Helen Essie Kegerreis Link

Helen Essie Kegerreis Link
(August 24, 1912 – November 30, 2002)

Born in northern Indiana near Elkhart, Helen Kegerreis graduated from Indiana University and the Methodist School of Nursing and then worked as a surgical nurse from 1932 to 1937. She resigned to marry a doctor, Goethe Link, M.D. (1879-1981), one of the founders of the IU School of Medicine and himself a practicing surgeon until almost 90 years old. Dr. Link bought his wife a bushel of daffodil bulbs one day in the 1940s, thinking they would be a welcome addition to their 50-acre home high on a hill south of Mooresville. The property was also the home to a full-size observatory Dr. Link built himself in the 1930s and shared with the Indiana University Astronomy Department.

Mrs. Link, whose fondness for daffodils went back to childhood and memories of her mother, planted about a thousand bulbs over the next several years, the beginning of an incredible passion that lasted the rest of her life. Over the years she developed many daffodil cultivars, and at its peak, there were 17 acres and 1,100 varieties of daffodils in bloom each spring, including the bulbs her husband brought home many years earlier. Regardless of how many thousands of daffodils there were, Mrs. Link always said that her favorite daffodil was the one that bloomed first.

As a noted authority on daffodils, she frequently served as a flower show judge, taught at gardening clubs and was a member of various gardening clubs and Daffodil Societies. Now owned by Indiana University and maintained by the Indiana Daffodil Society, her field of daffodils and Dr. Goethe’s observatory are open to the public each weekend in April from 10 am – 5 pm.

Location: Section 67, Lot 82; GPS (39.8236619, -86.1702833)