Category Archives: Women in History

Ruth Namuro and John Garman, the life in autochrome

Leave a reply

ruth-namuro.jpg
In the humblest of opinions, this is one of the most stunning photos we have. The colors, details, simplicity, and peace are incredible. What do we know about the subject, Ruth Namuro? Not much, which is a shame because there is a undoubtedly a back-story to the image we see here. Instead, we’ll focus on John Garman, the photographer.

Here’s the condensed version of what you’ll find on the John Garman biography page, which accompanies a great online exhibit of some of his other photographs.

John Garman was born in Urbana, Illinois, in 1896, though his family moved to Portland when he was two. After graduating from Benson Polytechnic High School in 1916, Garman enrolled at Oregon Agricultural College (OAC). According to an oral history interview with Garman, he and a friend made a bicycle trip from Portland to Corvallis in 1917, where they enrolled at OAC. The funny part of the story is that they had intended to travel to Eugene to enroll at the University of Oregon, but the two decided that they had traveled far enough for that trip. Though for those who’ve ridden the rest of the way, the trip down Hwy 99 from Corvallis to Eugene can be quite beautiful …

He began his studies in Electrical Engineering, specializing in telephony, though he also an accomplished musician (the b flat clarinet being his instrument of choice. However, as life often does, Garman took a detour after his first year at OAC: he entered the Army and was sent to service in WWI. While enlisted, he served as an instructor, training recruits in basic marching and drill. Really, it was lucky for all of us who enjoy his photography that he enlisted, because it was in the Army that Garman picked up his camera. Although he had been given a camera as a child, he didn’t take a serious interest in photography until an Army friend reintroduced him to it while they were in camp.

After WWI, he returned to OAC and began taking elective courses in photography from R.W. Uphoff, was involved in some of the early work on synchronous flash devices, and some early work in commercial applications of color photography. He was also a member of the OAC band and orchestra, manager of the band his junior and senior years, and a member of Kappa Kappa Psi (the Music honors society). In the meantime, Garman continued his studies in electrical engineering, founding the OAC chapter of Eta Kappa Nu, the Electrical Engineering honors society, and serving as the first president of OAC’s chapter. He graduated with a B.S. in Physics, with honors, in 1922.

After graduation, Garman spent the summer working for the Western Electric Co. in their telephony division. He returned to OAC as a part-time instructor in Engineering. R. W. Uphoff left OAC that year to pursue his own photography, and  Garman was hired in September 1923 to replace him as instructor of Photography in the Physics Department — this was a position he held until his retirement in 1966. Garman concentrated on the practical aspects of photography, believing the purpose of photography was “to make accurate and usable records of how things worked, and how they were built, and what they were for, and how they were adapted to their use …”

Without this practical-minded approach to photography, OSU might never have created its Photographic Services. Because of his photography talents, Garman had become well-known and sought after by the OAC faculty. It was Garman, working with Ed Yunker, who created the Photo Services in 1924 when they realized that their work taking pictures for other departments was interfering with their ability to do the work for which the college had actually hired them.

As an instructor, John Garman didn’t simply teach students how to point a camera at something and push a button; he insisted that his students understand the optics of a camera, the geometry of using lenses and of composition, and the chemistry of films and printing processes. He said this of of photography: “Processes are being continually changed and improved and if you don’t have a basic understanding of them the first change licks you. So, we found it advisable to teach people basic understandings of photography. Not, just training.”

He retired in 1966, after 45 years of teaching photography; however, in 1969, when the decision was made to move the instruction of photography to the Art Department, Garman was the natural choice to help the new caretakers of photography set up classes and labs — so he returned…

It wasn’t all electrical engineering and pictures: in 1925, Garman married Florence Goff, and they had three children. Garman passed away in November of 1989.

Listen up!

Leave a reply

zelda-rodenwald.jpg
A snapshot of Zelda Feike Rodenwold: How did she become the “housewife’s friend”?

What do we know about Zelda Rodenwold, first director of women’s programs at KOAC? If only you could all read the “Who’s Who in the Faculty Series: Radio Station KOAC” piece on Mrs. Rodenwold from the Archives’ Memorabelia Collection … It’s a late 1930s gem!

Rodenwold, born Zelda Feike, known from teaching women how to make “the best of a little and get the best return from the things they have,” was beloved for her work as the director of the the home economics extension radio programs. She was born in Iowa in 1897 and worked most of her life in the schools (student and teacher). Her family moved to Granite, Oklahoma in 1911, where she studied shorthand and typing, a skill that helped her pay her way through liberal arts courses at Drake University by working as a secretary. Her parents moved to Portland, Oregon, and Rodenwold followed in 1914. She traveled down the Valley, registering at OAC (OSU) in the fall of 1916 in the home economics program.

