Housewife and florist.
Mary Frye was an American housewife and poet and is chiefly remembered for a single poem. She was born on November 13, 1905. She died on September 15, 2004, aged 98. It is said that she never received a penny for her poem `Do Not Stand at my Grave` which was written in 1932 for a young German Jewish girl who had lost her Mother and was advised not to return to Germany due to the rising anti-semitism. This poem has become beloved by people the world over to express their own sorrows.
Mary E. Frye, housewife and poet, was born on November 13th 1905 and died on September 15th 2004 at the age of 98
Born Mary Elizabeth Clark in Dayton, Ohio, Frye was orphaned at the age of 3 and moved to Baltimore when she was 12. Although she had had no formal education, she was an avid reader with a remarkable memory. She married Claud Frye in 1927; he ran a clothing business while she grew and sold flowers.
After much contoversy this Baltimore housewife was finally acknowledged, towards the end of her long life, to be the true author of the well-known bereavement verse "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep." This famous verse has brought comfort to mourners throughout the world for the past 70 years but there were many other claimants to its authorship, including attributions to traditional and native American origins.
Frye’s assertion that she wrote the piece was eventually confirmed in 1998 following exhaustive research by Abigail Van Buren, the newspaper columnist responsible for the popular column “Dear Abby”.
Prior to 1932 Frye had not written any poetry. In that year she and her husband had a young German Jewish girl, Margaret Schwarzkopf, staying with them. The young guest had been concerned about her mother, who was ill in Germany, but she had been counselled not to return home because of growing anti-Semitic feeling in her native land. When Schwarzkopf`s mother finally died, the heartbroken youngster told Frye that she would never have the chance to “stand by my mother’s grave and shed a tear”.
Frye found herself composing a piece of verse on the only paper she has to hand, a shopping bag. Later she stated that the words “just came to her” and expressed what she felt about life and death.
Many people liked the simple, uncomplicated nature of her little verse and she made many copies and circulated them privately.
The verse has a remarkable power to soothe loss and so it became popular. Passed from family to family it crossed national boundaries. It was used on bereavement cards and at funerals regardless of race, religion or social status of those concerned.
Today, it is often a feature at memorial services for disasters where there has been a large scale loss of life It was after the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, and the terror attack in New York in 2001. In the UK a reading on the BBC television programme Bookworm in 1995 attracted more than 30,000 requests for copies and the following year a survey conducted by the programme pronounced it “the Nation’s Favourite Poem”.
Frye continued to write, often to support animal charities, but none of her subsequent work matched the impact of that first piece. She never published or copyrighted the poem. The version used here is regarded as the definitive one although many versions have been produced over the years.
Widowed in 1964, Frye is survived by her daughter.
