{"id":2018,"date":"2014-06-09T15:35:41","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T19:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/?p=2018"},"modified":"2014-06-15T12:15:34","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T16:15:34","slug":"dr-elsie-quarterman-november-28th-1910-june-9th-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/dr-elsie-quarterman-november-28th-1910-june-9th-2014.html","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Elsie Quarterman, November 28th 1910 – June 9th 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nToday Aunt Elsie stepped over the final fence,\r\ndying peacefully at her home in Nashville, Tennessee,\r\nattended by her nephew Patrick and his wife Ann,\r\nas she had wanted.\r\n

\r\nArrangements are still in progress.\r\nPerhaps more about the family later.\r\nFor now, here is a biography with some pictures.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe Wilson Post wrote 20 April 2011,\r\n\r\nQuarterman shares fervor for cedar glades<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n…her passion for the plant life of Middle Tennessee\u2019s cedar glades\r\nblooms ever strong through the generations of students she inspired\r\nat Vanderbilt University from the 1940s into the mid-1970s. And those\r\nstudents, many now teachers themselves, continue to inspire new students\r\nand conservationists….\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nPatrick Quarterman, Elsie’s nephew… and wife Ann live with\r\nthe renowned plant ecologist and Vanderbilt University professor\r\nemerita in Nashville and are her caregivers.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“Elsie Quarterman was a frontrunner in getting the knowledge\r\nabout the cedar glades started. She was instrumental in getting some\r\nof the areas in the Cedar Forest designated on the National Register\r\nand was one of the few leaders that brought attention to the glades\r\nand their uniqueness,” said Cedars of Lebanon State Park\r\nInterpretive Specialist Buddy Ingram.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAs for the wildflower weekend, Ingram said, “It’s time for\r\npeople to come out and enjoy the flowers and endemics, the special\r\nanimals and plants that have adapted to the glade environment, and\r\ntime to gain knowledge about the whole ecosystem, the cedar\r\nglade.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nBesides the Cedar Glade Wildflower Festival, the Elsie Quarterman\r\nCedar Glade, a 185-acre natural area in Rutherford County that\r\nprotects a globally rare cedar glade and is a recovery site for the\r\nfederally endangered Tennessee coneflower (Echinacea tennesseensis),\r\nhas also been named for the centenarian whose love for plants began\r\nas a child on a Georgia farm.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“It goes back to when her dad left his job in waterworks in\r\nValdosta and decided to buy a farm and moved the family\r\nthere,” Patrick said. “Her mother and a family friend\r\n(Edna Winn Small) used to take Elsie with them when they went\r\nwalking out in the woods. They were interested in finding and\r\nidentifying flowers and plants.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhen she went to college, Elsie joined the local botanical club and\r\nfound herself the only teenager in the group. Her passion for plants\r\ncontinued to grow.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAfter teaching English for five years, she decided to take a plant\r\necology summer field class in 1938 at Duke University with Professor\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nHenry J. Oosting. The experience hooked her on ecology. Several\r\nyears later, she and a graduate school friend, Catherine Keever,\r\nspent a summer assembling a checklist of plants that grew in the\r\nhighlands area of the North Carolina mountains. The Highland\r\nBiological Station was near the summer home of E.E. Remke, the head\r\nof the biology department at Vanderbilt University.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nRemke, upon meeting Elsie, learning of her credentials and impressed\r\nby her work, offered her a job at Vanderbilt as a biology lab\r\ninstructor. Once the men began to return from World War II, Elsie\r\nknew she would need a Ph.D. to hold on to her job, thus began\r\nstudying at Duke where Professor Oosting advised her to peek into an\r\necosystem known as cedar glades, which were easily accessible from\r\nNashville.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThus, in 1946, Elsie honed in on 300 square miles where Lebanon\r\nlimestone lay on the surface and where cedar glades developed. Three\r\nyears later, she completed her doctorate, and her dissertation was\r\npublished in 1950.