She was a member of the Chi chapter of Delta Zeta, one of the founding members of their Zeta Chi local, its president, and later the first president of Delta Zeta. Again, using those typing and shorthand skills, she paid her college expenses by doing office work, waiting tables at Waldo Hall, and serving as a student correspondent for the Oregon Journal. She was the first woman editor at the Barometer, member of the Scribe, Omicron Nu national home economics honor society, and Forum (which later became Phi Kappa Phi national scholastic society). And, in her spare time, she was president of Waldo Hall. She graduated in 1919 with a BA.

Though she had planned to be a teacher, after graduation she was asked by Ava Milam to work as the secretary for the School of Home Ec, a position she accepted and held for two years before moving on to another one as the secretary of the Alumni Association. There, shocked that there wasn’t an alumni magazine, she established a monthly paper called “OAC Alumnus.

She was married in 1924 to a fellow OAC employee, Ben Rodenwold (assistant professor of Animal Husbandry). After marrying Rodenwold, she gave up her position as a secretary, but remained editor of the magazine, which became known as Oregon State Monthly. She did free-lance writing and had stories published in Sunset, Forecast, Practical Home Economics, Pacific Northwest Magazine, and School Life.

In 1928, her husband received a year leave, so they both returned to Iowa State College to pursue masters of science degrees. With her advanced degree in Household Administration in hand, Zelda Rodenwold returned OAC and to writing, publishing several educational booklets for the college’s editor, ET Reed. Then, in 1930, she began broadcasting “Aunt Sammy’s Chats,” a 15 minute piece on home economics work on KOAC. As Aunt Sammy became more and more popular, the program was lengthened to 45 minutes, with Rodenwold in charge of planning, writing, and answering all her own fan mail.

That year Claribel Nye, state home economics extension specialist, asked her to serve as the state specialist in home managements. She accepted, but finding her heart in radio, she resigned after two years to become the director of home economics radio programs at KOAC.

Did you know? KOAC is now Oregon Public Broadcasting, aka OPB? And that they maintained their OSU studios until the spring of 2009, broadcasting all nightly programs from campus? Learn more about OPB and KOAC in the OSU Archives’ collection guide for KOAC or by checking out this Wikipedia article.

Alice Edwards and her wonderful diversion…

Leave a reply

OAC alumnae Alice Leora Edwards was born April 19, 1882 in Monroe, Oregon. She graduated in 1906 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics — and then she takes a wonderful turn! Though she is quite well-known for her work in Home Economics. she started her academic career as an instructor in Zoology and Entomology at OAC (1909 – 1915) and served as a student assistant in the Biology department at Teachers College, Columbia University (1915 – 1917).

After her stint at Columbia, she returns to her “career path” in 1917, receiving an M.A. from Columbia University and an Assistant Professor of Dietetics position at the University of Minnesota (1917 – 1918). From 1921 to 1926, she was the Dean of Home Economics at Rhode Island College. Then, as many academics do, she returned to school, earning her Ed.D. from Columbia University Teachers College (1940). In 1941, she became the Dean of Home Economics at Mary Washington College at the University of Virginia at Fredericksburg, a position she held until her retirement from academic life in 1951.

Edwards was Executive Secretary of the American Home Economics Association from 1926 until 1936, representing the organization on the Council of American Standards, the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, and the President’s Advisory Committee on Education. She devoted her career to acting as an advocate for standardized size and labels for consumer goods. She edited Scientific Consumer Purchasing: A Study Guide for the Consumer (1939), co-authored Consumer Standards (1941), and wrote Product Standards and Labeling for Consumers (1940).

However, Edwards was not all bugs, beasts, baking, or buttons! In 1925, as a member of the World Student Christian Federation, she traveled to Europe with a group to encourage and coordinate the work of existing national student Christian movements after the devastation of World War I.

Alice Leora Edwards moved back to Oregon in 1951 and died in Corvallis, Oregon on July 4, 1962.

To learn more about Alice Edwards and the archival items we have in our collection, check out the guide for her personal papers. Take the time to read through the “Scope and Content Note” section, which describes the biographical materials, correspondence, Oregon State specific materials, diaries, and photographs you’ll find in the collection. Since we’re always big fans of photos in the Archives, it’s interesting to note that included in this collection is a group photograph of the opening of the Celilo Canal on the Columbia River in 1913, with Oregon Senator Nathan Whealdon and L.N. Edwards in attendance. Again, it’s all connected! She’s also saved pictures of the OAC senior class of 1906, the OAC campus, the Washington State College campus (Pullman, WA), various photographs taken during her trip to Europe in 1925, and family photographs.

