Colton Johnson 00:02 This is Colton Johnson, and I'm again talking to Mary Ann Mace on the 20th of March, 2018. And there are some questions, Mary Ann, as I've told you, that have come up since we talked the other day that I would like to explore with you. I did get this copy of your academic record, and as you say, it's a very good record. You say you were second in your class when you graduated? Mary Ann Mace 00:31 That's what I think, yes. I was Phi Beta Kappa and second in the class. Do you remember who was number one? I remember her well. She was a zoology major like me, so must have given pretty high grades in the zoology department. Colton Johnson 00:52 But you were widely—your work in zoology goes all through the three years. Mary Ann Mace 00:57 Yes, naturally, for a major. Colton Johnson 00:59 But you seem to have spent a fair amount of time in the philosophy department. Mary Ann Mace 01:04 Yes, I did. That was one of the things that I wanted to carry over from our last talk, that I had really the equivalency of a philosophy minor. I mean, I don't think minors existed. Colton Johnson 01:22 I don't think so. Mary Ann Mace 01:23 No, but I certainly had two full years of philosophy. Colton Johnson 01:30 It looks as though you have two full years and nothing but A's in philosophy. Who were some of your philosophy teachers? Mary Ann Mace 01:40 Oh, it was a very nice department and I liked everybody in it. I think his name was Vernon Lee. Colton Johnson 01:52 Vernon Venable? Mary Ann Mace 01:53 No, Vernon Venable was in... Colton Johnson 01:56 He was in philosophy, but it may have been later. I'll have to look up Vernon Lee. Mary Ann Mace 02:02 Wait a minute. I'm getting the Vernons mixed up. Somebody named Lee. Colton Johnson 02:08 I'll look into it. Mary Ann Mace 02:09 Professor Lee. And Vernon Venable was later. Colton Johnson 02:16 Uh-huh. Mary Ann Mace 02:19 No, I had Vernon Venable for my freshman first semester philosophy. Colton Johnson 02:26 And had you studied any philosophy in preparation for philosophy? Mary Ann Mace 02:30 No, but my father was very interested in it. It was a lot of philosophical talk. My grandfather was a professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Virginia. My family were all Virginians. I just think there was a lot of talk about Socrates and Plato and things like that. Colton Johnson 02:57 Now in following all this, it looks as though you were not required to do a thesis. Mary Ann Mace 03:06 No. Colton Johnson 03:07 But was there a lot of writing in courses such as this or other courses besides the English department? Mary Ann Mace 03:17 I guess so. What else did I take besides, I took freshman English? Colton Johnson 03:22 Well, it seems in your third year, your last year, and I'd never seen a transcript that was for the special curriculum that they had because of World War II. Yeah. And this third semester, this third term, the C term. The summer term. Was it about the same length as the two semesters? Mary Ann Mace 03:43 It was just 10 weeks. So the three 10 weeks added up to another 30-week year. Colton Johnson 03:52 Well, it looks as though in your last year, in all three terms, you did some work in the music department. Mary Ann Mace 03:59 I took music 140. Colton Johnson 04:01 Yeah, and 240. Mary Ann Mace 04:03 I tried to do 240. It wasn't very successful. That was one of my few Bs because I had no technical training. Colton Johnson 04:12 - If you were to cheer up, it was a B plus actually. Mary Ann Mace 04:14 - We had to write a paper, I remember, in that. I don't think there was any paper in-- Colton Johnson 04:22 - In the 140? Mary Ann Mace 04:23 - In 140, that was a big lecture course that Dickinson gave and it was quite brilliant. He used recordings when available. He got the Vassar early music groups to make recordings of early music which weren't commercially available and so on, you know, matricals and so on. Colton Johnson 04:48 He has a wonderful reputation. Yeah. Mary Ann Mace 04:53 I certainly wrote papers in philosophy courses. Colton Johnson 05:02 And were the courses that you took in philosophy or even in music, those were lecture courses Were the classes large or small? Mary Ann Mace 05:13 The Music 140 was huge. It filled