Mary Worthen was a woman who knew her place—Arkansas.
Born in 1917 to Mamie Sandlin and Tom Fletcher, she would grow up in a house not at Scott but six miles outside it. Home-schooled till high school, she had plenty of time and space in which to grow. In the country, a patient child will notice things. They aren’t lost in the hustle-bustle of the city. And young Mary could read, read, read, read—and play the piano to her heart’s content. It was the start of a lifelong habit and passion. Perhaps most beneficial of all, she was given a good leaving-alone. How many of today’s kids, their eyes and ears and what’s left of their minds hooked up to every kind of electronic gizmo, are raised in that kind of luxury?
One of her boys said that, as a girl, his mother practiced piano “six hours a day because she was lonely and there was nothing else to do”—which is another way of saying she was granted solitude. And time enough to know it, savor it, explore it. Call it a measure of serenity, and there was something serene about Mary Worthen’s presence that she would bring with her everywhere she went, and to every life she touched.
Another of her sons, looking back, says one of his favorite memories is sitting on the living room floor as a boy and listening to his mother play Bach’s Fugue in G Minor. Talk about a way to nourish mind and soul, there’s nothing like an introduction to the sublime at a young age.
Mary Worthen would fill not just her life and her family’s with music, but her community’s. Not to mention a devotion to history, a love and practice of cooking and, thankfully for us all here in Arkansas, a dedication to public service as a volunteer. In that sense, she was the incarnation of the ancient Greeks’ definition of citizen—a private person who takes full part in public affairs.
Young Mary would go off to Vassar at some point, but not for long, leaving college in 1937 to marry Booker Worthen of the Arkansas banking family. And continue to read, read and read—everything from the Democrat-Gazette every day to the Arkansas Times and the New Yorker, among all the other periodicals that filled the Worthen house.
Mary Worthen would write, write, write, too. Among the books she turned out: The History of Trinity: The Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas, the church she attended for most of her life. She also produced a pamphlet on medicinal herbs—Frontier Pharmacy. (Did we mention that she was not only a good but inventive cook, and fancier of all kinds of herbs?) She even found time to help write a book of recipes and stories about Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock, which must be the state’s most distinguished address for the dead, it’s so full of eminent figures in the state’s history.
One of her boys, each of whom is now a distinguished citizen in his own right, says one of his mother’s regrets in her old age was that she had to cut back on her volunteer service in the community. On her death after 97 generous, music-filled years, her example still serves all of us here in Arkansas. And we can see those pearly gates swinging majestically open to welcome Mary Sandlin Fletcher Worthen—to the strains of Bach’s Fugue in G Minor, of course.