DND,

Did you ever get anywhere with your search? Mildred Primos was my grandmother. My uncle, Kenneth Primos, a very active, sharp, retired restaurateur in his 90's, would be the best resource, and I'd be happy to put you in touch with him. You're inspiring me to catch up to where you are in your search, so maybe between the two of us we can get uncover the history. By the way, Keith Willson, Jr., my nephew, is the Baby Keith for which the cultivar is named.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Victor Smith
Oxford, Mississippi

Victor,

I see that you're a new member--welcome to NGA!

Unfortuantely, I never did track down Baby Keith (or any of the other daylilies). I got incredibly busy and lost quite a bit of steam on this project last year. It's nice to 'meet' you, though, and I would love to work with you to try and find this cultivar, in particular, and try to 'rescue' your grandmother Mildred's other cultivars from extinction (or, more likely, fading into obscurity without people left to remember which cultivar is which).

I believe I tried contacting Ken last year, using the restaurant number (I tried two different locations, as I recall) before I moved, but I didn't have any luck. I was leaving messages, but not getting any phone calls back, so I didn't want to seem like a crazy person and I let it go for awhile. If you could let your Uncle Ken know that I'm trying really hard to track down this daylily (and the others that your grandmother hybridized), I would really appreciate it!

I wonder, would Keith Wilson Jr. possibly have the cultivar?...

And if you think of any other possible leads in your family or otherwise, please let me know. Feel free to tree-mail me if you you wanted to share personal information (your uncle's phone number, etc) that you don't want to make public.

Thank you!

-DND

Victor! What an interesting turn of events, to have new life breathed into DND's search! The folks here love daylilies as much as your grandmother did.

DND, your quest has been intriguing- I look forward to more updates and
maybe we'll see pics of those elusive blooms posted one fine summer.

This is awesome that you now have a lead to hopefully get Baby Keith. What a surprise post from Victor!!!

Welcome Victor!

great to see a new lead! Victor

@vpsmithjr - can you tell we're all crazy about daylilies here? I think we all love a good mystery, too--where did Baby Keith go?--and we're all hoping for a good ending! Thanks again for taking the time to post and for joining the quest! Let's see what we can accomplish together.

Baby Keith was named after my son. My grandmother Mildred Primos, had 17 grandchildren and she lived on 6 acres of gardens. Mildred named a day lily after each Governor of Mississippi. She would invite them over to choose one that she had created. I think Bill Waller chose an almost black one. At least that was what she told me. I am not sure if she named one after every grandchild, but Claudia was one of them. My sister was Miss Murrah High so possibly that name was given in honor of my sister. Frankly, until my brother brought this to my attention, I didn't know that there was a daylily named after my son. It would make sense because Keith was born in September of 1981. She called him Baby Keith and the following spring she would have chosen this daylily for him.
After my grandparents passed on their property of 50 acres was subdivided and her gardens had already suffered neglect from years of being in the nursing home. My sister did live in my Grandparents house for a short time and enjoyed gardening herself. Some of her daylilies were dug up and relocated to the homes of Mr. and Mrs. Primos children who all lived on the 50 acres of land at that time. My parents and one cousin both reside on that property today, and both my mother and Uncle Kenneth's son and wife live there too. My mother and my cousin's wife have beautiful gardens and probably have remnants of Mildred's masterpieces.
If you travel through the state and visit small towns, there will be films about people who contributed beauty to Mississippi. My grandmother was always in those movies.
She told me a story once about how they were widening the road in front of her property. They started to bullnose her daylilies that lined the front of the fence. She ran down to them and told them she wanted all of them because they were 40 years old and she paid $50 each for them. I think she paid a lot for them back then, and that was a lot of her base for cross pollinating. That story ended up in the newspaper.
My grandmother and I were very close. When I was young I would sleep over at her house. I would play fairy while she worked in her yard, mainly with her daylilies. She was so proud of them. Many of her children and grandchildren inherited this love for gardening and flower arranging. Victor, my brother, is always sending lovely photos of his creations. He inherited this special gift from my mother and our grandmother. My other two sisters both have special talents with arrangements and my younger sister travels and judges flower shows.

I just read more of this forum thread. I was Sheila Smith. My sisters were Angie Smith and Linda Smith. My mother was the only girl and had four brothers.

@SheilaWilson - welcome!