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLater she collaborated extensively with Keever, and the duo co-wrote\r\na seminal 1962 paper about Southern coastal plain hardwood and pine\r\nforests [Elsie Quarterman and Catherine Keever 1962. Southern Mixed Hardwood Forest: Climax in the Southeastern Coastal Plain, U.S.A. Ecological Monographs 167. http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.2307\/1942384<\/a>], but today Quarterman remains known best for her work on the\r\necology of Tennessee cedar glades. In 1964 she became the first\r\nwoman Department Chair at Vanderbilt when she chaired the biology\r\ndepartment in 1964.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nThrough the decades the teacher guided students and conservation\r\nworkers through the cedar glades, but she also worked as a\r\nconservationist to preserve other areas as well.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“I know of no one who has given more generously or with\r\ngreater dedication to save our natural heritage than Elsie\r\nQuarterman,” said Mack Prichard, who worked beside her to help\r\npreserve Radnor Lake in Nashville and Savage Gulf State Natural\r\nArea. (Prichard also served Tennessee for nearly 50 years as State\r\nNaturalist and State Archeologist.)\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“I think she enjoyed equally teaching in the classroom and\r\nmaking excursions into the field,” her nephew Patrick said.\r\n“She tied the pictures she took in the field with her\r\nlectures, and made it exciting.” One of Elsie’s most\r\nexhilarating moments must have come in 1968 as she and Barbara\r\nTurner were driving down a road near LaVergne and noticed a\r\nsurprising a patch of color on the roadside:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n“We thought it was a mighty pretty pink flower. I thought it\r\nprobably was [Tennessee coneflower] but I’m not a taxonomist,”\r\nElsie said. “Dr. McGregor [an expert on the genus from Kansas]\r\ncame down as soon as his term was over. He took samples back and\r\nstudied them for a while, tried some crosses with purple coneflowers\r\nand others, then wrote back that it was a species.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe species was indeed the Tennessee coneflower, the same plant\r\nMcGregor had officially decreed extinct a few years earlier.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIn 1970, Elsie and doctoral student Tom Hemmerly found a larger\r\ngroup of coneflowers at Cedars of Lebanon State Park. Hemmerly’s\r\ndissertation became the basis for restoration efforts as the\r\nTennessee coneflower became the first flowering plant native to\r\nTennessee named to the federal endangered species list.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nPatrick Quarterman says that his aunt’s general health is excellent,\r\nhowever she suffers from macular degeneration and some memory loss.\r\nStill, life is good for the professor who retired in 1976.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnn Quarterman said, “She loves living in her own home with\r\nfamily where she can walk around in her own yard to see all the\r\ndifferent wildflowers and plants growing there. She enjoys going out\r\non short rides in the car to look for anything blooming and\r\nespecially when we take her through the parks. Our trips to\r\n\r\nCheekwood<\/a> really make her smile.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAs for Elsie Quarterman’s most enduring legacy, Patrick said that\r\nwould be, “First of all, the work she did in the cedar\r\nglades—to get them recognized and appreciated—and\r\nsecond, her 12 Ph.D. students, most of whom ended up going into\r\nteaching themselves. She has influenced two generations of students,\r\nparticularly Tom Hemmerly at Middle Tennessee State University, who\r\nhas done extensive work on the coneflower. He has students who are\r\nnow doing cedar glade research of their own. Her prot\u00c3g\u00c3s also\r\ninclude Carol and Jerry Baskin of the University of Kentucky, who\r\nalso had many Ph.D. students, some of whom are presently doing\r\nresearch in the cedar glades.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBecause of the life work of Elsie Quarterman, cedar glades are now\r\nheld in public trust at Cedars of Lebanon State Park, Long Hunter\r\nState Park, the Elsie Quarterman Cedar Glade and Stones River\r\nNational Battlefield.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nPortions of this article were used with permission from\r\n“Middle Tennessee is Still in Bloom: Dr. Elsie\r\nQuarterman” by Bob Fulcher in “The Tennessee\r\nConservationist Quarterman shares fervor for cedar glades.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHere is Elsie, at the age of 95, leading relatives on a field\r\ntrip on the Isle of Skye:\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

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