Correction: While opposing segregation in the 1960s, Robert Palmer was threatened and vandals threw bricks through the windows of his mother’s Little Rock house. This feature obituary about Gladys Marguerite Palmer incorrectly identified the subjects of the threats and vandalism.
Ever the consummate writer who urged her children to record their experiences, Gladys Marguerite Palmer once turned her bout with a nasty brown recluse spider bite into a feature article for a publication.
Palmer was bitten on the calf while she sat on a bench waiting for a bus at the state Capitol, said her daughter, Dorothy Cox of Little Rock. She put off going to the doctor until the bite began swelling and turned red. The doctor eventually had to conduct a skin graft, covering a "hole" about 4 inches by 1.5 inches, Cox said.
Recently, as Cox went through some of her mother's articles, she found a feature about brown recluse spiders and their dangerous bites.
"It was funny," Cox said. "She had a stubborn streak in her, but she turned that bite into a story."
Palmer, 96, died Tuesday in a Little Rock nursing home of congestive heart failure.
Palmer was born on Nov. 11, 1918, in Pocahontas, to the late Drew and Gladys Bowers. Drew Bowers, a federal attorney, ran as a Republican candidate for Arkansas governor in 1926 and 1928. He lost both races, but the experiences helped shape his daughter.
She graduated from Little Rock Junior College -- which is now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock -- and Ouachita Baptist College -- known now as Ouachita Baptist University.
Palmer was employed by the state and by the U.S. Selective Service System. But she was best known for her writing.
A poet and freelancer, Palmer's stories appeared in the former Arkansas Gazette, The Saturday Evening Post, McCall's, the New York Herald Tribune, Parnassus literary journal, Kaleidograph magazine and other publications.
She wrote two books of poetry, Maps of Sun and Shadow and Searching for the Key.
In 1962, she was named the Arkansas Poet of the Year, and in 1987 she won the Sybil Nash Abrams Award, given by the Poets Roundtable of Arkansas.
"She didn't talk much about her writing," Cox said. "She poured herself into us and what we were doing.
"I didn't realize how well published she was until I read her obituary."
Palmer wrote her own obituary, Cox said, updating it every so often in pencil.
Augusta Lee Palmer of Brooklyn, N.Y., remembered her grandmother as an observant and sensitive writer. Yet, she also exhibited a "steely reserve" when it came to defending social issues.
When Drew Bowers ran for governor, he strongly opposed segregation, Augusta Lee Palmer said. As a result, the family was threatened, and vandals threw bricks through the windows of his home.
"It was dangerous, but she was proud that [her father] was standing for what was right," Augusta Lee Palmer said. "Her poetry captured moments of beauty and interchanges with human beings, but she cared deeply for social justice, no matter what people thought.
"I think I learned from her to be strong and do what you believe in and not be pushed aside by other people," she said.
Palmer taught her children to observe others and learn from them, Cox said.
While taking her ailing grandfather to a Veterans Administration hospital in North Little Rock, Palmer would often see a wounded soldier who had lost both of his legs but angrily said that he needed no help from anyone.
She wrote a poem about the man that appeared in Searching for the Key.
"She painted him with her words," Cox said. "We'd discuss a lot of her ideas around the dinner table. I thought that was normal for everyone to do it, but there was a lot of creativity in our home then."
Palmer's son, Robert Franklin Palmer Jr., was The New York Times' chief music critic in the 1980s.
Because of his fame, Palmer often met musical celebrities. Cox has a picture of her mother with former Beatle John Lennon's wife Yoko Ono, taken when Palmer was in New York for the wedding of her son Robert.
But her heart was in Arkansas, and she was proud of her upbringing.
Musician Gary Gazaway of Pocahontas -- who has played trumpet with Joe Cocker, Phish and Stevie Ray Vaughan -- developed a friendship with Robert Palmer because of his mother's hometown.
Gazaway played a show in New York in 1978 and met Robert Palmer, who was there to write about it.
After, Robert Palmer introduced himself and asked Gazaway where he was from.
"I told him Pocahontas and said, 'you won't know where that is,'" Gazaway said. "Robert said that was where his mother was born, and that created the beginning of our friendship."
Gazaway met Palmer's mother soon after.
"She was the most intelligent, sincere, sweetest, classy woman I think I've ever known," Gazaway said. "She knew my family in Pocahontas, and she would write letters to us. I treasure those letters.
"She was worldly, but she was so very fond of Pocahontas and its people," he said.
State Desk on 06/26/2015