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- Title
- Baldwin, Jane North, 1876-1975 -- Memorial Minute:
- Creator
- Bergeret, Ida Treat, Gooding, Velma, Stevenson, Jean K., Daniels, Elizabeth A.
- Description
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- Date
- [After 1975]
- Text
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4l”v"'~. _I .4 JAI*l“l NORTH BALDWIN -— 1876-1975 Attachment #1 ; L. At a Meeting of the ‘ Faculty of Vassar College held ' December seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-five, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Dr. Jane North Baldwin lived for ninety-nine full and intense years before she died in Poughkeepsie, New York on May l5th, l975. She was born in Keeseville, New York on February l0, i876, the daughter of George W. Baldwin, who was a professional...
Show more4l”v"'~. _I .4 JAI*l“l NORTH BALDWIN -— 1876-1975 Attachment #1 ; L. At a Meeting of the ‘ Faculty of Vassar College held ' December seventeenth, nineteen hundred and seventy-five, the following Memorial was unanimously adopted: Dr. Jane North Baldwin lived for ninety-nine full and intense years before she died in Poughkeepsie, New York on May l5th, l975. She was born in Keeseville, New York on February l0, i876, the daughter of George W. Baldwin, who was a professional photographer, and Margaret Hargraves Baldwin. She was one of the early women enrollees and graduates of Cornell University Medical School, taking her M.D. degree in l900. She interned at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in l9Ol-O2 and came to Vassar College as Assistant in Physiology and Assistant Physician in l905-O6. From l905 to i930 she served the college as physician in the department of Health and Hygiene, and in l93O she was promoted to Professor of Hygiene and College Physician, a position she held until her retirement in l9H6 after Al years of service to the college. She is permanently honored by the college infirmary, Baldwin House, which was completed in l9hO and named for her. Dr. Baldwin auspiciously started life in two counties. One day when she was a little girl--so the story goes--her mother took her to New York City from Albany on the dayliner to visit a sick friend in a hospital. Jane Baldwin determined there and then to become a doctor. Although not very much is on record about her preparation for her career in medicine, one presumes that the struggle to get ahead and establish herself in a man's world was no easier for her than for the other women struggling shoulder to shoulder at the beginning of the twentieth century. in accordance with the custom of the time, she entered medical school without attending college but was, however, retroactively adopted as an honorary member of the class of l92l at Vassar. At various times Dr. Baldwin did graduate work--in physiology at the Harvard Medical School in the summer of l905, in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins in l9l6, and at the New York Post Graduate Medical School in i922. She was associated with MIT as a research intern in Public Health in the summer of i935. During her career Dr. Baldwin was on the staff of the Vanderbilt Clinic of Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, where she was an assistant attending physician in endocrinology; and she was also on the courtesy staffs of Vassar Hospital and St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, many times presiding over the emergencies of Vassar students. She played an active role beyond the college in the medical affairs of Dutchess County. A member of the Dutchess County Medical Association and the American Medical Association, she was at various times a vice- president of the then American Student Health Association and president of the then New York State Student Health Association. She was an honorary member of the Women's Medical Association of New York City and of the Visiting Nurses Association of Poughkeepsie In l950 she was honored by the Medical Society of the State of New York, and in l95l by the Dutchess County Medical Society, in Attachment #l Page 2 recognition of her fifty years of the practice of medicine in Wew York State. Dr. Baldwin did not limit her activities to Vassar College in any narrow sense although she served Vassar long and well. She - was a pioneer in local social service work. She was president of the board of directors of Lincoln Center for a time and was active in her retirement in senior citizens groups. She was a director of the Dutchess County Association for Senior Citizens and a A member of the Gay 90's Club, -- one of the few members whose age