Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel was born December 22, 1918 in Stroud, Oklahoma. She was the daughter of Anna Elizabeth Finster and Benjamin Fletcher McDaniel.

She was educated in a two room school house. Encouraged by one of her school teachers, at 8 years of age she began to write poetry.

She continued to write her poetry on any piece of paper she could find. She would then stuff them in shoe boxes. She wrote of the simple life of a sharecropper and her family.

In 1936 due to the conditions from the dust bowl and the Great Depression, her family migrated from Stroud, Oklahoma to California to make a new start. Wilma was 17 years of age at the time. Two of her brothers had already gone to California to work. As the remainder of the family made the trip to California, they stopped along the way to work in order to pay for expenses.

The McDaniel family found jobs with the help from Anna's family. They moved around various places in California following the crops to make a living.

Wilma eventually had to drop out of school due to her having to help the family as they followed the crops across the state. She later earned her diploma all the while working the fields, on farms, and in packing sheds.

In 1971, she took a shoebox of her poetry to the editor of the Tulare Advance-Register to inquire if he could use them in his newspaper. He was amazed with her insight and agreed to publish them in the newspaper.

She frequently wrote of her childhood in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl years. She loved Oklahoma deeply and conveyed those feelings about the land and the people in her poetry.

Benjamin McDaniel died ten years after leaving Oklahoma. Wilma lived with her mother and took care of her until Anna's death in 1983. She is buried in Tulare, California.

Wilma once said of poetry, “I cannot imagine life without it.” She eventually produced more than 25 books of poetry.

Wilma passed away Friday, April 13, 2007 at 88 years of age in Tulare, California and was laid to rest in Tulare District Cemetery on Friday, April 20, 2007.

In her passing, Wilma is warmly remembered and loved by many friends, extended family and devoted readers.