Anna Ruth Ediger Baehr (1916-1998) was a well-known poet and educator in her home in Garden City, New York, before her Mennonite background came to the attention of Mennonite poets and scholars. In 1985, she received the Mary Elinore Smith Poetry Prize for her poem, “I am Dancing with my Mennonite Father,” which appeared in The American Scholar. Her poetry has appeared in many literary journals, including Poetry Review, Confrontation, West Hills Review, and Mennonite Life. Her book of poetry, Moonflowers at Dusk, was published in 1996.

Born in 1916 in Clinton, Oklahoma, Baehr spent the first 18 years of her life among the Southern Cheyenne, where her parents, J.B. Ediger and Agatha Regier, were missionaries. Anna Ruth attended Bethel College in Newton, Kansas, where she majored in Home Economics and Chemistry. There she met Karl Baehr, a Newton native, and they were married in 1938. The couple then moved to Chicago, where Karl pursued a degree at the Chicago Theological Seminary. While in Chicago, Anna Ruth gave birth to the couple's two children, and supported the family financially by editing and typing dissertations for University of Chicago students. In 1947, the family moved to New York, settling in Garden City in 1953, the same year that Anna Ruth completed her B.A. at Hofstra College (now Hofstra University). In 1959, she earned a Masters of education from the same institution. Anna Ruth had a fruitful career as an elementary school teacher for 24 years in Long Island.

Though Baehr always aspired to be a poet, the demands of both teaching and caregiving (her husband went blind in his 40s) kept her from writing poetry professionally until she was in her 60s. Anna Ruth published her first poem, “Cinnabar,” in 1978, the same year she retired from teaching. Moonflowers at Dusk, her only published book, contains both narrative and lyric poetry, reflecting on her years growing up among Southern Cheyenne people, her own spiritual formation, and her struggle with cancer in her later years. A committed feminist, many of her poems reflect the peripheral position of women in the church, something she fought against her whole life. Though she did not attend a Mennonite Church in her adult life, she was an active participant at the Garden City Community Church in Garden City, New York, and retained her Mennonite heritage as an important part of her identity. She always sought to articulate a spirituality shaped by her own experience, including various traditions—Cheyenne, Mennonite foremost among them.

Though best known as a poet, Baehr was an active member of her community--in Garden City and elsewhere in Long Island--as a lecturer, editor, organizer, activist, and teacher. She a founding member of "The Gathering,” an ecumenical women's group discussion group promoting Jewish-Christian dialogue. She served as co-editor for the poetry magazine Xanadu for several years, and edited several editions of the poetry magazine Process. She was a life-long educator inside and out of the classroom. As a frequent guest lecturer, she spoke on issues such as feminism and feminist spirituality, history and culture of Native Americans, and the craft of poetry. Anna Ruth Ediger Baehr died in 1998.