Skinner. Every seat was assigned in Skinner, year after year after year. And it was like Art 105, which was like that in the art lecture room. Colton Johnson 05:30 It still is. Mary Ann Mace 05:31 Every seat filled. Now Music 140 has disappeared completely. I mean, that kind of historical survey, of course, as far as I know. Colton Johnson 05:46 Another question that came to mind, and was reminded of it when I looked at the record, was the taking of the three-year bachelor's degree with the summer term, was that optional or was it obligatory? Mary Ann Mace 06:04 No, it was optional. Colton Johnson 06:05 and many people, how many people would, a lot of people decide that this was the way they could help their country and get on with their lives? Mary Ann Mace 06:15 Yeah, I think it, I have no idea the proportion. Obviously the people that I got to know best were people who went on. We had a large graduating class in 47, and so most people probably did. I have no idea the proportion. Colton Johnson 06:37 So, understandably, Skinner was filled for the 140 lectures. What about the other courses you took, say, in English or your French courses? Were those quite small and individual rather than a lecture format? Mary Ann Mace 06:55 Yeah, they tended to be, certainly. Certainly English 105. I didn't take any English course except 105, did I? Colton Johnson 07:05 Doesn't look like it, you're right. Mary Ann Mace 07:06 No, that was it. Colton Johnson 07:07 Well you've had enough English department things waiting for you in the future, you just didn't know about it. Mary Ann Mace 07:12 Yes, the future was ahead. Colton Johnson 07:14 Right. And you would, well no, it looks as though you took 236 in your third term of your first year after 105. Mary Ann Mace 07:29 Maybe that was American or something. Colton Johnson 07:31 Could have been, I'd have to look it up. Mary Ann Mace 07:33 I don't remember. But that would have been relatively small. I took a political science course, didn't I? I thought everybody should have a political science course. Not sure. Colton Johnson 07:49 Yes, you did. Mary Ann Mace 07:50 I think that was... Colton Johnson 07:51 It was in your third term. It was 240, and then you took 253. You took two of them, and you got A. Mary Ann Mace 08:01 Well, I guess we had the right paper. I was a pretty good writer of papers. Colton Johnson 08:04 I'll bet you were. Mary Ann Mace 08:05 Yeah. Colton Johnson 08:06 Which takes us to, well, let me just ask, I suppose the art lectures and the music lectures were in the same buildings where the music are these days. Your English classes would have been in Avery Hall? Mary Ann Mace 08:23 Yes. Colton Johnson 08:24 Yeah. In philosophy and Rockefeller? Mary Ann Mace 08:27 Yes. Colton Johnson 08:28 Where did political science hang out those days? Were they over there too? Mary Ann Mace 08:31 I'm not sure. Probably Rocky. Rocky seemed to have all kinds of miscellaneous departments in it. Colton Johnson 08:40 And Blodgett was around in those days, but anything in your pre-med that would have taken you there? Mary Ann Mace 08:48 Blodgett, as I remember, had the plant part and the physiology part, and I didn't take either of those. It was strictly zoology. Colton Johnson 08:58 And was that in New England? Mary Ann Mace 09:00 Yes. I love the New England building. It's a dear, wonderful building. Colton Johnson 09:05 It has survived wonderfully, too. Mary Ann Mace 09:07 And there's a wonderful lecture hall in it on the ground floor, on the left. Colton Johnson 09:14 Some warm spring day when we stop having Nor'easters every other week, I'd love for you to come and tour what they've done in the science buildings when they were doing the large renovation of the buildings and the building of the bridge building. Mary Ann Mace 09:30 I've never been in it. Colton Johnson 09:32 Well, Kate Sussman, who's in the biology department, had seen it coming, and she and many of her colleagues pulled together materials that had been used in the instruction of all of the sciences over the years. And lo and behold, they were stored or stashed widely in the campus. and in each of the science buildings now, physics and biology, chemistry, there is a wonderfully prepared and thought out