My Ex-Husband's Grandmother and My Dear Friend, Fran Ivy, Died Last night
COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Frances "Fran" Ledyard Ivy, a former president of the Mississippi University for Women Alumnae Association and member of a commission that recommended redesigning the state flag in 2000, died Wednesday in Columbus. She was 92.
Ivy led efforts to restore antebellum homes in Columbus and was a former columnist for the city's daily newspaper, The Commercial Dispatch.
In 2000, then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove appointed Ivy to serve on a commission to consider whether to redesign the Mississippi flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem, which critics saw as a symbol of Old South segregation.
Ivy was among the commissioners who, on a split vote, recommended replacing the Confederate emblem with a circle of 20 stars to represent Mississippi's status as the 20th state to join the union.
"Over the Capitol, we need to include a million black citizens who are disenfranchised with the flag now," Ivy said in December 2000.
The issue went on the statewide ballot in early 2001, and Mississippians decided by a nearly 2-to-1 margin to keep the Confederate design that had been used since 1894.
Ivy, a Tupelo native, was 16 when she went to Columbus and enrolled in what was then called the Mississippi State College for Women, now MUW. She graduated in 1937.
She and her husband, Robert Adams Ivy, bought and restored one of Columbus' oldest homes, a modified log house formerly owned by Civil War Gen. Stephen D. Lee. In the home, called Hickory Sticks, the Ivys hosted literary evenings with Eudora Welty, Wyatt Cooper, Hodding Carter and others.
Lillian Wade, an MUW graduate and friend of Ivy's, told The Commercial Dispatch: "I think we'd have lost a lot more of our historic homes in Columbus, if Fran had not taken the initiative, a long time ago, to stop the destruction."
Funeral services are 2 p.m. Saturday at First United Methodist Church in Columbus, with burial in Friendship Cemetery. Memorial Funeral Home in Columbus is handling arrangements.
Ivy is survived by a son, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Her husband died in 1991.
