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1958-04-06: ​tour stops---images---audio---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
Authority on Botany Visits Sister in Atlanta

By ANNIE LOU HARDY
Atlanta Constitution Society Editor

“If you make your field narrow enough, you can be an authority,” advised Dr. Alma Stokey with a merry laugh that crinkled her round face engagingly and made her hazel eyes twinkle.

Which was her very modest way of disclaiming that she herself is an authority - on botany in general, and on ferns in particular.

Dr. Stokey, currently her for a visit to her sister, Mrs. Eva S. Evans of 855 Highland Ter., is retired from the Mt. Holyoke faculty after 34 years of teaching botany.

She has gathered ferns all the way from London’s Kew gardens to the mountain slopes of Ceylon and Singapore, and has circled the globe three times in search of rare ones.

Which should certainly prove her something of an authority - an important one.

Dr. Stokey continues to do research on ferns in the Mt. Holyoke laboratory.  However, she insists that she is a novice in the field, though she has propagated more than 300 of the most interesting representatives of the main families.  All but one, in fact.

The subject is obviously an engrossing one, and one that the botanist loves to talk about.  She quickly assumes an affectionate and proprietary tone.

“It is hard for me to leave South Hadley (she still lives in a faculty house on the Mt. Holyoke campus) because people from all over the world send me spores by mail,” she said.  “You see, they have to be refrigerated as soon as they arrive.  I work with Dr. Lenette Rogers Atkinson and both of us cannot leave at the same time.  One of has to ‘baby sit’ with the ferns.  When I travel, I send spores back to her, and vice versa.”

Dr. Stokey is interested primarily in the prothallus stage of fern growing, which she explains as the early stage or germination of a spore.  This is accomplished in a shallow dish, she explains, but the moisture and temperature have to be just right, and the light must be diffused properly.

She goes to the laboratory as soon as the morning mail arrives each day (it might contain spores), and she stays for the rest of the day.

“She always stays long enough to be late for dinner,” laughed her sister, Mrs. Evans who joins her for the summer each year at her summer home in Woods Hole, Mass.

Dr. Stokey and her collaborator have written numerous articles on their work and are planning to compile all the material they have gathered into a book.  They will also do the illustrations, for both are talented artists.  They feel that a book without drawings would be sadly lacking in interest.

Dr. Stokey was graduated from Oberlin and received her doctorate from the University of Chicago.  She returned to Oberlin in 1955 to receive an honorary degree in science, along with Adlai Stevenson and James Reston.

Dr. Stokey is a sister of Col. William P. Stokey, who was a resident of Atlanta at the time of his death six years ago.  Her niece, Mrs. Ernest Lundeen, whom Atlantians will recall as Kathleen Stokey, is now woman’s page editor of a newspaper in Eugene, Ore., while another niece, the former Margaret Stokey, is now Mrs. Albert Bruchas of Vashon, Wash.  William P. Stokey Jr. is teaching mechanical engineering at Carneigie Tech after taking his doctorate at MIT.  His brother, Roger P. Stokey, is a member of the law firm of Goodwin, Procter & Hoar in Boston.

​
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1958-04-06​: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
By ANNIE LOU HARDY
Atlanta Constitution Society Editor
Alas, Google gave me practically nothing on Annie Lou.

2.
advised Dr. Alma Stokey with a merry laugh that crinkled her round face engagingly and made her hazel eyes twinkle.
Alma's face was round?  It doesn't look that way to me.  More like oval.

3.
“It is hard for me to leave South Hadley (she still lives in a faculty house on the Mt. Holyoke campus) because people from all over the world send me spores by mail,” she said.  “You see, they have to be refrigerated as soon as they arrive.  I work with Dr. Lenette Rogers Atkinson and both of us cannot leave at the same time.  One of has to ‘baby sit’ with the ferns.  When I travel, I send spores back to her, and vice versa.”
And yet both Alma and Lenette spent the following winter in Hawaii:
4.
Dr. Stokey is a sister of Col. William P. Stokey, who was a resident of Atlanta at the time of his death six years ago.
More like seven and a half years, since he died in December of 1950.

5.
William P. Stokey Jr. is teaching mechanical engineering at Carneigie Tech after taking his doctorate at MIT.
Not Junior.  William F. Stokey.
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