display of how the things were taught in the old days with these old instruments. Some sunny and absolutely not snowy day, I'll give you a call and we'll take a little tour if you'd like to. Mary Ann Mace 10:16 That would be very interesting. Colton Johnson 10:17 You might see some things that remind you. Mary Ann Mace 10:20 Oh, yes. Well, I did later in life, I mean, after Dean and I came back here, for several years I worked as an assistant in the biology department. Just a part-time job. Colton Johnson 10:40 What did you do? Mary Ann Mace 10:41 A lab assistant so that the night before a lab I would come over and set it up. Colton Johnson 10:50 And whose course would that be for? Mary Ann Mace 10:54 Probably the beginning biology course, yes. Colton Johnson 10:58 Do you remember who the faculty were in those days? Mary Ann Mace 11:05 Well certainly Rudolph Kempton was still there. Colton Johnson 11:09 Yeah, he was still around when I came. Mary Ann Mace 11:11 And Margaret Wright. Colton Johnson 11:15 Oh yes. Mary Ann Mace 11:16 There's a name. Colton Johnson 11:16 She was a wonderful woman. Mary Ann Mace 11:18 She was a wonderful woman. And it was a good department, but strictly limited to zoology. Colton Johnson 11:27 Yeah, right. Very. Which brings up another thing that we could think about a little bit. You thought Dickinson was a wonderful guy in music and Margaret was a wonderful person in zoology. Were the majority of your classes, both men and women, I mean, was it pretty well divided or there were more women on the faculty? Mary Ann Mace 11:52 I think it was pretty well divided. The philosophy department was almost entirely male as I remember. English after Helen Lockwood insisted on bringing some of those nice boys. Those nice boys being Dean Mays, Lynn Bartlett, and Howard Green. Colton Johnson 12:14 Those are all nice guys. Mary Ann Mace 12:15 Three nice boys. Colton Johnson 12:16 Nice in their own individual ways. Mary Ann Mace 12:19 And then there were more men came, including you, after that. Colton Johnson 12:24 But there were certainly in that period other women in the sciences that were quite well established in their departments. Well, one other thing that I wanted to ask you about was, um, you were a zoology major, but it would seem that your advisors were not necessarily restricted in their knowledge of the curriculum to what they taught. They could advise you about philosophy courses and that sort of thing. Was it pretty easy to discover what you wanted to study and go study it in those days? Mary Ann Mace 13:08 Yes, I think so. When you came as a freshman, you were given an advisor, and that advisor told you you had to do one thing in each section of the curriculum. I think we talked about that. And I had a very lovely advisor, namely Ruth Venable. Ruth Venable. Colton Johnson 13:32 She's a lovely person. Mary Ann Mace 13:34 The Venables were the handsomest couple on campus. They were both very... Colton Johnson 13:40 In my day, too. Mary Ann Mace 13:41 Very great looking. Colton Johnson 13:42 She and I speak very admirably about them. Mary Ann Mace 13:45 And Ruth was very, very nice. She had actually picked out my name, curiously enough, which was my maiden name, which was Fitzhugh. because she grew up on the University of Virginia campus. Colton Johnson 14:00 Oh, I didn't know that. Mary Ann Mace 14:01 I don't know what her maiden name was. And my grandfather was a professor of classics, and my father and my aunt had grown up on the, we don't call it a campus, the lawn at the University of Virginia. That's why I was so terribly upset in the recent troubles... It just really upset me so much because my whole family was associated, my father's side was associated with the University of Virginia. Colton Johnson 14:39 I ran across some fact that I didn't know the other day, and I can't remember why. Ruth Venable came originally to teach Italian. Mary Ann Mace 14:50 Really? I had no idea. Colton Johnson 14:52 I didn't either. She was certainly, along with Ilse Lipschitz, identified as the stars of the French department. Yes. She was obviously very fluent in French, but for the first year at least she taught Italian and then became a French professor, which I thought was surprising. Mary