Malheur County: Women in the Fields

Leave a reply

japanese-am-woman.jpg

We don’t know much about the woman in this picture, apart from the fact that it was taken in 1946 and she is a Japanese American field worker in Ontario, Oregon.

In general, people working the land in Malheur County came from diverse backgrounds. During World War II, when many American farm workers left the farm for the battlefield, OSU Extension agents traveled through Oregon with large-format cameras to document wartime farm workers. We are quite lucky to have their pictures in our Extension and Experiment Station Communications photo collection (P120).

During World War II, the federal government forced West Coast Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans to leave their homes for internment camps or inland states. Because of an acute agricultural labor shortage, Malheur County was the only place in Oregon where Japanese were allowed to live outside of internment camps. So, in May 1942, Malheur County became one of the first counties to recruit Japanese American evacuees for farm work. Some of the evacuees remained in Eastern Oregon after the order excluding them from the West Coast was lifted in January 1945; the 1960 census reported that 1,136 people of Japanese heritage were living in Malheur County.

In the spring issue of Oregon’s Agricultural Progress magazine, the magazine of the OSU Agricultural Experiment Station, Bob Rost wrote an excellent article on Malheur County, featuring a piece about WWII workers.

“Prisoners of war, primarily German, worked the fields in Malheur County and were largely responsible for planting and harvesting 7500 acres of potatoes, 3500 acres of onions, and 3000 acres of lettuce in 1945.

Braceros were Mexican citizens who provided most of the international migrant labor in Oregon through a wartime labor agreement between the U.S. and Mexico.

Japanese American citizens who had been forcibly removed from their homes during World War II were welcomed to Ontario by the city’s mayor, Elmo Smith, at a time when other communities around the nation shunned them because of their Japanese ancestry. Most of the displaced Japanese Americans lost their homes and businesses during their internment, but many remained in the Ontario area following the war to rebuild their lives, becoming leaders in the community and the agricultural industry, and giving Malheur County the state’s largest percentage of Japanese Americans.”

There is also a great article on the Oregon History Project page!

Oregon’s Emergency Farm Labor Service

Leave a reply

dorothy-1.jpg dorothy-2.jpg

Given the power of our information sharing yesterday (think Obama and the White House lawn), we continue the WWII farm service theme. Today, however, our focus shifts to the images of Mrs. Dorothy Burleson, who was a Walla Walla nurse at the Athena and Milton-Freewater farm labor camps. In these pictures, she is treating a patients in her trailer “Clicnic,” a dispensary at the Athena camp.

For those who haven’t read the last two Women’s History Month posts, between 1940 and 1943 the number of farm workers in the United States noticeably decreased — the armed forces manpower requirements and competition with higher paying jobs in the defense industries were the cause. Of course, at the same time, farmers were asked to increase production to support the war effort. By 1943, the nation’s food supply was in jeopardy.

So, on April 29, 1943, the 78th U.S. Congress approved “Public Law 45, the Farm Labor Supply Appropriation Act,” to “assist farmers in producing vital food by making labor available at the time and place it was most needed.” Each states’ agricultural extension services held responsibility for their emergency labor programs; their primary duty was coordinating and overseeing labor recruitment, training, and placement of workers.

In Oregon, the Emergency Farm Labor Service was established by the Oregon State College Extension Service. Between 1943 and 1947, there were over 900,000 workers placed on the state’s farms, thousands of trained workers of all ages, and nine farm labor camps. The farm laborers in our state were a diverse bunch, including urban youth and women, soldiers, white collar professionals, displaced Japanese-Americans, returning war veterans, workers from other states, German prisoners-of-war, and migrant workers from Mexico and Jamaica.

WWII Workers in Oregon: changing faces and changing roles?

Leave a reply

housewife-special.jpg pow.jpg farm-labor-sign.jpg

As you may remember from the post yesterday, the Women’s Land Army (WLA) was part of a national effort during WWII to supply desperately needed laborers to U.S. farms. During the war, farmers throughout the Pacific Northwest and the nation experienced a serious labor shortage. Farmers increased production to meet the demands of European allies and American troops. At the same time, many people who had been farm laborers were offered higher paying jobs in the national defense industry — building ships and airplanes for the war effort — or joined the military service.

