User:Ajewell2/Willa Cather Foundation

The Willa Cather Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving the archives and settings associated with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and promoting the appreciation of her work.

Founding
The organization was founded in 1955 in Red Cloud, Nebraska, the small town that appears frequently in her novels and stories under a variety of names. Cather, born in Virginia in 1873, moved with her family to rural Webster County, Nebraska in 1883; in late 1884 the family resettled in the county seat of Red Cloud, where Cather lived until beginning her college studies at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1890.

Established as the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial, the foundation was organized by a group of local volunteers under the direction of Mildred R. Bennett, a South Dakota native who had originally come to Webster County in 1932 as a schoolteacher and eventually became an important early figure in Cather studies. Bennett’s The World of Willa Cather, published in 1951, was the first full-length biography to be published following Cather’s death in 1947, and remains a useful resource for studying Cather’s Nebraska milieu.

Early Focus
Acknowledging the scope of its activities in its early years, in 1965 the organization renamed itself the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation. Under Bennett’s direction, the foundation’s primary early focus was the preservation and restoration of sites in and around Red Cloud that figure in Cather’s life and work. By 1976, the foundation’s properties included Cather’s childhood home; the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank building, erected by Silas Garber, the prototype for the Captain Forrester figure in A Lost Lady; the Burlington Depot, which appears throughout Cather’s work; St. Juliana Falconieri Catholic Church, where “Antonia” of My Antonia — in real life, Cather’s friend Annie Sadilek Pavelka — was married; Grace Episcopal Church, which Cather and her parents joined in 1922, and which houses a pair of stained glass windows donated by Cather in memory of her parents; and the Pavelka farmstead, the rural setting for the final scenes in My Antonia.

In 1978, the Nebraska State Historical Society assumed ownership of these properties and the archival materials amassed by the foundation to that date. The foundation continues to manage these sites and keep them open for visitors.

Additional historic sites maintained by the foundation and owned by it outright include the Miner house, which was the home of the Harling family in My Antonia ; the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie, a 608-acre virgin mixed-grass prairie five miles south of Red Cloud ; and the fully restored 1885 Red Cloud Opera House, prominently featured in The Song of the Lark and Lucy Gayheart and now the foundation’s headquarters.

The Foundation’s Work
Since 2007 the organization has operated as simply the Willa Cather Foundation, or the Cather Foundation, directed by a thirty-member Board of Governors including scholars, educators, and professionals from throughout the United States. It publishes the Willa Cather Newsletter & Review, a journal of scholarly articles and foundation news, and holds an annual spring conference in Red Cloud. With rotating academic partners it hosts a biennial International Cather Seminar for scholars and Cather readers. The foundation continues to offer year-round tours in Red Cloud and host visiting scholars and researchers. It awards the Norma Ross Walter scholarship, given annually to a female graduate of a Nebraska high school intending to major in English. Since the 2003 restoration of the Red Cloud Opera House, which houses a theater and gallery, the foundation also operates as a regional arts center.