marked the distinction of the name. g Throughout her career, Dr. Baldwin had a very strong feeling for her vocation. Her efforts to improve the health education and the health service at Vassar resulted in the modern facilities and in the enlightened attitudes characteristic of her administration. The Vassar Alumnae Maqazine of July l, i936 quoted Dr. Baldwin, when asked for the story of her life, as replying that Vassar needed a new infirmary. A new infirmary was finally built at the time of Vassar's 75th Anniversary and named in her honor. ln i933 the doctors‘ offices, previously crowded into the front Southwest wing of Main Building, had moved to the old gym space in Ely which was made vacant by the opening of Kenyon Hall. In the new quarters in Ely there were fourteen consulting and waiting rooms--including a separate one for colds in the head. There were four physicians (including one psychiatrist and one pediatrician) and nine nurses. But Dr. Baldwin was not content with the total situation since she persisted in thinking that the infirmary, a beautiful New England reproduction built in l90l with funds donated by the family of Charles Swift, was badly adapted for desired improvements in infirmary care. As the saying was “Swift Infirmary, quick recovery.“ She pushed, therefore, for the modern facility which was designed by Faulkner and Kingsbury and built and dedicated in l9hO. Dr. Baldwin was friendly, outgoing, concerned, intense, serious and humorous. She was a woman of high moral standards and of great humaneness. She put herselt out for others. in l9H5, (for example) she spent her summer vacation on the staff of Vassar Brothers Hospital in order that a regular staff doctor might be released for rest. A typical Baldwinian act! The Class of l92l, her adopted Alma Mater, officially celebrated her 90th birthday with a banquet. At that dinner the story was told that Henry Noble MacCracken cited Dr. Baldwin for bravery. Dr. Baldwin, he recalled, was the younger assistant in her first years of Dr. Elizabeth Thelberg, her rather more formidable female predecessor, known as Dr. T. One fall year the two of them - Dr. T. and Dr. B. - were,as usual, examining freshmen in the annual initial medical examination lineup. Recording a student's family history, -Dr. Thelberg asked the frightened freshman - "And what was the cause of your grandfather's death? ' - Freshman; He was assassinated. Dr. T.; Good Heavens, child, what did he do? Freshman; He was president--President Garfield. Dr. T.; (turning to Dr. B.) Did you know this? Dr. B.: Of course. Dr Then why didn't you tell me? Dr (quietly): You didn't give me a chance." ED—'l 1 i l l - -t Attachment #l Page 3 Dr. Baldwin's driving became part of the folklore of College Avenue in her later years. All the affectionate residents knew enough to drive to the side of the road and stop when Dr. Baldwin honking her horn as she came, pulled out of her driveway. She was still driving her car with gusto, pleasure, and indiscretion in her nineties. » . . For all generations, Dr. Baldwin has been immortalized in certain Vassar class songs, among them three sung by two members of this Memorial Committee. The first: "Where Oh Where are the Verdant Freshmen?“ . Where oh where are the verdant freshmen? Where oh where are the verdant freshmen? Where oh where are the verdant freshmen? Safe now in their trundle beds. They've gone out from Baldwin's hygiene, They've gone out from Lockwood's English, They've gone out from Dicky's music Safe now in their trundle beds. The second: “The Hygiene Song“, arranged by Martha Alter '25 from words and tune originally composed by the Class of l9l9. Oh we never used to bathe - Till we heard the Doctor rave In the lectures that she gave - How to behave Now we take our daily bath - Even tho we miss our Math. ls; How in the world do you know that? She told us sol ,--T:-:.-.-....~*\ Q... In this case, as in many others, the song was reworked by the ingenious ad-lib inventions of subsequent generations of students, but it did not take too much ingenuity occasionally to substitute Dr. B. for Dr. T. as the song sank deeply into the college's musical folklore. ln l927, then, the song could include: When we heard from Dr. B. Of our ancient pedigree Traced back to the Cambrian Sea Much impressed were we, . Though they say man and baboon are but a minute in a long afternoon How in the world do you know that? She told us so. The post-Darwinian Doctor of hygiene has now become Dr. B.rather than Dr. T. And finally in the song “Matthew Vassar's Generous Heart“ composed by the Class of 1935 to the tune of “It Ain't Gonna Rain No More," we have Dr. B. coming into her own as the original dedicatee of the lines in the second verse: Attachment #l' Page A Matthew Vassar's generous heart Found a brain in every lass, So he made his beer and college here ' h ood of the Freshman class. For t e g “Hygiene, hygiene, hy," said the Freshmen, “Thank you, Dr. B. I know all about the scurvy and the sanitary survey and the inside parts of me.“ Ida Treat Bergeret Velma Gooding Jean K. Stevenson Elizabeth Daniels J M... ..._. M. '\-<