Locally, the Oregon State College Extension Service established the Emergency Farm Labor Service to place women, children, and Mexican nationals on Oregon farms to thin and harvest crops. The state also paid Japanese American internees and German prisoners-of-war to work as farm laborers.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica article on the WLA:

“Radio stations and newspapers made urgent pleas for volunteers to help with the harvest. Women with little or no agricultural experience answered the call and, on an informal basis, saved countless crops from rotting in the fields. It soon became clear, however, that the situation required a more organized approach if the nation was to mobilize a reliable force of farmworkers. By 1943 the U.S. Congress had allocated funds for the Emergency Farm Labor Service, which included the recruitment, training, and placement of a female corps of farm laborers to be known as the Women’s Land Army, a subdivision of the United States Crop Corps. Recruits were not expected to have farming experience, but the WLA specified that applicants be physically fit and possess manual dexterity, patience, curiosity, and patriotism.

The WLA recruited more than a million female workers, drawn from the ranks of high-school and college students, beauticians, accountants, bank tellers, teachers , musicians, and many other occupations. The women worked long hours driving tractors, tending crops, and even shearing sheep. Most laborers received an unskilled worker’s wage—25 to 40 cents per hour—out of which they were to pay for their denim overall uniforms and their meals and lodging in temporary camps, summer cabins, and private homes. Most workers did not join the WLA to make money but wanted to contribute to the war effort. By the end of 1944, the WLA had more than proved itself as an indispensable brigade of hard workers, and farmers were eager to enlist their services in the upcoming season. Women continued to volunteer their services in the immediate postwar period (in Oregon through 1947).”

In 1943, more than 15,000 women worked as seasonal laborers on Oregon’s farms. Many Oregon women also found work in the shipbuilding companies in Portland and Vancouver, Washington.

Want to read more online?

Unofficially, they were soldiers!

Leave a reply
coeds-hoes.jpg mabel-mack.jpg harvest-war-poster.jpg

We hear a lot about kitchen gardens these days, with calls in the US and UK for the President and Prime Minister to set up their own plots, but how much do we think back to the Victory Gardens or Emergency Farm Labor Service of WWII? While men fought overseas, there was a general call to service at home as well — in this case, support the troops and the war effort by working the land!

Oregon farmers were facing back to back bad crop years in 1941 and 1942, as well as a worker shortage after many Oregon men had left the workforce to fight in World War II. In the spring of 1942, state officials registered nearly 100,000 women who said they wanted to join a different kind of army — to work on Oregon farms. The greatest need was in the Willamette Valley, so the state recruited and trained women at Oregon State College (now OSU) in Corvallis and, from 1943 until 1945, worked with the Women’s Land Army (WLA) to place more than 78,000 women on Oregon farms. (Oregon Encyclopedia Project)

“The WLA was part of a World War II national effort to supply desperately needed laborers to U.S. farms. Locally, the Oregon State College Extension Service established the Emergency Farm Labor Service to place women, children, and Mexican nationals on Oregon farms to thin and harvest crops. The state also paid Japanese American internees and German prisoners-of-war to work as farm laborers.” (Oregon History Project)

Soon after passage of Public Law 45, statewide responsibility for the WLA was given to Mabel Mack, nutrition specialist for the OSC Extension Service. In order to enroll, applicants had to be at least eighteen years old and healthy. The pay wasn’t very good, in Oregon members of the WLA earned between sixty and ninety cents an hour, and the work was hard with women getting seasonal and permanent jobs weeding, harvesting, canning, and operating farm machinery.

“Most women worked on a ‘day haul’ basis, which meant they lived at home and were transported to farms by personal cars, growers’ trucks, or school buses. They hoed, weeded, thinned, and harvested crops of all kinds. Many supervised youth platoons, especially teachers out of school for the summer. A few worked year round, especially on poultry and dairy farms. Others worked in canneries or were leaders for recruiting other women. Nearly 135,000 placements of women were made in Oregon from 1943 through 1947.” (Oregon State Archives)

Ava Milam Clark and her travels…

Leave a reply

clark.jpg clark-students.jpg clark-cakes.jpg chen-clark.jpg

Born on November 27, 1884 in Macon, Missouri, Ava Milam Clark was one of five daughters of Ancil and Louisa Milam. She taught two years in a public school (1902-1904) and then spent three years teaching at Blees Military Academy in Macon, Missouri (1904-1907). Clark returned to school, this time as a student, obtaining her Ph.B. (1910) and A.M. degree (1911) from the University of Chicago. While working as an instructor of Foods and Nutrition at Iowa State College in the summer of 1911, she was hired to be a professor and head of the Department of Foods and Nutrition at Oregon Agricultural College (1911-1916).

She was named Dean of Home Economics in 1917, the youngest dean in college history, and under her leadership the program became nationally known. In 1932, she was made Director of Home Economics for the Oregon State System of Higher Education.

Clark was known for her international travels, focusing on establishing home economics programs in Asia. In 1922, Clark went to China to help establish a home economics department at Yenching University (Peking), introducing the study of home economics to China. She left OSC for a year in 1931 to work as a consultant in home economics at various universities in Asia. In the summer of 1937, Clark returned to Asia with Alma Fritchoff, conducting a home economics tour of both China and Japan. For five months in 1948, she acted as a consultant in home economics colleges in Korea and China, making an educational survey in the Philippines for the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. Finally, from 1950 to 1952 Clark served as a home economics advisor to the governments of Syria and Iraq for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). She retired from OSC in 1950 and was made Dean Emeritus. In 1966, she received the Distinguished Service Award from OSU, two years later she received the same award from Yonsei University.

Clark wrote many articles for various professional magazines as well as two books: A Study of Student Homes of China (1930), and her autobiography, Adventures of a Home Economist, with Kenneth Munford (OSU Press, 1969). To see a more complete list of her publications, click this link to see the Open Library project site.

Ava Milam married J.C. Clark on November 1, 1952. Nearly 25 years later, on August 14, 1976, Clark passed away.

In 1915, a charming bungalow on Corvallis’ NW 26th Street was built for Clark. She remained in this house for over four decades, spanning her remarkable career. In her autobiography, Ava Milam Clark wrote this about her house: “Early in 1915, I decided to build a home of my own in which to live and entertain students, faculty, and other friends. When my parents came for an extended visit that summer, Father helped me choose a lot a few blocks from the campus. Mother helped me develop plans, while Father talked with the carpenter. In a time when large houses were the custom, many people thought I was building a doll’s house when I built one just large enough to accommodate myself, a college girl to live with me, and a guest or two from time to time” (p. 105). To learn more about the house and read more about its evolution, visit the City of Corvallis site to read the Oregon Inventory of Historic Properties form. To see some great pictures, especially of Clark when she was young, click here.

Dr. Snell and the College of Home Economics

Leave a reply

snell.jpg snell-lab.jpg snell-lab-sewing.jpg snell-retirement.jpg

Margaret Comstock Snell was known as one of the truly great faculty members in the history of OSU. Respected and admired by everyone who knew her, Snell’s greatest contribution was the establishment of the first college of home economics in the West — and she did so with 24 students, no assistants, almost no budget, and a lone classroom on the third floor of Benton Hall.

She was born to Quaker parents near the town of Livingston, New York, in 1843, attended Cedar Grove Academy, and graduated from Grinnell College. After teaching in Iowa City from 1872 to 1879, Snell moved to Benicia, California, to establish a school for young women; she called it the Snell Seminary. Snell developed an interest in medicine and was admitted to the medical school at Boston University, where she graduated with honors in 1886, specializing in homeopathy or household economy. After returning to Oakland she was recruited North to Corvallis by Board of Regents member Wallis Nash and his wife Louisa.

Want to know more about her time at OSU? George Edmonston has written a fine article on Snell, full of details and great quotes!

Helen Margaret Gilkey

Leave a reply

gilkey.jpg
Helen Margaret Gilkey epitomized the Pacific Northwestern botanist of the first half of the Twentieth Century.

helen-gilkey.jpg
Born on March 6, 1886, in Montesanto, Washington, she and her family moved to Corvallis in 1903. She received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from OSC and completed her PhD, “A Revision of the Tuberales (truffle fungi) of California,” in 1915 with W.A. Setchell at the University of California at Berkeley. From 1915 until 1918, she worked as a scientific illustrator at Berkeley.

In 1918, she returned to Oregon State to work as the curator of the University’s herbarium, a position she held until 1951; she later became a professor of Botany. She had 44 publications to her credit, 10 on vascular plant taxonomy and 10 on Tuberales. According to the Oregon State University Mycological Collection, “She played an essential role in establishing Oregon State University as the center for taxonomic and systematic research of hypogeous fungi. Her collection is still actively used and serves as the foundation for systematic research of hypogeous fungi in North America.” The consummate academic, retirement didn’t slow her research; she remained active until her death in 1972.

To learn more about Dr. Gilkey, read our March 13th, 2007 blog post.

There is also a wonderful Oregon Encyclopedia article on her — well worth the read!