Sudie Stuart Hager (1895-1982)

Teacher, Poet
Born June 30, 1895, Manchester, Grant County, Oklahoma
Died May 27, 1982, Kimberly, Idaho

Sudie Bower Stuart was born on June 30, 1895, in Manchester, in Grant County, Oklahoma, to Marion V. and Susan Elizabeth Allison "Allie" (Starks) Stuart. According to her niece, Sudie and her family moved to Binger, Oklahoma, where she attended school. The enumerator of the 1910 Federal census found the Stuart family in Fern, in Caddo County, Oklahoma.

Sudie B. Stuart taught at the Henley school in Klamath Falls, Oregon, from 1917 to 1919. Prior to that, she had lived in Silverton, Oregon. By 1920, Sudie was married and living in Kimberly, Idaho, with her husband, Everett G. Hager (1890-1971). Sudie B. Stuart Hager seems to have resided in Kimberly for the rest of her life, working as a teacher at the junior high school there for ten years before retiring to devote herself to her poetry. Called "a poet of the people and a Solomon of the Soil," (1) she was appointed the third poet laureate of the State of Idaho in 1949, succeeding in that post Irene Welch Grissom. (Ezra Pound was the state's first poet laureate.) Sudie's poetry appeared in Country Gentleman, Farm Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as many newspapers. Her only poem for Weird Tales was "Inheritance," in the issue of July 1940. Sudie's poems were collected in Earthbound (1947) and Beauty Will Abide (1970).

Sudie Stuart Hager served as poet laureate of Idaho until her death on May 27, 1982, in Kimberly. She was buried at Twin Falls Cemetery, Twin Falls, Idaho.

Sudie Stuart Hager's Poem in Weird Tales

"Inheritance" (July 1940)

Further Reading

• "Poet Laureate of Idaho Is Former Klamath Woman," Klamath Falls Herald and News, February 26, 1949, page 14.
• "Writers Will Mark Idaho Poetry Day" by Frances C. Yost, Idaho State Journal, October 12, 1950, page 9.

Note

(1) From "Writers Will Mark Idaho Poetry Day" by Frances C. Yost, Idaho State Journal, October 12, 1950, page 9.

Sudie Stuart Hager (1895-1982)

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley