Kate Frost Tufts; Sold Home to Fund Annual Poetry Prize

Kate Frost Tufts, who sold her family’s 14-room Craftsman home to fund a poetry prize honoring her husband, has died. She was 86.

Tufts, who was born in the Hollywood Hills home, died June 3 in her Santa Monica condominium.

The daughter of a physician, Tufts became a teacher. But when she married Kingsley Tufts in 1933, she left the classroom to support him in his pursuits as writer, poet, athlete, musician and certified public accountant.

The devoted couple pledged that whoever survived the other would establish a prize to encourage the writing of poetry. The house and its 10 1/2-acre lot (purchased for $11 an acre in 1906) served as their savings account.

Fifteen months after her husband’s death in 1991, Tufts awarded the first $50,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award at the Claremont Graduate School. She had sold the home for $1.25 million to fund the annual award in perpetuity.

Tufts established the requirements for determining the prize and rejected Stanford University (her husband’s alma mater) as the host university because it would not meet her conditions. She said that no academic or other requirements were to be placed on the recipient; the award was simply to put food on the table for a year, freeing the poet to write.

“With her unique blend of love and determination, Kate Tufts fulfilled Kingsley’s and her vision of establishing a poetry prize that would recognize and reward emerging poets,” said John D. Maguire, the Claremont Graduate School’s president. “Her legacy to the world of the arts--and her spirit--will endure.”