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PAUL:

Think great writers are all serious business? Not in Jackson, where literary legend Eudora Welty left her mark with both brilliance and playful spirit. Hey, it's Paul Wolf with the front-row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the City With Soul shine. On today's show, we're celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Eudora Welty house with Welty education specialist Anna Traylor who's bringing the beloved author's vibrant legacy to new generations at this perfectly preserved piece of Jackson history.

Tell me about your role there at the Welty House, how long you've been there and kind of what you do on a day-to-day basis.

ANNA:

Sure. So I am the education specialist here at the Welty House. I have been here since October of 2023. And I always tell folks that finding the Eudora Welty House was like finding my home. I was a children's librarian and I have a background in education before that. And the very first Welty book I read whenever I was offered this job was her one and only children's novel. So it has been my mission since being here to really like bring Miss Welty and her creative and inspiring legacy, not just to like the people that might remember her, but the people who are just learning about her and are just growing up here in Mississippi and like seeing that, well, Eudora was a kid too. She wasn't just this old lady.

PAUL:

Yeah. We have a blog on our website that is visiting Eudora Welty’s Jackson and it talks about her roller skating in the middle of the state Capitol. Isn't that, that's cool.

ANNA:

Right? That's so amazing. And that's exactly the type of personality that I think the site shows of Eudora. know, one thing that I tell people whenever I was in high school and I read Eudora's short story is I feel like I had this misperception of like her being this Mississippi grandma, but she was like more like Mississippi's kooky aunt. Like people don't realize how much fun and how much youth and how much life she had in her. And she was able to share that and continue to pass that on that when people read about her and learn about her now, they still feel inspired.

PAUL:

The recent Anthony Thaxton documentary has a quote, frankly, that said, “Eudora was a bad ass.”

ANNA:

It is one of my favorite things. And I love that he's like, I don't know if I can say this, but she would want him to say that.

PAUL:

That's right. Her bottle of Maker's Mark is still in the kitchen, right?

ANNA:

Yes. It's on what she called her entertainment center or her hospitality center. So one of my favorite lines from the tour is that if you were visiting her, she might pour you a shot or two because a bird can't fly on only one way.

PAUL:

Well, she, she and I would have gotten along just fine.

ANNA:

I agree. I feel like a lot of people can find their connection to Welty whenever they come here and everybody, lot of times it brings a connection to the Welty space to already they have their own Welty story.

PAUL:

There's so many Jacksonians that are, you know, still alive today, they're still here that maybe were younger children or young adults when she actually was living in Belhaven in that house that is now a museum and interpretive center. And they would know her from the grocery store or the post office. She was just a regular lady.

ANNA:

Yes, absolutely. I think one of my favorite things reading about people seeing her out in public at the Jitney Jungle is they would be reminded that she's just a regular person. So they don't want to like go and approach her and say like, my gosh, I'm such a big fan. But I think one of the best stories of the actual house, not out and about people would leave stacks of her books on the front porch for her to bring in and sign and she would put them back out. So she did really appreciate the admiration of her fellow Jacksonians too, even though some of them were shy to come up to her in the Jitney Jungle.

PAUL:

That's a cool story. That definitely humanizes her and, shows that people really respected who she was. Now if I understand correctly, and I've been through the house a couple of times, the house is one of the most intact literary homes in the United States. And it's kind of set to a 1986 period of when she would have lived there. Tell me how the house is set up for people who maybe have never been through it or just haven't been through it in a long time and need to refresh her.

ANNA:

Absolutely. So, you're completely correct. Eudora willed her home, deeded her home to the Department of Archives and History in the 1980s. So archivists came in at that point and took photographs of everything as it was then. And then it is now staged to look that way. And so what you'll see when you walk through are very few barricades, just a few, here in each room and then carpet runners. And that's really the only protection that you see. The rest of it looks like Miss Welty has just stepped out. There's stacks of books on almost every piece of furniture, tables and chairs alike. Even her bathrobe hanging in her bathroom and little slippers sitting there. It feels like she's still living there in the home. It's very much so like you're visiting her home.

PAUL:

She really was, how do I say this, kind of an every man's Jacksonian? She was so relatable. And even to this day as a museum, her home is relatable. I also heard this story too, that like her family got to come in and kind of claim all the personal effects, but then gave most of it back to the house so that the house could indeed look like she had just stepped out as you said.

ANNA:

Yes. So that is correct. Whenever she deeded her home and her manuscripts to the department. deeded all of the contents of the home, so the furniture to her nieces and they took a handful of the sentimental things, but the rest they in turn went and deeded the rest to the department. So honestly, it's mostly all of Ms. Welty's stuff. I can think on one hand, five items that are not exact.

PAUL:

Wow. That is intact indeed. It has a legacy of that for a reason. And then her garden, is something that she and her mother worked on. And it also is kind of set in a time period as well, right?

