Barbara L. Dreier Forged Creative, Academic Life

Barbara Loines Dreier died March 6 at her home in Fairfield, Iowa, after more than two years of coping with cancer. She was 99 years old.

Mrs. Dreier, or Bobbie as she was known to many, spent her first summer on Martha's Vineyard as an infant in 1907 after New York doctors, concerned about her low weight gain, advised "plenty of fresh air." The prescription evidently succeeded. She not only thrived, but returned for many summers over the course of her life, riding ponies, swimming and sailing -- until last summer, when she enjoyed watching her children, grandchildren and great-granddaughter from the beach on Vineyard Sound.

Bobbie was an exuberant, open-minded woman who related to people in a positive, forward-looking way. She helped found one college and oversee another, traveled widely and spent several years living in Mexico.

Bobbie was born in New York city on Feb. 18, 1907, and lived during the winters with her parents in Dongan Hills, Staten Island, where her father, Russell Hillard Loines, helped start Dongan Hall, a girls' school. Mr. Loines, a marine insurance lawyer, knew Willoughby Webb, son in law of Nathaniel Shaler, who bought the West Tisbury and Chilmark land that would later become Seven Gates Farm. The Loines family spent summers there in an old farmhouse until they built their own house on the shore in 1925.

In 1949, Bobbie and her own family began living at Seven Gates Farm on a site now called Hickory Hollow, in an old farmhouse remodeled by Bobbie's mother, Katherine Conger Loines. The house had been built originally on Indian Hill, several miles away, and had been owned by Alfred Look. A man who later bought the house had it dragged by oxen toward a new site on the North Shore, but the wood-framed building foundered on some rocks. "If I can buy the land where she sits," he reportedly said, "I'll leave her here." And so he did.

As children, Bobbie and a neighbor friend, Charlotte Leavitt, explored nearby roads, fields and beaches. One of their favorite projects was to walk or ride their own ponies up then-unpaved North Road to where Mrs. Charles Putnam raised and trained Shetland ponies. Mrs. Putnam encouraged Bobbie and Charlotte to ride her ponies so the animals would become more gentle and accustomed to children, and hence more saleable. She organized games that resembled small rodeos. Sometimes she invited the girls to lunch with her son, Patrick, seven adopted children and a pet chimpanzee named Crissy who ate corn on the cob at the table with everyone else.

Bobbie's mother was one of Seven Gates's founding members. Her father took his two daughters, Bobbie and younger sister Margot, sailing in a catboat to Tarpaulin Cove on Naushon and to Nashawena Island.

Bobbie attended Bryn Mawr College, where she majored in English literature and the history of art, graduating in 1928. She played center forward on the basketball team and was a speedy right wing on the field hockey team. She became president of the faltering Bryn Mawr Christian Association, converting it to a broader-based, more successful Bryn Mawr League.

Bobbie married Theodore Dreier in 1928, raising three sons and a daughter. They first lived in Schenectady, N.Y., where Ted had been working as an electrical engineer for the General Electric Co. When he shifted careers to education, they moved to Winter Park, Fla., where he taught physics at Rollins College for three years. After the conservative president and board of trustees fired an outspoken liberal professor, there was a great uproar on campus and a third of the faculty, including Ted and Bobbie, left in protest.

In a creative response to their sudden unemployment, Ted, Bobbie and a number of others, including the outspoken professor, founded Black Mountain College in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in 1933. Thus began an experimental college, with no board of trustees, which attracted many artistic and intellectual luminaries of the time, ranging from Josef Albers of Bauhaus fame to Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome.

In 1949, after 19 years in education and one year off, Ted shifted back to engineering and worked for the General Electric Co., first near where they lived in Sherborn and then again in Schenectady, N.Y.

Between 1949 and 1950 Bobbie, Ted and their younger children spent an entire year on Seven Gates Farm while the family considered future plans; son Eddie attended the Vineyard public schools.

After Ted retired in 1963, Bobbie and he built a beautiful house in Guanajuato, Mexico, where they lived for more than a decade, enjoying the warm climate and colorful culture. In 1971 they met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and began a deep interest in his teachings. In 1985 they moved to Fairfield, Iowa, home of Maharishi University of Management, where they again enjoyed participating in an innovative academic community. Ted and, after him, Bobbie, served on the university board of trustees.

Bobbie was a creative and sympathetic spirit who injected humor and brightness into a conversation with the turn of a phrase. A friend remarked, "She listens to what I say and attends to it as though she were wanting to help a flower bloom. After our conversations I always feel better about what I said, and also I feel better about myself." This ability made her an informal counselor for sensitive members of the academic communities she joined. She was a marvelous hostess and provided a warm welcome, attractive table and delicious feast to all who came her way.

She is survived by her daughter, Barbara Beate Dreier of Fairfield, Iowa; her son, Theodore Dreier Jr. of Belmont; her sister, Margot Loines Wilkie of New York city and Seven Gates Farm; four grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; four nieces; two nephews, and numerous grandnieces and grandnephews.

A memorial service was held in Fairfield, Iowa, on March 11.