‘Debby Rairdon’ (Lois Kuntz 1964, TB) ‘New Moon’ (Neva Sexton 1968, TB)
‘Starwoman’ (Marky Smith 1998, IB)
264 irises that had been registered by Chancellor James
Kirkland (an AIS founder), Clarence Connell (Parks and
Hospital Superintendent), Mary Geddes Stahlman in
collaboration with T. Alibone Washington and Jesse
Wills, AIS president 1943–1946. Other prominent iris
personalities included Tom Williams, the original “Old
Dirt Dobber” of radio fame, and Vanderbilt professor of
geology Dr. L. C. Glenn and his famous large iris gardens
on the Vanderbilt campus., The adjacent Peabody
College campus (now part of Vanderbilt) also contained
1 Additional Dykes Medal winners by American women:
1950 ‘Blue Rhythm’ (Agnes Whiting 1945, TB)
1957 ‘Violet Harmony’ (Edith Lowry 1948, TB)
1965 ‘Pacific Panorama’ (Neva Sexton 1960, TB)
1967 ‘Winter Olympics’ (Opal Brown 1963, TB)
1971 ‘Debby Rairdon’ (Lois Kuntz 1964, TB)
1973 ‘New Moon’ (Neva Sexton 1968, TB)
1977 ‘Dream Lover’ (Esther Tams 1971, TB)
2008 ‘Starwoman’ (Marky Smith 1998, IB)
2 AIS Bulletin, April 1970, page 40, Mary Williamson
quoted as making the cross at the suggestion of
Mrs. Peckham.
3 IRISES The Bulletin of the American Iris Society,
Summer 2017, pp. 18–19.
4 Ginny Russell, graduate of George Peabody College for
Teachers now known as Peabody College of Education
and Human Development at Vanderbilt University.
large iris gardens. For years graduates received their
college diploma and an iris rhizome, and for years they
came back and told of their iris planting. This tradition
fell out of favor at some point but has recently been reinstituted.
4
Although Marky Smith wasn’t the first woman in America
to win the coveted Dykes Medal, she joins fine company,
and she was the first woman to win it for a median iris.
d
Winter 2018 AIS Bulletin 51