ANNA:

So that's actually kind of like stepping back into time from the house. When she deeded the home to the department in the 80s, you know, she was writing and traveling and her mother had passed away at that time. So the garden had largely fallen into disrepair. And I think what you'll see about some of these conversations that began about the garden, she always called it her mother's garden. And she saw it as one of her biggest regrets about how she allowed that garden to kind of fall into disrepair. So that conversation to restore the garden to its heydays began prior to her death. And it was from her documentation and her mother's documentation of the garden that we were able to restore it to its current state. She would sit on her rooftop and take pictures of the garden at different points in time in the year so that she could capture that parade of bloom that Chestena did. And it was from that that we now have the garden. It's interpreted to the 1920s to 40s. So that would have been when her mother and her were actively working on it daily.

PAUL:

Yeah. Speaking of the 1920s, that house that you know, Welty house there was built in 1925 and lo and behold, it's 2025. We're at the hundred-year mark. That must mean a big year of celebrations.

ANNA:

We are so excited to be celebrating the centennial of the Pinehurst Welty House. With that, are having every Wednesday is Welty Wednesday and we offer free admission to house tours, but we're also doing it up for as many events as we can, having paint and sip classes and pressed flower workshops, and of course, anticipating this Welty's birthday bash in April.

PAUL:

And that's April 13th, right?

ANNA:

So that's her actual birthday is April 13th, but that is a Sunday this year. So since we're not open to the public on a Sunday, we're going to have the celebration on the Friday and Saturday premiere. So we're going to have free tours on that Friday and Saturday, the 11th. We'll have guests and fun activities and cupcakes on that Friday. And then we will have a garden volunteer opportunity on that Saturday, the 12th.

PAUL:

It is such a treasure to have the Eudora Welty House and gardens here in Jackson, a piece of living history. And so many people who live here in Jackson have never experienced, have never stepped foot on that property, maybe even never driven by it's across the street from the front entrance of the Belhaven University campus in the Belhaven neighborhood. But if someone wanted to come visit, how would they go about that? What are the tours look like? How long did they take? And what are we going to find and learn when we go through the Welty House & Gardens?

ANNA:

So you can learn any number of things. It's almost like a choose your own adventure. If you come and you find something that inspires you, that's the direction your path can lead on. But we offer tours at 9 and 11 a.m. and 1 and 3 p.m. And so whenever you want to have a tour your while, you're more than welcome to just walk up. We do prefer reservations because there's a capacity limitation in the house because it's so in tact, we can only bring a handful of folks in at a time. So the best way to guarantee a spot on a tour is to give us a call or send an email to info at udorawealthyhouse.com and let us know your preferred time and date. And then we'll get you set up. And then once you get here, there's gonna be a little film that kind of introduces you to Miss Welty and what this place meant to her. Then you'll get that guided tour with your volunteer docent or staff member through the house room by room. And then you'll have the rest of the time to explore the garden at your own leisure.

PAUL:

And that tour may even be led by one of her family members. I know her niece, Mary Alice Welty White lives in Jackson.

ANNA:

Yes, Mary Alice still does come to volunteer and give tours. I was so fortunate to go on my first Mary Alice tour over the summer. And it's so fun because Mary Alice wrote the tour script that we all know and we all use. And so, you know, she's saying the same things that we know and say, but to hear her say my aunt and we, and over here, this is when it happened. It's just such a unique experience. really makes it so magical.

PAUL:

There's such a striking resemblance there to her aunt and even the voice as well. It's almost like you're walking through the house with you, Eudora Welty.

ANNA:

Yes, I told somebody yesterday she's the spitting image of her. It feels like if you don't have time to take a tour or maybe you come by and the tours are full for the day, the visitor center itself is absolutely amazing and fascinating.

ANNA:

Absolutely. So we have always a permanent exhibit on display that will take you through her life with the lens of her memoir. But then we also have temporary exhibits that cycle through currently on display. We have Ms. Welty's photography. That's “Other Places.” So she was most known for the photographs that she took of Mississippi during the Great Depression, but what we have on display appropriate for this season is New York and New Orleans. And then we also have typewriters to interact with, our permanent exhibit on Medgar Evers, tons of stuff to interact with, and the visitor center is always free. So if you are here and you don't have a chance to go into the house as the ticketed event, you can always just hang out at the visitor center.

PAUL:

As we wrap up our visit to the Eudora Welty house, don't forget they're celebrating their centennial throughout 2025 with Welty Wednesdays offering free tours plus special events like Welty's Birthday Bash April 11th through 12th and the annual heirloom plant sale on March 29th where you can get this take home plants propagated directly from Welty's historic garden. Head to our show notes to learn more. They're at visitjackson.com/soulsessions.

This podcast is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization from Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Ricky Thigpen. I'm our managing editor.

Do you want to know more about the great things happening in Jackson and our efforts to shine a spotlight on those? You can find all of that at VisitJackson.com.

I'm Paul Wolf. You've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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