Grenfell, Clarine Coffin

Clarine Coffin Grenfell was a poet, teacher, publisher and Methodist minister. She was born Dec. 31, 1910, in Bangor, Maine, the daughter of Millard Fillmore Coffin and Clara B. Kelley Coffin. She was a member of the class of 1932 at the University of Maine, where she belonged to Phi Mu and was class poet, and graduated from the Hartford Seminary in 1938. She taught at various high schools in Maine and Connecticut and worked for Reader's Digest and the state of Connecticut as a consultant and editor. After retiring from teaching in 1980, Grenfell founded a small publishing house, the Grenfell Reading Center, in Orland, Maine. She also served as a supply pastor in Dixmont and Hermon, Maine. Grenfell established the Clarine Coffin Grenfell Poetry Prize at the University of Maine in 1990 and received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from the university in 2002. She married Rev. Jack Grenfell in 1939 and they had three children: John Millard Grenfell, Lornagrace Grenfell Stuart and Pamela Grenfell Smith. Jack Grenfell died July 2, 1980 and Clarine Coffin Grenfell died Sept. 7, 2004.