Pen name of Mamie Willoughby
Major Works
- Sweetly Be! (1990)
- From Rose Budd’s Kitchen (1988)
- Along the RFD with Rose Budd Stevens (1987)
Biography of Rose Budd Stevens
Rose Budd Stevens was the pen name for Mamie Davis Willoughby. Stevens was born Mamie Davis Van Norman on November 3, 1915, to Pearl and Hiram (Bud) Van Norman. She was born in Amite County, Mississippi. Stevens went to public school, graduating from Liberty Agricultural High School in 1933.
She attended Southwest Junior College at Summit, Mississippi, graduating in 1935. After graduation, she worked in the Amite County Extension office. She also worked as a payroll clerk for the Works Progress Administration in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a short time, afterwards returning to Amite County. In 1938, Stevens married Bennett Willoughby, and they had three children: Will, Ben, and Celeste.
Stevens started writing in 1947 while she was on bed rest during her pregnancy. She wrote newspaper columns at home based on her experiences on Shady Rest Farm near Liberty, Mississippi. Her columns were homey topics about killing hogs, superstitious people, Christmas customs, and the like. One of her columns, Along the R.F.D. appeared regularly in local newspapers including Enterprise-Journal, the Carthaginian, and the Clarion-Ledger. She wrote a regular feature article, Ramblin’ With Rose Budd, for the Mississippi EPA News, and The Farmer Takes a Wife, which was published in MFC News.
Her columns were honored with awards from the National Federation of Press Women, the Mississippi Press Women’s Association, and Progressive Farmer magazine. She stopped writing in 1994 due to ill health.
Her pen name, Rose Budd Stevens, is a composite of the name of her husband’s favorite aunt (Rose), her father’s nickname (Bud), and the surname of her college roommate (Stevens). She donated her papers to the University of Southern Mississippi in 1983.
She died of Alzheimer’s in 1996.
Related Websites
- The Stevens (Rose Budd) Papers at the University of Southern Mississippi
- Excerpt from her 70th birthday piece, reprinted in Mississippi Scenes: Notes on Literature and History