Ruth Lilly
Based on Wikipedia: Ruth Lilly
The Poet Who Funded Poetry
In November 2002, a small literary magazine in Chicago received a phone call that would change American poetry forever. Poetry magazine, founded in 1912, had been scraping by for decades on a shoestring budget of less than seven hundred thousand dollars a year. It had a circulation of about twelve thousand readers and a staff of four people working out of modest offices. Then Ruth Lilly pledged one hundred million dollars.
The gift was staggering. It was like giving a corner bookshop enough money to rival Barnes and Noble.
What made this donation particularly poignant was that Poetry magazine had rejected Ruth Lilly's own poems for decades. She had been submitting her work since the mid-1930s, and the editors had consistently said no, thank you. The rejections never stopped her from writing, and they never stopped her from believing in the magazine's mission. When she finally had the power to transform American poetry's most venerable institution, she did exactly that.
The Pharmaceutical Fortune
Ruth Lilly was born on August 2, 1915, in Indianapolis, Indiana, into one of America's wealthiest families. Her great-grandfather, Colonel Eli Lilly, had founded Eli Lilly and Company in 1876, building it into a pharmaceutical empire that would eventually bring the world drugs like insulin and, much later, Prozac.
The family business passed through generations like a crown. Colonel Lilly handed leadership to his son, Josiah K. Lilly Senior, who became president in 1898 and later chairman of the board. Josiah Senior's son—Ruth's father, Josiah K. Lilly Junior—joined the firm in 1914, eventually serving as president from 1948 to 1953 and chairman until 1966.
Ruth had one sibling, a brother named J. K. Lilly the Third, whom everyone called Joe. He joined the family business in 1939 but resigned in 1948, breaking the chain of succession. When Joe died in 1995, Ruth became the last surviving great-grandchild of Colonel Eli Lilly, sole heir to a fortune built on medicine.
There is something almost novelistic about this: the pharmaceutical heiress who suffered from depression for much of her life, eventually finding relief through Prozac—a drug her own family's company brought to market in 1988, when she was in her early seventies.
A Quiet Life in Indianapolis
Unlike many heirs to great fortunes who scatter to New York, London, or the French Riviera, Ruth Lilly stayed home. She remained in Indianapolis her entire life, attending Tudor Hall School, a private girls' school, and later studying at the Herron School of Art.
In December 1932, when Ruth was seventeen, her parents purchased a French chateau-style mansion called Oldfields. The estate, with its carefully landscaped grounds, became an anchor of her youth. Decades later, in 1967, Ruth and her brother donated Oldfields to the Art Association of Indianapolis. Today it operates as part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, open to visitors who walk through the home where a young heiress once dreamed of being a poet.
In 1941, Ruth married Guernsey van Riper Junior, a writer whose father worked in advertising. The marriage lasted forty years before ending in divorce in 1981. They had no children.
Newspaper accounts describe Ruth as living a life of quiet seclusion. She did not seek publicity. She did not court the social pages. When the Indianapolis Star and other outlets reported on her, they often mentioned her struggles with depression—a condition she lived with for decades before finding effective treatment.
Giving Away Eight Hundred Million Dollars
By the time Ruth Lilly died in 2009, she had given away an estimated eight hundred million dollars. Not through a single dramatic gesture, but through decades of steady, thoughtful philanthropy.
Her giving followed four main channels: education, literature and the arts, disease prevention, and health care. Rather than picking one cause and championing it exclusively, she spread her generosity across the landscape of human need. But she always came back to poetry.
The year 2002 was extraordinary even by her standards. That year, with her estate valued at more than one billion dollars, she gave away nearly five hundred million in a single twelve-month period. The hundred-million-dollar gift to Poetry magazine grabbed headlines, but it was not alone. She also pledged one hundred twenty million dollars to Americans for the Arts, a Washington-based advocacy organization, and one hundred fifty million to the Lilly Endowment, her family's charitable foundation.
These were not empty promises made in press releases. The gifts came mostly in the form of Eli Lilly and Company stock—actual wealth, transferred to organizations that could convert it to programs and initiatives.
The Poetry Foundation Transformed
When Ruth Lilly's donation hit Poetry magazine, the Modern Poetry Association—the nonprofit publisher behind the magazine—had to reinvent itself entirely. It renamed itself the Poetry Foundation and began thinking on a scale previously unimaginable.
The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, established in 1986, awards one hundred thousand dollars annually to a living American poet whose lifetime work merits extraordinary recognition. This is not a prize for a single book or collection. It honors an entire career dedicated to the craft.
Since 1989, her donations have also funded fellowships for young poets. Initially there was just one fellowship each year. By 1996 the program had expanded to two. In 2008, it grew to five annual fellowships. The program eventually merged with another fund to become the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, open to American poets between twenty-one and thirty-one years old. The awards have grown from fifteen thousand dollars to more than twenty-five thousand per fellowship.