Ann Mace 15:13 It may well be that there was a rule that a husband and wife couldn't both be faculty members at the same time. Colton Johnson 15:24 Don't know. It's possible. It's something to look into. Let's move a little bit because I don't want to take up too much of your time today. You told me that you were in North when you first came to the college. Yes. Did you live there as long as you were in the college? Mary Ann Mace 15:44 I lived there the first and second year, and I'm going to come back to that in a minute. I had a single on the ground floor, which was very nice. The only time I remember living elsewhere was in the final year or maybe just semester. All the seniors went to Main. Colton Johnson 16:15 Yeah, that was the tradition when I came. Mary Ann Mace 16:19 Was that the whole year? I can't remember. But I remember being in Main, which was very nice. They had space to move around. Colton Johnson 16:29 Well, you had the Main dining room, which is now the Villard room. And I remember when I came, the seniors were eating in the Main dining room, And then there was a little faculty dining room behind where you could go and have what was being served that day. And so you lived in North, also a.k.a. Jewett, and Main. Something else I noticed, and you had told me a little bit about it. Oh, yes. Here's something on the back of your academic record card that I was going to ask you about. Your resident advisor was Susan Turner in the English department. But then there's this COP, and I have to find out what that means, Mrs. Venable. And I don't know what that means. But she was somehow listed on your... Mary Ann Mace 17:29 I don't know what COP means. I just think that she was the one I was assigned to as an incoming freshman. And I think pretty much you just chose what you wanted to take from then on. I don't think there was a whole lot of advice. Colton Johnson 17:46 I've never seen that notation. Mary Ann Mace 17:48 I have no idea what that means. Colton Johnson 17:50 But it gives me something to study. Another thing I wanted to ask you a little bit more about was your activities. Mary Ann Mace 18:02 Yes, that was what I wanted to come back to too. Colton Johnson 18:05 I know you were a hockey player. Mary Ann Mace 18:07 Yeah, you had to take a sport each semester, definitely. I wanted to talk about two things about that. I was a hockey player and then probably a basketball player. I don't know what else. I was more of a group sport. More for group sport. Colton Johnson 18:33 Team sport. Did you come from Madeira with some knowledge of hockey? Mary Ann Mace 18:38 Yeah, I was on the first all-Washington hockey team. as a right fullback, not a very interesting position, but a defensive position. So I came from Madeira as a hockey player. Basketball not especially, I think I broke my little finger playing basketball. But one thing about the sports, and when you came, Is that right to go back to that? As a freshman, there were certain requirements. One, you had to choose a sport, and two, you had to take a swimming test. Colton Johnson 19:32 Oh yes. Mary Ann Mace 19:33 Everybody had to. You swam in the old pool there, because you had to be able to prove that you could swim when the catastrophe happened. And the third was the most hated single thing, and that was the posture pictures. Colton Johnson 19:53 Ah, yes, that was that period. Mary Ann Mace 19:54 They were loathed. I mean, it was so embarrassing. Colton Johnson 19:58 Loathed by the students. Mary Ann Mace 20:00 Loathed by the students. Colton Johnson 20:01 But enforced by the physical educationists. Mary Ann Mace 20:03 Yes, absolutely. Everybody had to have a posture picture. You had to look at this ghastly thing and be told you had to sway back or flat feet or what have you. You had to have an appointment about your problems. You had to take some physical therapy, I guess. I don't really remember that very much. But I know that this was loathed and I'm sure dropped. Colton Johnson 20:36 It was an invasion of privacy. Mary Ann Mace 20:39 I mean it really was. Colton Johnson 20:41 Yes it was. Obviously nothing had happened in your previous education but my impression knowing some of the faculty who were present in those days