A Hoosier Legacy

13 – Hoosier legacy

When I learned that Ruth Lilly had died in late December, my mind drifted back to stories from my mother who grew up in Madison, Indiana. There, in the wake of the Great Depression, she and my grandmother were left destitute after my grandfather died at the age of 35. The farm payments made to their insurance agent had been pocketed and not forwarded to the mortgage company. Alas, fraud and theft are not new in American society.

Miss Drusilla Cravens was the granddaughter of J.F.D. Lanier, who, with the help of famous architect Francis Costigan, built the magnificent Lanier Mansion in 1844. Lanier finally relinquished title to the Madison property and deeded it to his oldest son, Alexander, in 1861. Moving to New York City, he maintained close ties to his former home state. As an interesting side note, you should know that during the Civil War, Lanier made unsecured loans totaling over $1 million, first to enable Governor Oliver P. Morton to outfit troops, then to enable the state to keep up interest payments on its debt. By 1870, these loans were repaid with interest. Lanier died in 1881.

Getting back to Miss Cravens, she learned of my mother and grandmother’s situation and took them into her home, where they lived until my mother graduated from Madison High School with The Class of 1935. While living with Miss Cravens, my mother was exposed to a wide variety of impressive visitors. Among these was Josiah K. Lilly, Jr., who would have been about 45 years of age when mother was a senior in high school.

Mr. Lilly brought my mother a lovely beaded necklace from one of his European trips. A delicate piece, it reposes in the safe haven of a vault. I can’t bear to think of losing it. I treasure it as a relic from that golden time when movers and shakers who would build a pharmaceutical giant were simply known as hard working entrepreneurs — men borne of a family from Greencastle.

Most of us have grown up with Eli Lilly as a familiar part of our lives, since many local people have worked for the pharmaceutical company over its many years. Stories abound about Ruth Lilly, and I find it intriguing that her own family’s company produced a drug that gave her some respite from a dogging depression with which she had struggled for years.

Her passion for poetry is well known. As a novice poet myself, I appreciate her efforts on behalf of American poets at large. This coming Monday, Indiana will inter a woman of considerable influence and generosity. Crown Hill Cemetery is a fitting last resting place for this gentle woman. Its beauty and symmetry equal that of a great poem and its history is replete with legends and lore common to such a large cemetery.

As for me, I will think of Ruth Lilly on Monday, and later on I will pick up that old necklace and muse about a man who took the time to bring a fatherless, seventeen-year-old girl something precious from a faraway land…. a man whose family impacted— and continues to impact — the lives of countless Hoosiers. Indiana is, in large measure, a better state for the work of the Lilly family. I wish them continued success.

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