Thomas Keneally – The Garrard Ardeneum Collection Project Blog

On February 10, 1980, Tom and Allece Garrard hosted a dinner at the McAlester Country Club to celebrate the 1980 Neustadt Prize. Honorees of the dinner were President Emeritus Paul Sharp and his wife, Rose, Professor and Mrs. Wayne Chess, Australian novelist Thomas Keneally and Czech novelist Arnost Lustig.

Included among the R.S.V.P.s for that event was this creative reply from supernatural fiction author Frank D. McSherry:

Happy Friday, everyone!

About the collection

Processing of the Garrard Ardeneum Collection is made possible by a grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council.

The Garrard Ardeneum is a garden/museum established by Allece Locke Garrard in McAlester, Oklahoma. Allece coined the term "Ardeneum" by combining the two words, "garden" and "museum" and dropping the "g" from the beginning. The purpose of the Ardeneum is to preserve the history of McAlester, Oklahoma, the United States and the world, while providing guests with "a pleasant place to visit."

The material in this collection came from the Garrard Ardeneum and was donated to the Sequoyah National Research Center by Francine Locke Bray. Allece Locke Garrard was the granddaughter of Seminole Chieftain, Alice Brown Davis. Her uncle, Victor Locke, was Chief of the Choctaw and Superintendent of the Five Civilized Tribes. On January 25, 1963, Allece Locke married Tom Garrard, an MIT graduate from a prominent Dallas family. Allece graduated from the University of Oklahoma and taught speech and drama in public schools in Oklahoma City, taking time out during World War II to become a Director in the US Army Hostess Service. At the time of their marriage, Tom Garrard worked for his uncle, J.G. Puterbaugh, at McAlester Fuel Company. Shortly after their marriage, Puterbaugh named Tom President of the company.

The Garrards were active in the realms of business, philanthropy, education, the arts and politics.

About the Author

Hello, I'm Zack Whitaker, Project Archivist for the Garrard Ardeneum Collection at the Sequoyah National Research Center at University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I received my MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science, where I worked as a Graduate Research Assistant for the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives. Before I came to Arkansas, I was a Digitization Technician for the World Bank Group Archives of Development in Washington, DC.

* The Garrard Ardeneum Project Blog is a personal blog and in no way represents the opinions of Sequoyah National Research Center or the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Tag: Thomas Keneally

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