and having read some of the materials surrounding them there was a great furore about which methods were proper and therapeutic and which methods were not, but that they really meant that they were educating the body at the same time they were educating the mind. Mary Ann Mace 21:12 Yes, I'm sure they had all kinds of good ideas. Colton Johnson 21:15 If you needed to pick up a foreign language, you also needed to pick up a straight back or whatever. Mary Ann Mace 21:21 Yeah, if you were sway back you wanted to get rid of it. Colton Johnson 21:25 Were the pictures taken to see whether you were ready to graduate? Mary Ann Mace 21:31 No, right at the incoming freshman. Colton Johnson 21:34 But they forgot about finding out whether you were an A-plus physique or still a— No. They let you go. Mary Ann Mace 21:43 It was a freshman initiative. Colton Johnson 21:46 And it was only in the freshman year that you had to do it? Mary Ann Mace 21:48 Yeah. Colton Johnson 21:49 Oh, I didn't know that. Mary Ann Mace 21:51 As far as I know. Colton Johnson 21:52 Well, maybe you— Mary Ann Mace 21:53 And there were all sorts of rumors, of course, silly rumors about the Yale boys getting in to see them and so on. The whole thing was too humiliating. I don't know if any of that, probably none of that was true, you know. Colton Johnson 22:09 I don't think there's much evidence of it. No. I do recall, oh, several, many years ago now, when in Washington somewhere there were discovered posture pictures from some of the women's colleges. And this is when Fran Ferguson was the president and she had to depute, I think, maybe Susan DeCray and somebody else to go down and claim hours and put them through a shredder and bring the shreds back. Mary Ann Mace 22:33 How did they get to Washington? Colton Johnson 22:35 I'm not sure that we ever knew, but somebody from the New York Times caught wind of this tradition from the period when you were in the college and wrote a rather nasty thing in the Times Magazine and Betty Daniels undertook to set him straight with something that I think was probably published in the Times also. Mary Ann Mace 22:58 That's interesting. Now there was something else. Oh, activities. Are you ready to go? Besides sports. Colton Johnson 23:05 Well the one thing that keeps on your record is that you seem to have been on crew at some point. Mary Ann Mace 23:10 A what? Colton Johnson 23:11 The crew. The boats. Mary Ann Mace 23:16 I don't remember that. Colton Johnson 23:18 Well then I don't know. In your first year you were the second hall crew. Now that could be athletics or that could be… Mary Ann Mace 23:28 I can't imagine what that is. I don't remember being on any boats. Colton Johnson 23:33 Well, then it must have been some kind of, maybe that was what they called the obligations you had to do chores. Mary Ann Mace 23:43 That could be. I told you that. Colton Johnson 23:45 Yeah, you did. Mary Ann Mace 23:47 One thing I did do, an activity, and probably started in the second year, was work on a newspaper. It was not the Miscellany News, which already existed, but it was a second newspaper. Don't ask me why they decided we needed a second newspaper, whoever they were. I guess more students wanted to work on newspapers. Colton Johnson 24:14 This was the one called the Chronicle? Mary Ann Mace 24:15 The Chronicle, yes. Yes, and I was on that and that's how when I was in Lathrop on the ground floor I had a telephone which was a very desired possession. Nobody else had a telephone in the building. Colton Johnson 24:35 So you lived in Lathrop? Mary Ann Mace 24:37 Yes. Colton Johnson 24:38 So you were in North, then Lathrop, and then Main? Mary Ann Mace 24:42 Oh, Lathrop. No, I was—I didn't live in North, did I? Colton Johnson 24:51 I thought you had said you did, but— Mary Ann Mace 24:54 I think I said Dean and I were House Fellows. Colton Johnson 24:57 I think that's right. Mary Ann Mace 24:58 In Jewett. Colton Johnson 24:59 So you were in Lathrop and then in Main. Mary Ann Mace 25:01 Yeah, Lathrop for two plus years and then in Main for the final either semester or year, I'm not sure which. Colton Johnson 25:10 And the folks who kept the record on you or for you say also that in your third year you were the news