PMSS students and her students in a New London, Connecticut, school where she was teaching at the time. Throughout the years since Pine Mountain, she gave many talks and programs about the School, raising awareness of its mission and reliance on donations. (For images and a list of contents of her letters with Pine Mountain staff, see SARAH MARCIA LOOMIS Correspondence<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Sally Loomis’s life was one that quite clearly reflects her interest in social justice, her concern for the poor and disadvantaged, and her devotion to the craft of journalism. Her poem “Neverstill” is a rich tapestry of Appalachian influences and many of the later themes of her life.<\/p>\n “Neverstill,” for the quaking fern of the same name, follows the themes\u00a0of many mountain ballads and captures the fatalism of much of the favored balladry of the region, The poignant poem’s story is based on histories gathered from residents in the Pine Mountain community and in this particular case, the family of Fiddler John Lewis<\/a>.\u00a0The fatalism expressed by Aunt Louize Lewis, Fiddler John’s wife, may be found reflected in many of the ballads popular in the culture of the Southern Appalachians. Sally Loomis has used this form to capture some of the experiences of Louize and her husband\u00a0Fiddler John Lewis,\u00a0whose conversations obviously formed the context\u00a0of the poem. The experiences\u00a0Loomis\u00a0had while working at Little Laurel and while in direct contact with the Lewis family are woven into the poem.<\/p>\n Reading this narrative poem, it’s not difficult to imagine sitting on the cabin porch of Aunt Louize and Fiddler John as they shared their stories. The couple was a favorite with Pine Mountain workers and the Lewis home warmly welcomed all who visited to “sit a spell.”<\/p>\n Fiddling John Lewis and his wife, Louize. [lave017.jpg]<\/p><\/div>\n Gallery: “Neverstill” and “The Dead Child” Poems<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t![\"\"](\"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/X_100_workers_2542_mod-300x259.jpg\")
SARAH MARCIA LOOMIS: After Pine Mountain<\/h3>\n
SARAH MARCIA LOOMIS: Her Poetry<\/h3>\n
![\"Fiddling](\"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/lave017-300x194.jpg\")