Indiana Hill Country Poems PDF Download

When I grew up in Jasper, in Dubois County, I had never heard of a Pinkston Settlement. Nor had anyone else of my generation. It is still not widely known about, even in our time. Ida Hagan's father, Ben Hagan Jr., was the last Black buried in Pinkston Cemetery, in 1939. IIt's high time the impressive story of this woman is told in a book of narrative poems, my favorite way to tell stories for some fifty plus years of writing and publishing. But you will also find more than a few lyrical moments. If you have not met Ida Hagan, just as I had not growing up in the area in which she was born and worked for a Swiss Doctor Wollenmann in German-Catholic Ferdinand, she may surprise you. Ferdinand is not far from little German-Catholic St. Henry, where my father was born in 1904. I will not repeat the story of the most impressive Ida Hagan here, because I tell it in detail in the book you are holding. I will, however, tell you that Ida was born in 1888 in Huntingburg, Indiana, where she attended high school after finishing "common" or elementary school, in a country school. After Doctor Wollenmann died in 2012, Ida moved away from Dubois County, lived with her first husband and worked as a pharmacist in Indianapolis, where in 1926 she married a second time, and moved with her new husband to Detroit, where she lived until 1978. I believe in learning about Ida you will be surprised, as I was, and probably, also like me, be amazed and gratified that you came to learn about such an impressive woman. Like me, you may want to learn more about Ida. Perhaps, like me, you will also regret that you were not lucky enough to meet and spend time with her. You may want to share Ida's story with friends.