editor of the council. Mary Ann Mace 25:20 Yes, and that's why I had the telephone. Much desired. I sometimes got back to my room and found people using my telephone, which made me really very annoyed. Colton Johnson 25:32 And they were making the news rather than collecting and recording it. Mary Ann Mace 25:36 It was very annoying actually because they weren't necessarily people who were particularly friendly to me any other way. They just spotted a telephone and helped themselves. Colton Johnson 25:45 It also shows that you were in your third year the president of the Philosopher's Holiday. Mary Ann Mace 25:50 Yes. Colton Johnson 25:51 And I didn't know that it went back that far. It's a tradition still I think. Mary Ann Mace 25:55 No, I had no idea whether that… Colton Johnson 25:58 So did you have to introduce? You met people coming to speak on philosophy and you introduced them? Mary Ann Mace 26:06 Or yes, sort of, yes. Colton Johnson 26:09 Did things like that draw a big sized crowd? Mary Ann Mace 26:11 I would assume so. I mean not a lecture hall, but especially if we had somebody that was sort of famous. Colton Johnson 26:22 Yeah, they would be in the parlors of the residence halls? Mary Ann Mace 26:26 Or in small classrooms. Colton Johnson 26:33 so you were playing hockey and introducing philosophers that's pretty exciting stuff Mary Ann Mace 26:40 it was a busy and wonderful time I must admit Colton Johnson 26:44 there's one further thing that we touched on when we talked the other day and then I was talking to my wife about it this is when you and Dean served as house fellows in North and did you say that there was some recompense to you for it or, and I've forgotten that, but it struck me that you were really responsible for an educational program for the house. Mary Ann Mace 27:18 Yes, as a husband and wife, but also particularly my husband. Dean ran a writing program that met once a week and people would bring things they had written and criticize one another's work. And we would invite people from other departments to come and talk to any students who were interested in hearing from them. I remember Louis Pamplume giving us a very erudite talk on something or other. Colton Johnson 27:53 I had an inquiry recently from someone in, I can't remember, it may have been Italy, but someone who as a young man had met a professor from Vassar and he had his name all confused. It was Pomp and then the rest of it was Lume. And the dean of the faculty office got in touch with me and said, who would be Professor Pomp-Loon. And I thought, well, it has to be Pamplume. Yes. Mary Ann Mace 28:26 Sure enough, he said he was. And just when, and we would invite, of course there was the usual cocoa and cookies for exam time and hand-holding and so on. Dean once saved a girl's life because her roommates came down and said, Whatever her name was, she's just, we're worried about her because she's just sleeping and sleeping and she doesn't seem to respond. And Dean dashed upstairs and found that she was in some kind of coma and immediately got the ambulance and the doctor's office and so on. So it was actually, he didn't save their life, but it was the alertness of roommates and the fact that he was there to know what to do. Colton Johnson 29:19 Now, were you the only House Fellows? Mary Ann Mace 29:20 No, there were a pair of us. It was Shirlyn Brien and Nancy Brien. Fascinating people. She was the daughter of a very famous Harvard professor. One of those university professors. Can't remember Nancy. Oh, sorry. Anyway, but Shirlyn Brien, S-H-I-R-L-Y-N, was known as Pete, and he was in the art department, not for too many years because he had trouble finishing his thesis, which was one of those sad stories because he was the most talented. He'd been in the Navy and gotten the bug to be an art historian, but somehow couldn't carry it through. So he was only, they had to let him go, though he was a very good teacher. Colton Johnson 30:30 His service to his country interrupted his… Mary Ann Mace 30:38 He was older and he just felt the pressure of time I think. Nancy's father, now that's a name that just gave me completely, but he was a famous university professor. Colton Johnson 30:51 How was the last name spelled? B-R-Y