Carolyn Alexander Fleming, Pensacola Branch
(1926 – 2019)
Carolyn Alexander Fleming called writing a “lifelong joy,” and she accomplished a great deal in her lifetime pursuing the things she loved. Her novel, “Journey Proud,” for which she received the Eric Hoeffer Book Award, is set in the 1930s in a small Georgia town like her birthplace.
Along with her husband, Jack, she received the Adelia Rosasco Soule Award for Seaplane, a musical about early naval flight, of which Pensacola is its cradle. Seaplane was produced three times in Pensacola and also at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 1990. Both Carolyn and her husband made a huge impact on the arts community in Pensacola, where she also co-founded “Evenings in Olde Seville,” a popular summer concert series.
Fleming was a letters member who retired in 2013 from the Pensacola Branch after participating that year in its “Branching Out” show at Artel Gallery and also in a book of art and writing titled “Nobis: Making Others See.”
Branch member Anne Baehr recalls how Fleming participated with her singing group at the Pen Women meeting in 2009 as the “Crocks,” a medical wives group that performed at Medical Society meetings all over the state, singing about the challenges of being a doctor’s wife. Their motto was, “If laughter is the best medicine, then the Crocks surely have a guaranteed cure!”
The Pensacola Branch is very honored that such an accomplished and talented woman was one of its members.