The Ozarks has lost a true living legend this weekend. We are sorry to hear of the passing of Ms. Ellen Gray Massey and we know she will be missed and remembered by many. Her guidance has helped many people discover new talents and a love of writing and photography over the years. We originally published the story below in October of 2008 and wanted to put it online for everyone to read as a tribute to a wonderful woman.
Ellen Gray Massey has written and compiled more history, memories and written treasures of the Ozarks than perhaps any other. Here’s her living legacy.
All I ever really wanted to do was to write about the people of the Ozarks and let others know who they really are.” Her eyes burn bright at the very mention of the word, write. As the author or editor of more than 20 books, Ellen Gray Massey has been doing exactly that since retiring from full-time teaching.
“There just was no time, with the farm, raising children, teaching and then of course, “Bittersweet Magazine.” Now I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do.” She settles herself briefly on the couch in her living room, beside a shelf full of books that bear her name.
“My father was a representative for the American Farm Bureau, so we spent the school year in Washington D.C., where he worked. Then every summer, we came back home to the family farm near Nevada, Mo.” Ellen Massey explained how she has been a lifelong resident of the Ozarks but went to school in the East. “It made me part of two cultures, and we were easily accepted in both places.” She made that first trip to Washington D.C. as a small child, along with her parents and her seven brothers and sisters, in a single vehicle in 1926.
“We traveled back and forth a couple of times a year. When my mother was in charge, we stayed in little cabins along the way.” The long abandoned shells of those old vacation cabins can still be seen on rare occasion tucked in the woods, along the nation’s interstate highways. “When my father went with us, he always stayed in fine hotels, so my brothers liked it better, when we traveled with my father.”
“It took five days,” she recalled with a sweet smile of fond remembrance. “Except for my sister, Carolyn and I, the two youngest, all the rest of our sisters and brothers stayed in the East, including my brother, Harold. We were all together this past summer to celebrate his 100th birthday.”
With a degree from the University of Maryland, Ellen Gray Massey returned to the Ozarks as a full time agent for the University of Missouri Extension Service. “There were not a lot of occupations open to women at that time,” she continued.
She met and married Lane Massey, a Laclede County farmer and together they had three children, David, Ruth and Frances. Later, her first year of teaching was in a one-room school house near the old Webster County community of Rader.
Her face lit up as she described her introduction to that part of the educational system. “Going to school in Washington, I’d never attended a one room school house, although all of my older siblings had. It was a wonderful teaching experience. For nine months, it was just me and those kids.”
Life moved fast for Ellen Gray Massey, as she became a young widow and went back to school for a second undergraduate degree and then a Masters in education. She came to the Lebanon school system to teach English and in short order, she became the head of the Language Arts Department.
“One of the courses we offered at that time was called Ozarkia. We took the students on float trips, hikes and visited area caves and taught them about their own home area. So many of our students just wanted to graduate high school and get out of town as soon as they could. We wanted them to know that they had something really special here in their life in the Ozarks.”
She sighed contentedly as she continued. “One of my brothers, Ralph Gray was the editor of National Geographic’s youth magazine, National Geographic World, and he was also familiar with the Foxfire Magazine of Georgia. He encouraged me to start a similar magazine here but I was resistant at first, because I knew how much work would be involved.”
In 1973, all the right factors finally came into play, and Lebanon High School’s own Bittersweet Magazine, a quarterly publication written by the students, came into its own. “Our first issue was all about one room country school houses because that was the last year the state would accredit them. They were all consolidated with other schools. The students and I actually worked all that summer, before the Bittersweet class ever began, so that we had that first issue ready to go the first day of school, and it was a big hit.”
The next ten years saw 40 issues of Bittersweet come and go, as well as over 100 students and the stories they followed, highlighting the beauty of the land, the people, the skills, the folklore, the very heart and soul of life in the Ozarks, as lived by the people of the area.
Bittersweet Country, an anthology of many of the magazine’s articles, was published by Doubleday in 1978. “It was quite exciting,” Ellen Massey admitted, “and we sold 25,000 copies, but to a New York publisher, that is not a big run. They want 100,000 copies. When we were ready to do Bittersweet Earth, a second anthology, after we had stopped production of the magazine, the big publishers didn’t want it. Fortunately, the University of Oklahoma press did it in 1985 and they re-printed the first one as well.” The third and last of the Bittersweet books is Bittersweet At A Glance, a collection of photos from the ten years of Bittersweet Magazine, was released in 2003.
“It’s been my goal for people to know more about the beauty of the Ozarks, and its people, their resourcefulness and to get away from the stereotypes. The best way I could do that was to do my own writing.”
Her writing and her endless efforts to help others perfect their writing skills through the decades brought her into the Writers Hall of Fame in 1995. In addition to her long teaching career, she has conducted numerous writers’ workshops, through Drury University, the Elderhostel program, and even private workshops at her own home.
“You know, when my husband died, I could have moved anywhere but I wanted to stay here. I’d already become acquainted with so many fine people here in Laclede County and I wanted to show how wonderful a location the Ozarks really is, how great the people are and I wanted my children to grow up here.”
Ellen Gray Massey has spent her retirement years writing, about the beauty and the people of the Ozarks. She points with pride to a little sign her daughter, Ruth, gave her not so long ago, which says “I’m Still Learning.” The sign describes Ellen Gray Massey very well, a lifetime teacher, who continues to help all the rest of us to do the same.