or B-R-I? Mary Ann Mace 30:55 B-R-I-E-N. Colton Johnson 30:57 E-N, okay. Mary Ann Mace 30:58 I think. Colton Johnson 30:59 I could do a little bit. Mary Ann Mace 30:59 You could look him up. Shirlyn, that's an odd name for a man, but we called him Pete. Colton Johnson 31:06 No wonder we wanted to be called Pete. Mary Ann Mace 31:08 Pete Bryan. He was a great friend of Pamela Askew and other people in the art department. Colton Johnson 31:15 Now, when you served as House Fellows, that certainly wasn't obligatory. You elected to be in that program. Is that right? Mary Ann Mace 31:26 Oh, yes. You applied for it. Colton Johnson 31:29 And was it expected that anybody who applied and was willing to take on this extra obligation would be accepted or were there criteria? Mary Ann Mace 31:43 Well, you had to be a faculty member in good standing. Colton Johnson 31:50 A man and a woman? Were there single sex? Mary Ann Mace 31:54 There were single women. Colton Johnson 31:55 House fellows. Mary Ann Mace 31:56 There were single women who were house fellows. Colton Johnson 31:58 I think Leila Barber was a house fellow for a long time. Mary Ann Mace 32:02 I'm sure she was. I'm sure she was. There's a name I'd forgotten. There were two barbers, but one was art and one was history, right? Colton Johnson 32:13 I never knew the history barber, but once you'd met Lally, you knew you'd met somebody forever. Mary Ann Mace 32:20 You'd met somebody. The art department people were so striking and so kind of glamorous. And through our close association with Pete and Nancy Brien, we got to know a lot of them, which was great. Colton Johnson 32:38 Was Chatterton still around in those days? Mary Ann Mace 32:41 He was just practical drawing, practical stuff, drawing on pieces of paper. That was like the labs. Colton Johnson 32:52 Well, yeah, they've always tried to balance the historians and the practitioners. Mary Ann Mace 32:57 That's right. Colton Johnson 32:59 Well, I don't know that there's anything that you've given me enough things to look up, not only the Brians, but I want to know more about some of the ways the Housefellow Program started because I think when we came, certainly it was a very popular thing for young faculty, but I'm not sure that there was this sort of expectation of a… Mary Ann Mace 33:27 A commitment. Colton Johnson 33:28 Yeah, teaching outside the classroom by the faculty. Mary Ann Mace 33:30 Yeah, I think that when the program started, you named the program that it came under. Colton Johnson 33:37 Oh, the Mellon Study brought that up. Mary Ann Mace 33:40 There was money with it, and the faculty member in the very early days was given one third teaching time off. That was that plus meals of course. Colton Johnson 33:56 That's right, we were all dining within the residence halls in those days. Mary Ann Mace 34:00 And we would go in and eat and gather some students who wanted to sit with us did, and If they didn't want to, they didn't. Colton Johnson 34:10 I remember someone describing, when we arrived at Vassar 20 years later, nearly, describing the House Fellow Program rather, I think, unkindly, as like an ant farm, where you used to have these cases, glass cases, that would be filled with sand, and you could watch the ants as they moved up and down and you said it sort of allows students to study the faculty, see how they raise their young, see how they go from floor to floor, see what it is that their nutriments are and things like that and that that was really about all that the faculty had to offer. Mary Ann Mace 34:54 At first it started as a real educational program and it was thought that it would bring faculty and students, young faculty and students closer together. Colton Johnson 35:07 And it was predominantly the young faculty who would go for this when they hadn't established their residence. I would think so. Mary Ann Mace 35:13 Although you said Leila Barber was… Colton Johnson 35:15 She was for a long, long time I believe. Mary Ann Mace 35:18 Yeah. She may have been a resident before the House Fellow Program. Colton Johnson 35:23 And there were residents of course for… Mary Ann Mace 35:25 Yes. Colton Johnson 35:26 There were wardens for a while and then they became residents. Mary