ABOVE: Joan Christopherson Schmidt, left, discusses her late husband’s Robert Frost collection with UWEC English major Rebekah Morrisson. BELOW: In addition to rare and first-edition books, the collection includes poems written in Frost’s own hand.

This story begins and ends – and, in a sense, continues– in a college library. It involves a legendary American poet; a bookish college boy; and a widow dedicated to ensuring the pair’s unlikely literary friendship remains more than just words on a page – no matter how priceless that page may be.

In 1942, Frederick Schmidt was a shy 17-year-old from Wisconsin attending Dartmouth College on a swimming scholarship. Already a collector of first-edition books, Fritz (as he was known) became friends with Harold Rugg, chief librarian at the Ivy League school. One day, Rugg told the young scholar there was someone he’d like him to meet.

“Fritz said he trudged up these back stairs, and there was this old man with a shock of white hair sitting in a rocking chair faced the other way with a glass of apple ‘cidah,’ ” recalls Fritz’s wife, 83-year-old Joan Christopherson Schmidt of Milwaukee. “It was Robert Frost.” At the time, Frost – who had already won three Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry – was teaching a seminar at Dartmouth, and he and Fritz bonded over their shared interests in literature and nature.

“They would take walks around the campus almost every night and talk.Fritz said, ‘When I think about it, it was sort of like I was his disciple.’ ” – Joan Christopherson Schmidt, on her late husband’s relationship with poet Robert Frost

“They would take walks around the campus almost every night and talk,” she says. “Fritz said, ‘When I think about it, it was sort of like I was his disciple. I would ask a question, and he would just expand and go on. … He told me all of these wonderful things.’ ”

The relationship between the two men continued until Frost died in 1963, and until his own death in 2005, Fritz – who went on to a career in magazine publishing – cherished his memories of Frost and his personal collection of the poet’s works. Late last year, that collection – which includes 44 books by Frost, many of them first editions or volumes personally inscribed by the poet, as well as manuscripts and other items – was acquired by UW-Eau Claire’s McIntyre Library. Christopherson Schmidt – or Miss Chris, as she is known – visited the campus in late January to discuss the acquisition and the relationship her husband shared with the man regarded by some as America’s greatest poet.

Miss Chris never met Frost – he was invited to her wedding, but he was too ill to attend – but she is alive with her husband’s tales of the man. One of the most fascinating stories of that friendship is embodied, fittingly, in a poem. Fritz left Dartmouth to join the Army, training in Colorado as part of the 10th Mountain Division. His service was cut short when he was hospitalized for what doctors feared was Meniere’s disease, a potential debilitation inner-ear disorder. As Fritz convalesced, Frost contacted the young man’s parents, asking for Fritz’s first-edition books, which he personally inscribing and returned. Inside the cover of one volume, Frost wrote the words to a poem, “One Step Backward Taken,” which describes a landslide of sand, gravel, and “great boulders off their balance.” The poem continues: “I felt my standpoint shaken / In the universal crisis. / But with one step backward taken / I saved myself from going.”

Frost later revealed the meaning of the poem to his young friend: “Fritz, I took undue advantage of you,” Miss Chris quotes, imitating Frost’s New England accent. “But I ain’t a-gonna take it back. I wrote a poem about you. But I won’t tell anyone; that’s up to you.” The viewpoint figure in the poem was Fritz, whose illness – the “step backward taken” – had saved him from the war in which many of his comrades died.

After her husband’s death, Miss Chris pondered what to do with the Frost collection. While the Schmidts hadn’t attended UW-Eau Claire or lived in the Chippewa Valley, a chain of personal relationships connected them to the university. The Schmidts’ longtime neighbors in Milwaukee, Larry and Meg Fox, knew of the Frost collection and understood Miss Chris was considering finding it a new home. As it happens, Meg Fox’s brother is an Eau Claire physician, Mark Attermeier, who suggested that UW-Eau Claire’s archives would be an ideal place.

Greg Kocken, head of the library’s special collections and archives, said he was amazed by the magnitude of the trove. “When this was first brought to my attention, I was floored and a little bit skeptical that UW-Eau Claire’s McIntyre Library would have the opportunity to house such a collection,” he said. Accompanied by Attermeier and Kimera Way, president of the UW-Eau Claire Foundation, which assisted with the acquisition, Kocken met with Miss Chris, who agreed to part with the collection. UWEC seemed to be a good fit because its commitment to environmental sustainability and its natural setting match the love of nature evident in Frost’s poetry as well as Fritz’s dedication to environmental causes. (He was a lifelong conservationist who among other things helped create the Ice Age Trail.)

That’s not to say that parting with the collection was easy. When Kocken came to Milwaukee to bring it back to Eau Claire, Miss Chris had to suppress the urge to rip up the paperwork she was asked to sign. “I really did not want Fritz and Frost to leave,” she admits, choking back tears. “It was like the two of them were walking out of my home forever. And I am not one to cry, but every time I tell that (story), even now, I still well up, because those two men were bonded in spirit, and they’re leaving me.” But Miss Chris made peace with the donation, particularly because it will help educate young people and will be the centerpiece of a Frost-themed celebration the university plans to hold annually.

While the collection is now housed in custom-made boxes in the library’s climate-controlled archive, it won’t be off limits: In fact, anyone – student, researcher, or book lover – will be able to study the material, to read the poet’s words as they were intended to be read: printed on paper and bound in volumes, not as mere characters on a digital screen. “It’s not a treasure,” Kocken explains. “It’s not here to sit on the shelf. It’s not a trophy.”

Miss Chris says this commitment to making the collection accessible is one reason her husband would have supported housing it at UWEC. “If I didn’t think that he would (approve),” she says, “it wouldn’t be here.”