I love that your family is all joining in! And how neat to have your grandma name a daylily after your son. I absolutely love hearing the backstory on all of this, it's turning into quite the story! I love the part about her running out to stop the construction workers from bulldozing her beauties--I would have done that, too!

If you have access to family members who have your grandmother's daylilies, could you see if they might be willing to take pictures of the daylilies and/or database them and/or sell them? Personally, I'd love to have Baby Keith in my garden. I, as well as other daylily lovers, might also appreciate having some of the other daylilies your grandmother created in order to preserve them for historical purposes. (If your family members don't know which daylilies are which, it may be possible that we could organize some people to come down and evaluate the daylilies against the descriptions in the database and see if there is a way to determine which daylilies are which.)

Thanks again for popping in here and sharing! Please don't be a stranger! I'm hoping that we can work together to try and preserve your grandmother's daylilies and their identities.

Sheila -- Thank you so much for sharing your story. I enjoyed reading it very much. I wonder how your Grandmother would feel if she knew that in 2018 people would still be desiring to enjoy and preserve her daylilies. How nice it was to hear from you and Victor.

Sheila!

What a wonderful back story of your grandmother and her love of the Daylily.

I'm sitting here now reminiscing, wonderful memories of my grandmother and other family members. All of whom, were great gardeners and loved flowers.

Dnd, wonderful, simply wonderful that your quest for preserving these CVs, may finally come to be realized. I can not wait to read more and hope you will keep us all updated with, progress.

When DND's search for Baby Keith started, I was not hopeful at all, but I kept scrolling through the posts and loved reading how the mystery was playing out. Then, when Mildred's family members chimed in, I thought "Wow! What a turn of events!"

Even if DND never finds Baby Keith, this just goes to show what a great place this site is.

Sheila and Victor! I hope that you love this site as much as we do and that you are able to help DND in her quest.

This story really hits me personally because my whole reason for hybridizing is to name and register some seedlings after loved ones. Some in honor and some in memory. And then share them with family and friends near and far.

I am so touched to read this family story and the continuation of family gardeners over a couple generations (so far), that now years later these daylilies by Mildred Primos are being sought. And that search is encouraging the family story to be shared once again with gardeners everywhere. Those on this forum are spread across the country, including other countries besides North America. I think this thread is one of the most interesting threads on the Daylily forum. History about some of the older cultivars and the person (& in this case the family also) behind the Daylily names.

There is another person (actually family) on this forum who also has a history with our beloved Daylily cultivars. @kidfishing is also trying to preserve those very old cultivars that his relatives brought with them across America.

It is stories like this that encourage me to keep trying my hand at hybridizing. Thank you to the relatives of Mildred for taking the time to share the history and maybe even share some of those older cultivars with DND. I think it is very important to keep the older cultivars alive and shared around to preserve them for the future. Here is wishing DND the good fortune of obtaining some of Mildred's cultivars to help keep her memory and beloved daylilies alive.

Well said, Becky

Very well-said, Becky. And thank you for following the search notes before it even became such an interesting story through the additional anecdotes of Victor and Sheila. What good fortune to have them join us and participate!

Thank you, too, to everyone else for the well-wishes in my search and for following along this trail, even when sometimes I had to stop along the path to tend to other life events. I wonder if this feels slightly like what people running marathons feel like.....you have some friends run with you that motivate you; you have others that are there at stopping points to give you water and encouragement--so necessary to keep going!--and in this case, you have new friends that join in and run with you part of the way until you reach the finish line.

I'll probably never run a real marathon in my life, but if this is my virtual marathon, I can't think of better people to 'run' it with than all of you! Thanks for hanging in there with me and helping propel this search forward!

And Victor and Sheila, thank you, again, for breathing new life into this search. It would have been awhile longer before I invested myself in this thread and this quest again if you two hadn't popped in here.

I have been absent from this website for almost 3 yrs - but just revisiting this thread and surprised to see the turn of events where actual family members were posting concerning the daylilys! Has there been any updates since May 2018?? I kept waiting for the rest of the mystery to unfurl..................

Hope to catch up with everyone now that I am back on the forum!
Genna

I just read this tread when you bumped it. I too would like to know the outcome. I wondered about your adventure did you find all the bottles and did they like them??

I wish I could say that this progressed a little further; but, alas, it is 2020 and the daylilies and their whereabouts (if anywhere) are still a mystery at the moment. I wish I could push this rock forward a little further down the path, but life has me really busy right now, believe it or not. I hope that things change, though, so that I can pick this up again and continue the pursuit!