Roberta Poland's file in Archives sketches a life drawn to academia. Born in 1899 in Pennsylvania, she earned a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore in 1921 and a master's from the University of Pennsylvania in 1934, with further study at the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado. She taught at three girls' preparatory schools before she was appointed to Deerfield's faculty in 1943 to teach math and physics. Her husband, Burdette, and she had arrived on campus in 1941 when he was appointed a teacher of chemistry and biology. Burdette became known as "Dr. Death." His physical appearance surely inspired some of that reference. He looked gaunt and a little eerie, an intense stare glaring back in photographs documenting his Deerfield years. He was thought to exist on a strict diet of cigarettes and black coffee. He was also one of the inspectors during meals when the Dining Hall served whole turkeys, judging carcasses for the skill of the carver and awarding a prize called "The Golden Goose." Pictures show him holding a long flashlight, scrupulously examining a platter's remains. The same pose is repeated in photos of him in the lab, scrutinizing dissections by his students. The impression one gets is of a kind of severity and a macabre sense of humor. Roberta Poland was, during her career at Deerfield, bland in comparison. She was a private person who upheld her obligations as a teacher but otherwise eschewed involvement in the school community. While at Deerfield, she developed a second career, impossible to consider a hobby given her professional expectations, working as a field botanist.

At this point, it is easy to flash backward in time through academy history to the poignant example of another couple working together at Deerfield, Edward and Orra White Hitchcock. He was preceptor at the school 1816-1819 and she was the preceptress of the girls' department 1813-1818. They wed in 1821 and stories tell of the two of them traipsing Deerfield together to collect samples of local flora. Orra identified the specimens, and rather than mounting the actual plant material, recorded their likeness with watercolors, resulting in an herbarium that the academy still owns. The Polands, too, shared exploring Deerfield and collecting plants. At first, Roberta deferred the identification process to Burdette. But as she gained experience, her capabilities bloomed. She began to take on the process as a personal quest, challenging herself to collect and identify every single species of wild plant growing in the 30 square miles of Deerfield. In several interviews that she gave in the 1980s, she commented on how important that daunting challenge was, despite moments when she felt overwhelmed. She was determined to be the most complete and most accurate in cataloguing the area's botanicals. There seemed to be a competitive impetus and the goal certainly evinced from her a passion. Upon her retirement in 1968, she was free to dedicate every waking moment to the work. The Polands moved to a home in South Deerfield. Burdette retired in 1969 and died in 1976.

By the early 1980s, Roberta had mounted over 2000 specimens with accompanying files of documentation. Essentially the house served as a lab. Her reference books were put to multiple uses, their weight helping hold down piles of plants in blotter paper to dry. Then specimens were glued to herbarium paper as gently as possible; any damage precluded use of a sample. Roberta not only had a surgeon's touch in that process, but an artist's eye. Her talent is obvious, remarkable for an aesthetic sense of the plant's most beguiling presentation. She could be poetic, as well, as she noted in the inventory locations of plants, her colloquial descriptions still challenging to translate today, koans of Zen-like allusion such as "funny big stump," "my amphitheatre," "clothesline at home," and "where cows have made a path." But the descriptions of locations also starkly documented how the landscape of rural Deerfield was under siege. She refers to fields "now real estate development" more than once. She was concerned that Deerfield was "drying up," connecting the construction of Interstate Highway 91 with the destruction of wetland and the disappearance of many fragile species including the wild calla and a rare climbing fern.

Roberta continued her quest until her death in 1989. In her last years, she was accompanied on weekly outings by Lyn Mattoon, then a member of Deerfield's faculty. In a tribute, Lyn wrote, "You may have seen her, an old woman with arresting white hair carrying a stick, a large plastic bag for plant specimens, clippers, and a trowel, prowling the roadsides, riverbanks, swamps, and field edges in search of elusive species. She was a quiet woman of remarkable achievement. By the time of her death she had collected more than 8000 different plants in the town of Deerfield. She was delighted by plants until the day she died."

The botanical discoveries of Roberta Poland live on. Several thousand of her labeled specimens are an important resource at the University of Massachusetts Herbarium in Amherst. Her records have long been respected for their accuracy and quantity and often serve as a baseline reference for environmental impact assessments. Deerfield's Pocumtuck Ridge, which now has priority status with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management for preservation of its features with historical, cultural, scenic, and ecological significance, was inventoried in 2002. The ecological survey was largely based on the foundation of Roberta Poland's work. The inventory includes land owned by Deerfield Academy such as abandoned ski slopes and pastureland. Roberta would be pleased to know that the academy can actively contribute to conservation efforts with a vigilance and maintenance that supports the native flora and fauna, including mowing grasslands to encourage bird habitats, protecting vernal pools, controlling multiflora rose and other nonnative, invasive species in pasture areas, preserving forest canopy, and restricting off-road vehicle access.

Roberta's spirit lives on and not just in the data helping to sustain and protect an environment at risk. In attempting to describe her, her passion could be seen as obsessive, the focus with names and numbers an intellectual, rather than experiential, way of appreciating nature. But it is not the crushing compilation of data that impresses most. Her data is virtually infused with care and respect for nature, offering an ideal of stewardship and love of the land. Her sustained dedication and her indefatigable devotion to the place are what truly impress and inspire others. In dedicating to Roberta the 2002 Ecological Inventory Report prepared by the University of Massachusetts, a photograph of her at Deerfield was accompanied by the tribute, "She botanized the Pocumtuck Ridge, lived on it, and loved it."

Thanks to Laurie Sanders and Karen Searcy at the University of Massachusetts, former faculty Lyn Mattoon and Peter Hindle, and David Bosse, librarian at Historic Deerfield, for their help.

As published in the Summer 2003 issue of Deerfield, the publication of Deerfield Academy's Alumni Office.