Remembering John S. Stokes Jr.
October 21, 1920 - November 14, 2007
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What a legacy John Stokes leaves us--a web site,
www.mgardens.org, Mary Gardens throughout the world, numerous books inspired by the Blessed Virgin Mary’s
flowers and their legends, and untold numbers of persons who have come to know
and love Mary by learning about her life and attributes as symbolized by flowers and herbs.
He was a gentle man, with a passion for Mary and her
flowers, their theology and spirituality. Perhaps it was his faith that made him
gentle, for he was confident in his beliefs and never failed to instruct others,
gently and patiently, about spiritual matters, especially as they related to Mary, Mother of Jesus and Mother of God.
I think of John Stokes as the founder of what I call the Mary Garden Movement. I learned about him in the early 1990s when I
began my research into flowers and legends associated with Mary. He was in contact with
Jane McLaughlin, who had helped restore the first U.S. Mary Garden, at St.
Joseph Church in Woods Hole on Cape Cod. She had no telephone number for him,
only a post office box number and later an e-mail address. He was very private,
saying little about himself and his life and eschewing personal and even telephone contacts.
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Jones S. Stokes, Jr. (far left)
at the Mary Garden at Woods Hole on Cape Cod
with Vincenzina Krymow and Jane McLaughlin (far right) |
When my husband and I arrived at St. Joseph Church to visit
the garden in the summer of 1995 and met Jane, I was surprised and honored to
find that John had taken the train from Philadelphia that morning to meet with
us. The tall and lanky, casually dressed man spent the day with Jane, my husband
and myself, talking about Mary’s flowers, how Mary Gardens could encourage and
deepen devotion to Mary and instructing me about the spirituality of flowers associated with Mary.
We maintained contact through e-mails and John was very
generous in sharing information and printed materials, sending me early photos
of the Cape Cod Mary Garden and copies of many articles on Mary Gardens he’d
published in the 1950’s and 1960’s in numerous Catholic magazines.
Several times over the years he attempted to pull together
the voluminous correspondence and information about Mary Gardens he had amassed
over a 44-year period. Finally, with the advent of the Internet, he found the
perfect vehicle for making that information available to all. On October 7,
1995, the Feast of Mary’s Rosary, he established a Mary’s Gardens home page on the World Wide Web.
"The sense of reaching out to the whole wide world which
comes with the Internet is awesome," he wrote. His dream and his vision were
expressed in the press release announcing the opening of the web site: "The
universal reach of the WWW will also facilitate the restoration of Mary Gardens
in the many cultures, in addition to English and Spanish-speaking from which the
research has found many of the symbolical Flowers of Our Lady to have been current in medieval times."
Soon people from all over the world, from Japan, Indonesia, South Africa, as
well as all the European countries were accessing the Mary Garden site. In the
late 1990’s he proudly e-mailed me that in one day one-thousand
people had accessed the "Spotless Lily" flower clip accompanying the text,
"Plant Symbols of Our Lady from the Church Fathers and the Liturgy." The clip
was from a photo of the first Madonna Lily he cultivated, in 1952.
John kept in touch with me and about a dozen others whom he
referred to as his associates through e-mails, notifying us of developing Mary
Gardens, recent articles and new books, and forwarding requests for information from persons throughout the world.
John was personally instrumental in getting my book, Mary’s Flowers: Gardens, Legends and Meditations, published. The agent I
had secured was having difficulty finding a publisher who would produce the book in
hard cover with full-color illustrations because of the cost involved. John
e-mailed me about Lauretta Santarossa, who had found his website and was
interested in establishing a Mary Garden. John suggested I contact her, pointing
out that "She just happens to be in charge of marketing for Novalis Press in
Toronto." My agent contacted her, with the result that Novalis and St. Anthony
Messenger Press in Cincinnati agreed to co-publish my book!
I am forever indebted to John for his continued support and assistance with the Mary’s Flowers book, and for his Foreword to
the book, with its overview of the history of the Marian names and legends for flowers. In my mind’s eye I see him
in happy conversation with Our Lady, discussing her flowers and pointing out the unique features of the many gardens dedicated to her.
Vincenzina Krymow
January 22, 2008
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