Eudora Welty House & Garden

Abstract

Eudora Welty House & Garden Lauren Rhoades 2020 gave us a new perspective on the meaning of a "sheltered life" here at the Eudora Welty House & Garden. Our small museum and botanical garden were fortunate compared to so many around the country that had to slash their operations and staffing budgets in response to the COVID crisis. We retained all our staff with limited budget cuts and were able to pivot to virtual programming and limited in-person visitation. Thankfully, staff and volunteers have remained healthy throughout the pandemic. On March 13, 2020, we closed to the public and canceled all our major spring programs: the Bettye Jolly Lecture, Scholastic Awards Ceremony, the Eudora Welty birthday celebration, and the Annual Welty Plant Sale. Working from home, our staff quickly ramped up our virtual programs and social media presence. Instead of our in-person summer story time program, for example, we posted virtual #StorytimeInTheGarden children's book readings, including Welty's The Shoe Bird. We engaged with guests on Facebook and Instagram with weekly #FlowerFriday posts, historical highlights from Welty's life and writing career, and features on our new gift shop items. Perhaps our most successful virtual program so far has been the Welty-at-Home Book Club. We began the book club with the goal of reading and discussing works by Welty and authors connected to Welty in some way. On April 29, we kicked off a ten-week discussion of Welty's Losing Battles. Our first call had over 50 participants, and attendance has been steady ever since [End Page 281] with a growing list of participants joining from around the country. Success of the Welty-at-Home Book Club has been in large part due to Suzanne Marrs's masterful teaching and intuitive approach to facilitation, as well as our book club's "slow reading" approach. In July, the book club read Margaret Walker's Jubilee (with discussions led by Robbie Luckett, director of the Margaret Walker Center), and in the fall we read and discussed The Golden Apples over the course of eleven weeks. Even as we look forward to being able to host in-person book signings and literary events in the future, we plan on maintaining the virtual book club as a cornerstone of Welty House & Garden virtual programming. For now, there is no better way to foster an appreciation of Welty's literary legacy and cultivate a community of readers across the country. Since July, the Welty House & Garden has been open for limited tours and small, outdoor programs. We are lucky to have a beautiful outdoor space in which to safely engage with guests, and thus the Welty garden has become the focal point for much of our programming efforts. At the end of June, Susan Haltom, Welty Garden Curator and co-author of One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place, retired after 25 years. We are enormously grateful for Susan's work in restoring, preserving, and maintaining the historic garden in line with Welty's vision. Jessica Russell Hilton, our Garden Projects Specialist, worked closely with Susan in the months prior to her departure and has since taken up the mantle of preserving our "living exhibits." The year 2020 also marked the release of the completely redesigned Eudora Welty House & Garden website. The new website features colorful photography, an accessible design, an events calendar, a teacher resources page, streamlined visitor information, and more. Be sure to visit eudoraweltyhouse.com to see all the updates. In 2021 we look forward to returning to some semblance of normalcy with more outdoor, in-person programs, and the reopening of our popular Saturday afternoon tour times. As always, visitor, volunteer, and staff safety is our top priority. While the past year has been extraordinarily difficult, I am grateful for the connections sustained within our community. I hope our staff at the Welty House & Garden has been able to offer guests—whether virtual or in-person—a peaceful and inspiring respite during stressful times. [End Page 282] Copyright © 2021 Department of English, Georgia State University