Edith Mize Lewis

Lieutenant Edith Mize, 1944
Photo from“Women of the Boca Raton
Army Air Field,”

Edith Mize Lewis (born Edith Grace Jackson, May 7, 1920, Gary, Indiana, U.S.A.; died March 5, 2004, Huntington, New York), Army flight nurse in World War II, and later writer and poet. She began writing poetry in 1974 and turned to haiku and senryu in the early 1990s. She wrote a book about haiku for children. A member of the Haiku Society of America, Lewis was a long-time resident of Boca Raton, Florida.

Edith Grace Jackson was born in 1920 in Gary, Indiana, the daughter of Philip H. Jackson, a gardener, and Grace L. Care. As a young woman she wanted to become an airline hostess, and so it was required that she complete nurse training. From about 1940 she worked in that capacity at Methodist Episcopal Hospital in Gary.

When the United States entered World War II, Jackson signed up and was sent to the Boca Raton Air Station Hospital in Florida. She managed to sign up for training as a flight nurse and was sent to Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky, for specialized training. A month after her graduation in January 1944 she married Frederick G. Mize, a fellow Army officer at the Boca Raton Air Station. A few days later, with a commission as lieutenant in the 816th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron of the 9th Air Force, Edith Mize shipped out, first to Grenham Commons, England, then Prestwick, Scotland. She was sent to Normandy six days after D-Day and through the end of the war flew fifty missions evacuating wounded soldiers. She celebrated V-E Day, May 8, 1945, in Paris.¹

Edith and Frederick Mize returned to the Boca Raton/Fort Lauderdale area. They were divorced in 1978, and Frederick died in 1990. Edith married again, in 1983, to Army Col. Harry James Lewis (1911–2002).

Edith Mize’ launched a second career as a writer on topics that included World War II, travel, medicine and nursing, children, and poetry. She published in popular periodicals including Life Magazine, Home Life, Grit, Sunshine Magazine, and Woman’s Day. Her longer published essays included “A Mother Mourns” in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s Death: The Final Stage of Growth (1975).² She began writing poetry in 1974 and turned to haiku and senryu in the early 1990s. She published a book for children, Haiku Is … A Feeling, in 1991, which won Second Prize in the poetry contest sponsored by the Florida branch of the National League of American Pen Women. She joined the Haiku Society of America in 1994 and began publishing in the HSA journal Frogpond in 1995:

Sea … son … walking on the beach alone with memories.	Frogpond 18:2 (Summer 1995).

Bored reading the newspaper I wrap the garbage.	Frogpond 20:2 (September 1997).

hunger moon our neighbor’s cat comes calling	Frogpond 20:2 (September 1997).

Lewis was a regular contributor to the HSA members’ anthologies from 1995 through 2002:

the sea gull banking over my head makes a quick deposit …	Jean Dubois, ed., One Breath (Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 1995).

writer late at night blows a fuse	Garry Gay, ed., Light and Shadow (Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 1998),

She contributed haiku and especially senryu to a variety of other publications as well. A small sampler:

fireflies leading me home crickets sing-song	South by Southeast 3:2 (1996)

Looking good, I say: smiling at her fat behind	Modern Haiku 28:2 (Summer 1997), 26

hunger moon our neighbor’s cat comes calling	Haiku Light, November 1998

In 1998 in memory of soldiers she had known she published a haiku sequence, in Piedmont Literary Review :

Toy Soldiers

What Good gave us so that we 
may have roses in December. — James Barrie

Toy soldiers
  pail of a game-plan:   
     they mature overnight

blood-red poppies
  covering the ground
    and star-crossed soldiers.

The stillness in the church …
   people pray to their God
    … and He wipes away their tears

sheep of the flock …  people
  sing quietly to Him
    … and the angels sing:
      the dead are awakened.

After a long life and career in Boca Raton, Florida, Edith Mize Lewis died March 5, 2004, in Huntington, Long Island. She is buried in Calverton National Cemetery, Calverton, New York.

Sources / Further Reading

Works by Edith Mize Lewis

Lewis, Edith Mize. “A Mother Mourns.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Death: The Final Stage of Growth (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1975; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986).
Lewis, Edith Mize. Haiku Is … A Feeling. Illustrated by James B. King. Boca Raton, Fla.: Pippin Books, 1990. Children’s book.

Haiku and senryu in anthologies

Dubois, Jean, Michael McNierney, and Elizabeth L. Nichols, eds. One Breath: Haiku Society of America 1995 Members’ Anthology. New York: Haiku Society of America, 1996.
Brooks, Randy M., and Lee Gurga, eds. A Solitary Leaf: 1996 Members Anthology, Haiku Society of America. Decatur, Ill.: Brooks Books for the Haiku Society of America, 1997.
Stevenson, John, ed. From a Kind Neighbor: Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 1997. New York: Haiku Society of America, 1997.
Gay, Garry, ed. Light and Shadow (Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 1998), 26
Gay, Garry, ed. Light and Shadow; 1998 Members’ Anthology. New York: Haiku Society of America, 1998. Briefly reviewed by Robert Spiess, Modern Haiku 30:3 (Fall 1999).
Missias, A. C., ed. Intersections: 1999 Members’ Anthology Haiku Society of America. New York: Haiku Society of America, 1999.
Gallagher, D. Claire, ed. Crinkled Sunshine: Members’ Anthology 2000, Haiku Society of America. New York: Haiku Society of America, 2000.
Colón, Carlos, ed. Voices and Echoes: Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 2001. New York: Haiku Society of America, 2001.

Haiku and senryu in print periodicals

Frogpond, 1995–1998. 16 haiku.
South by Southeast, 1996–1999. 3 haiku.
Black Bough, 1996. 1 haiku.
Modern Haiku, 1996– 1997. 4 haiku.
Haiku Light [website], 1997–1998. 4 haiku.
Haiku Headlines, 1998–2000. 9 haiku.
Piedmont Literary Review, 1997–1999. 12 haiku.
Point Judith Light, 1998.

Periodicals publishing Lewis’s other work

Life Magazine
Journal of Practical Nursing
Home Life
Grit
Sunshine Magazine
Woman’s Day

Work in linked forms

“A Pigmy Lion” [haibun], Frogpond 20:2 (September 1997), 56
“Indian Summer” [haibun], Piedmont Literary Review 20:4 (1998), 14
“Toy Soldiers” [4-haiku sequence], Piedmont Literary Review 20:4 (1998), 11

Biographical information

Harakas, Margo. “A Woman Remembers War,” South Florida Sun Sentinel, November 11, 1993, and online September 25, 2021: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/1993/11/11/a-woman-remembers-war/.
Kintop, Aubrey, “Women of the Boca Raton Army Air Field,” The Spanish River Papers 22 (Boca Raton Historical Society and Museum, August 2014): https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2845/OurHistory_SRP_BRAAFWomen.pdf.
“Lewis, Edith Mize.” Elizabeth St Jacques, Poetry in the Light website: http://members.tripod.com/~Startag/Bio_gh.html.

Activities

Member, Haiku Society of America, 1994–2002.

Awards

National League of Amrican Pen Women Florida State Association Poetry Competition, 1991, Second Place, for Haiku Is … A Feeling.
Haikuworld Kukai, Fall 1999, Peer Review Purse, First Place

Compiled by the Haikupedia Editors

“Women of the Boca Raton Army Air Field.” [↩]
Poetry in the Light website. [↩]

Updated on March 28, 2025