Harry Kollatz Jr’s most recent column informs of new attention to Grace Arents’ legacy from local librarian and writer Wendy DeGroat. A New Jersey transplant, DeGroat was inspired by a previous 2009 Kollatz feature on Grace Arents called The Invisible Philanthropist.

Kollatz excerpt:

Segue to 2015, and DeGroat is composing a group of 20 to 30 “documentary poems” under the title “What Doesn’t Burn.” The title is imbued with meanings: DeGroat like researchers before her, is left with scant material about Arents who, like her wealthy uncle Lewis Ginter and others of their time, ordered the destruction of her personal papers. What somehow didn’t burn were a commonplace book and two travel journals. In constructing the poems, to give herself Arents’ voice, DeGroat charted the frequency and choice of words and broke them into their proper categories, whether noun, verb and so forth. To frame the poems, she created letters that Grace could have written to her younger sister, Minnie, in New York City.

But, DeGroat points out, what also doesn’t burn is what one gives away, whether energy or material. It is a particular poignant observation, giving that the William Byrd Community House, a direct portion of Arents’ legacy – which withstood economic depressions and many variations of the monetary climate – closed this year.

She’s found in Arents not a schoolteacher spinster, as she’s perceived, but an independent woman who at age 49, through inheritance of the Ginter fortune, became a person of means, too. Arents chose to exercise her will by making her part of the world a better place and doing so in a way that didn’t attract undue attention to herself. Arents’ humble nature seems to have come through either example or genetics of her Uncle Lewis. The tobacco magnate who bankrolled the construction of the Jefferson Hotel ordered that his name not be seen anywhere in the building. This kind modesty isn’t exemplified by latter-day tycoons.