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- Title
- Fahnestock, Edith, 1872-1957 -- Memorial Minute:
- Creator
- Daniels, Elizabeth A., Gleason, Josephine M., de Madariaga, Pilar
- Description
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- Date
- [After 1957]
- Text
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EDITH xmanssrocx 1872 - 1957 Edith Fahnestock ended a long and distinguished career as a teacher of modern languages when she died on November 21st at Poultney, Vermont in her eighty-fifth year. At the time of her retirement in 1939, she had been a member of the Vassar language faculty for thirty-one years. During her rich career as a linguist, Miss Fahnestock ranged over the modern languages with a eosmopolitan sense of the whole. She was warmly aware of language, not only as a tool and...
Show moreEDITH xmanssrocx 1872 - 1957 Edith Fahnestock ended a long and distinguished career as a teacher of modern languages when she died on November 21st at Poultney, Vermont in her eighty-fifth year. At the time of her retirement in 1939, she had been a member of the Vassar language faculty for thirty-one years. During her rich career as a linguist, Miss Fahnestock ranged over the modern languages with a eosmopolitan sense of the whole. She was warmly aware of language, not only as a tool and technique, but as the blood stream of culture. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, she attended school in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from the Women's College of Western Reserve University in l89h with the degree of Bachelor of Letters. After two years, during which she did graduate work at the University of Zurich and at the Sorbonne, she was appointed Fellow in Romance Philology at Bryn Mawr College. Completion of her graduate work was interrupted by intervals of teaching, but in 1908 she received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College. Prior to coming to Vassar in the Autumn of 1908, she had been made head of the Department of Modern Languages at Mississippi State College, a position which she held from 1899 to 1906, and after that a member of the Department of Romance Languages at Mount Holyoke College for one year. In the early years of her appointment at Vassar she taught Italian and French as well as Spanish. Under her guidance the Department of Spanish was established as a separate division in 1922, at which time she was made its Chairman. She continued in this capacity through its growth until her retirement in 1939. She worked consistently for the broadening of offerings in the Spanish Department and for any changes in the teachin of languages which would break down barriers to international understanding. Miss Fahnestock's great interest in bringing together the people of this country and the Spanish speaking people not only of Spain, but of this Hemisphere, led her to introduce as early as l92l, courses at Vassar, conducted in Spanish, in the literature and the historical cultural background of Spanish America. She further helped the teaching of Spanish by inviting scholars and young people from these countries to lecture or teach in the Department of Spanish. EDITH FAHNESTOCK (Continued) Miss Fahnestock's publications included a Study of the Sources and Composition of Old French "Lai d'Haveloc" 1915; translation in collaboration with Miss Florence White of an "Entremes" by Cervantes; the editing in collaboration with Miss Margarita de Mayo of an American edition of "Campo" by J. M. Estrada, 1937; and contributions in 1930 to Current History. At the time of the Spanish American War a great liberal movement, a twentieth century Renaissance, had arisen in Spain in the work of the so-called generation of '98. Miss Fahnestock was one of the first American language teachers who fully aware of the importance of this movement familiarized American students with the ork of Ramon Menendex Pidal, Miguel de Unamuno, Maria de Maeztu, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Jose Castillejo, Jose Ortegay Gasset and many others. Her concern for Modern Spain continued throughout her lifetime. In 1916 she became a