Library HighlightS: the Life of Poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel during American Archives Month

by Emily Lin

The Library hosted a program last week with Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel’s biographer, Betty Blanks. A close friend and “surrogate daughter” of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, Ms. Blanks shared a history with the poet as a child of Dust Bowl migrants.

“Wilma and I were like family. When I first met her, the sound of her voice was so familiar to me. I recognized the people in her poems. She spoke about back home with the same longing that I had always heard from the elders in my own family,” said Blanks. “I was born right here in the Valley, in Visalia. But I recognized Wilma’s longing for that old ‘home,’ because I always heard that same deep longing expressed by my own family.”  Read More.

by Terry Ommen

Although we were contemporaries, I never met Wilma McDaniel and I very much regret that. I hadn't discovered San Joaquin Valley literature during those years - too busy working and raising a family, I guess. I acquired my first McDaniel book by accident in probably the late 1990s. It was a small hardcover publication called The Red Coffee Can. The Raggedy Ann doll artwork on the dustcover is what caught my attention. I thought it was a children's book, so without opening it, I just put in on my bookshelf, not realizing that the author had already achieved recognition as the "Okie Poet."  Read More.

by Trudy Wischemann

Betty was one of Wilma’s closest companions for her final 15 years. Also a child of Dust Bowl parents, Betty’s family stories rhymed so well with Wilma’s that she served as a daughter to this spinster Okie poet. But Wilma, a true Oklahoman, left much unsaid. It was only after her death in 2007 that Betty found herself wanting to track down the many loose ends in Wilma’s story.  Read More.