Mary Behrendsen Ward
Mary Behrendsen Ward (January 21, 1894 – May 13, 1985) was an American poet and fiction writer. She was the first woman Poet Laureate of Alabama, serving from 1954 to 1959. Ward published more than 600 poems in her career, appeared in papers like The Birmingham News and The New York Times, and won the Century of Progress lyric prize at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
She was born in Selma, Alabama, to German immigrant Henry Jorgen Behrendsen and Mary Elizabeth Smitherman. Her father ran a bakery that the family worked in. Ward married Herbert Jackson Ward, a Birmingham attorney, in Montgomery on July 3, 1918, while she worked as a schoolteacher. During World War II, she reconditioned houses for defense workers and earned the top score on a state civil service exam for an editorial job. She finished Autauga County High School in Prattville in 1912 and began at the University of Alabama that year. One of her early poems, written at age 12 in church, described a tiny bug climbing a lady’s shoulder. Ward was sworn in as Poet Laureate in 1954 and was noted for poems that often featured dialogue, drawing comparisons to Robert Frost. The Mary B. Ward Silver Loving Cup honors the best lyric poem not longer than 18 lines from the Poetry Society of Alabama. She wrote under several pen names, including Mary B. Ward, Linn Latham, Amy Atchison, and Jack Ordway. Ward died in Birmingham at 91 and is buried beside her husband in Elmwood Cemetery.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 11:37 (CET).