Barbara L. Dreier Forged Creative, Academic Life

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.