Ann Mace 35:30 Oh, there was the warden. Colton Johnson 35:32 There were, she was the warden head Pratt House, but there were wardens, there was a board of wardens who… Mary Ann Mace 35:42 I didn't know that. Colton Johnson 35:43 Yeah. I think they, well in British universities a warden is of course just a… The officer that stands between the academy and the public. So there were residents, but the house fellow program was supposed to be that active. That's good to know. Mary Ann Mace 36:05 It was supposed to be definitely an extension of an academic program. And if you were given one-third time off, you were expected to spend one-third time on it, and your whole family, your wife? Colton Johnson 36:23 Now, this may be just an administrative question that's lost, the answer to which is lost. Who administered that? Was that the Dean of Residence, Betty Drouillet in those days, or did it come out of the Dean of Faculty Office? Mary Ann Mace 36:40 I have no idea what they—you can find out under that program. Betty Drouillet was a remarkable person. Colton Johnson 36:49 Oh, I learned so much from her. Mary Ann Mace 36:51 I learned a great deal from her too and in an odd sort of way I had an unusual connection to her. Are we still recording? Sure. Yeah. She was the divorced wife of a young naval officer and my uncle, my mother's brother, was a naval commander and had Paul Drouillet under his command. So when my family, somebody let my aunt know that Dean and I were coming to Vassar, she told her friend, Betty Drouillet, who she and Paul had divorced, that Betty had come to Vassar with her young son and lived in Pratt House and be nice to me. So that very fall when we arrived in '52 was the presidential election, the first election I ever voted in. And of course nobody, I mean we were all poor faculty members and none of us had a television set or anything, but Betty Drouillet had a television set in Pratt House and she invited us and other young couples to come and watch the election returns. Of course they were heartbreaking, but still. Colton Johnson 38:27 I was going to say you probably didn't vote for Eisenhower. Mary Ann Mace 38:29 No, that was the first time I voted a Democratic ticket. First time I'd voted for the presidential election. Colton Johnson 38:38 That was the first televised political or electoral season that I had ever watched. We were in Michigan and the people on the top of the hill had an antenna tall enough to pick up a signal. But I remember the tension. My parents were solidly behind Ike. Mary Ann Mace 39:00 I'm sure. So was my father. Colton Johnson 39:04 This has been a wonderful follow-up, and I won't call it a coda. We might sometime in the future want to get together again, but thank you for telling me so many things. Mary Ann Mace 39:17 Well, I hope it's been helpful, and it's been a lot of fun for me. Colton Johnson 39:21 Well, it'll be a lot of fun for a lot more people, thanks to our little get-together. Mary Ann Mace 39:26 Nothing else on there that we need to know about? Colton Johnson 39:28 No, but I'm going to leave your academic record with you. Mary Ann Mace 39:32 Oh, my heavens. Colton Johnson 39:34 I enjoyed studying it and now you can show it to your grandchildren and see what they think of it. Mary Ann Mace 39:43 Heavens. I don't know. They were certainly interested in this picture from the dads. Colton Johnson 39:50 That's a lovely photograph. Mary Ann Mace 39:52 With all the cigarettes. I only smoked then. I smoked, well I didn't even smoke then because I smoked during war when it was so glamorous to get these strange cigarettes that had unknown names because the cigarettes were all going to the GIs. Oh yeah, yeah. And they had strange names that you never heard of. So you'd line up and that was glamorous. And whether I wanted to smoke it or not, I never really cared about smoking. I liked the glamour of lining up and getting a pack of unknown cigarettes. Colton Johnson 40:30 It looks in the picture like there's more posing than there is smoking. Mary Ann Mace 40:34 But that could well be true. Colton Johnson 40:36 Anyway, thanks much, and maybe we'll meet again to talk about things. Mary Ann Mace 40:41 Great call. Colton Johnson 40:42 Thank you. Thank you.