Think about what this means for a young poet. Poetry has never been a lucrative profession. Most poets teach, edit, freelance, or work day jobs entirely unrelated to literature. A twenty-five-thousand-dollar fellowship can buy time—months of concentrated writing that would otherwise be impossible. Multiply that across decades and hundreds of recipients, and you begin to see how one woman's donations reshaped the American poetry landscape.
Universities and Hospitals
Poetry was Ruth Lilly's passion, but her philanthropy extended far beyond verse.
Indiana University received gifts so substantial that its Center on Philanthropy—located on the Indianapolis campus—was renamed the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy in 2013. The Indiana University law library bears her name. So does the medical library. The Herron School of Art and Design, where she once studied, received an estimated 2.7 million dollars from her estate in 2011, funding graduate programs and helping complete Eskenazi Hall.
The list of Indiana colleges she supported reads like a directory of higher education in the state: DePauw University, Butler University, Wabash College, Anderson University, Franklin College, Hanover College, Marian University, the University of Indianapolis. She also gave to Duke University in North Carolina and Tufts University in Massachusetts, proving her generosity could cross state lines when the cause merited it.
Her healthcare giving touched Indianapolis institutions with particular intensity. IU Health Methodist Hospital, Riley Hospital for Children, Saint Vincent Indianapolis Hospital—all received her support. She gave a million dollars to the Crossroads Rehabilitation Center for its Assistive Technology Center. The Ruth Lilly Center for Health Education, funded in 1987, taught generations of Indianapolis children about wellness and prevention.
Environmental causes also drew her attention: The Nature Conservancy, the Hoosier Environment Council, and outdoor education programs at YMCA camps. She supported the American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, and the United Way. She gave to Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School, Cathedral High School, Lutheran High School, and other Indianapolis-area private schools.
The Arts in Indiana
Ruth Lilly served on the board of trustees at the Indianapolis Museum of Art—the same institution that now manages Oldfields, her childhood home. But her arts patronage extended well beyond that personal connection.
She supported the Indianapolis Art Center, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Indiana Repertory Theatre, and the city's ballet and opera companies. She gave to Young Audiences of Indiana, which brings performing arts into schools. She funded WFYI Public Broadcasting. She supported Conner Prairie, a living history museum, and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. Even the Indianapolis Zoo received her generosity.
Her brother Joe had established Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich, Massachusetts, as a tribute to their father. Ruth contributed to it as well, honoring family connections that stretched beyond Indiana's borders.
The Final Years
As Ruth Lilly aged, her health declined. Physical limitations eventually confined her to a wheelchair. In 2006, with her estate still valued at more than a billion dollars, a court established her niece and nephew as legal guardians with authority over decisions about her care and finances.
She spent her final years at Twin Oaks, an estate on Kessler Boulevard in Indianapolis. The property had once belonged to Isabel and Lyman S. Ayres the Second—grandson of the founder of L. S. Ayres and Company, the department store chain that was once a fixture of Indianapolis commerce. Ruth's parents bought the Colonial Revival home in 1955 and renovated it in European style. They expanded the grounds to twenty-two acres in 1963.
Though her parents never made Twin Oaks their primary residence, Ruth did. She lived there until her death on December 30, 2009, from heart failure. She was ninety-four years old.
A celebration of her life was held at Christ Church Cathedral, where she had been a member. Her remains were interred at Crown Hill Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in the United States, final resting place of President Benjamin Harrison, bank robber John Dillinger, and now the quiet heiress who revolutionized poetry funding.
Legacy and Continuing Impact
When Ruth Lilly died, her giving did not stop. The Ruth Lilly Philanthropic Foundation, established in 2002, received additional funding from her estate—estimated at 125 to 150 million dollars. The Lilly Endowment received funds from two trusts, one valued at 95 million dollars and another at 200 million, the latter benefiting the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Twin Oaks, her home, is now privately owned but leased to the Indiana Historical Society, which uses it as a hospitality center. The Historical Society's president serves as resident curator—an unusual arrangement that keeps the property connected to Indiana's civic life.
Honorary degrees from Wabash College, Franklin College, Marian University, and Indiana University recognized her contributions. In 1998, the national Easter Seals society named her Philanthropist of the Year.
But perhaps the most fitting memorial is simply this: somewhere in America right now, a young poet in their twenties is writing, freed from financial worry for a few precious months by a Ruth Lilly fellowship. That poet may never have heard the full story of the heiress whose work the editors kept rejecting. They may not know about the depression, the quiet life in Indianapolis, the family pharmaceutical fortune that made everything possible.
What they know is that someone believed poetry matters enough to fund it. Someone understood that the art form needs not just readers and writers but also patrons willing to invest in its future.
Ruth Lilly never got her poems published in Poetry magazine. But she may have done more for American poetry than any single poet of her generation.