The monthly meeting of the Mayflower Poetry Club was held on Monday, May 13th. It was a special commemorative session in remembrance of founding member, Alex Moffett, who died in 2009 at the age of 103.
The tradition of the Club is that each member brings a poem they have written plus one by another poet. For this special session, attendees were encouraged to bring a favorite poem by Alex Moffett or a poem by another poet that the member associates with Alex. Alex’s poems are available in the Mayflower Community (Grinnell IA) library. His Selected Poems is a slim volume of 82 pages, and his Complete Poems is a spiral-bound volume.
Born to missionary parents in China in 1905, Alex received his medical degree from Vanderbilt University and then returned to China as a missionary doctor. Alex, his wife Virginia, and family had to leave China in 1950 due to rising political pressures. He then served the balance of his professional career in North Carolina as a family practice doctor and surgeon.
In 1990, Alex and Virginia moved to Grinnell, Iowa, where their son Sandy Moffett has been a Grinnell College faculty member since 1971 and is currently serving as Professor Emeritus of Acting, Directing, and American Theatre.
Living at first in an independent living Mayflower apartment, both later lived in Mayflower’s Health Center, with Alex having a stay in Mayflower’s Beebe assisted living facility. Alex died in May 2009 at the age of 103.
The Mayflower Poetry Club meets the second Monday of each month in Mayflower’s J&B Bistro. Membership is open to the public. Pictured at the start of May’s meeting, left to right are Paula Osgood, Pastor Kirsten Klepfer, Judy Hunter, Tom Moore, and Jim LaCasse. In Kirsten’s care is Oscar Guenther, son of Emily Guenther and Jordan Scheibel, who is getting an early start on his appreciation for poetry! Jim noted with pride that he had the privilege of caring for Virginia in the Health Center where he was serving as a Certified Nurse Aide.
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