Corporator of the International Institute for Girls in Spain, an organization sponsored by Americans, and staffed entirely by American and Spanish teachers. It provided secondary educational opportunities for the young wmnen of Spain. During the next forty years she continued the connection with the school in various capacities. In 1927 she gave in Spanish the introductory address to the 17th Spanish Language and Literature Summer session at the Centro de Estudios Historicos, of the University of Madrid. Americo Castro, Professor Emeritus of Princeton University and at that time, Director of the Centre, welcomed the foreign teachers of Spanish. Miss Fahnestock who as an American teacher of Spanish had attended the first session in 1912, was invited to address the group in the name of all the language teachers, American and European. She stressed the importance of the relations between the United States and Spain and advocated the promotion of interest in Spanish culture among teachers of Art, History and Literature. Her speech-was published in the issue of "Hispania" of November 1927. During and after the Spanish civil war and until her death, she aided homeless Spanish refugees with gifts of money and clothing. She worked in the defense of the Anti-fascist committee and the Spanish Loyalists. She helped exiles to find ways to carry on their careers in other countries. EDITH FAHNESTOCK (Continued) Colleagues and friends of hers have spoken of the real gift which Miss Fahnestock showed in directing young people into teaching. She had a primary interest and faith in people in whom she honestly welcomed variety, non-conformity and individual differences. Miss Fahnestock continued to live an active life in the communities of Vassar and Poughkeepsie after her retirement. She was a member of the League of Women Voters; she made frequent trips to Castle Point, where, at the Veterans Hospital, she taught Spanish. For a while she also taught at Greenhaven Prison. In recent years she became very much interested in the study of Russian. Before and after Miss Fahnestock's retirement, the book-lined living room in the house on College Avenue shared by Miss Fahnestock and Miss Peebles, of the Department of English, was an exciting haven for Faculty discussions and student gatherings. A fire burning on the hearth and good talk -- these were the by-words for several college generations who look back to the hospitality of this house with its lovely view of the Catskills and its rock garden, and the alert teachers who made it a place of warmth and friendliness. Fran her interest in foreign languages and cultures, to her concern for public affairs, from her activities in behalf of oppressed nations to her kindness towards the stray dog who wandered up hill to her front door, Edith Fahnestock was a humane woman, citizen and teacher. Respectfully submitted, Elizabeth A, Daniels Josephine M Gleason Pilar de Madariaga XIV - 273-27H
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- Title
- Walker, Helen, 1915-1970 -- Memorial Minute:
- Creator
- Gregg, Richard, Griffin, Charles, Daniels, Elizabeth A.
- Description
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- Date
- [After 1970]
- Text
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75 HELEN WALKER 1915 - 1970 Helen Walker, an instructor in Russian at Vassar from 1966 until her death in 1970, died on November 4th that year in Troy, New York after a long illness at the age of 55. Prior to 1966 after coming to this country from China, Mrs. Walker had served as a mainstay assistant in the Russian Department from 1946 to 1949 and as director of an eminently successful evening Russian pro- gram for teachers from 1962 to 1966. Born in Manchuli, Manchuria on June 10, 1915, the...
Show more75 HELEN WALKER 1915 - 1970 Helen Walker, an instructor in Russian at Vassar from 1966 until her death in 1970, died on November 4th that year in Troy, New York after a long illness at the age of 55. Prior to 1966 after coming to this country from China, Mrs. Walker had served as a mainstay assistant in the Russian Department from 1946 to 1949 and as director of an eminently successful evening Russian pro- gram for teachers from 1962 to 1966. Born in Manchuli, Manchuria on June 10, 1915, the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Alexander P. Bugaer, Helen Walker came to this country in 1946. Although she had forfeited all trace of her previous academic records in China, Mrs. Walker enrolled for the Vassar undergraduate degree, which she received in 1950, followed by the second degree which she took with distinction in 1964. She thereafter enrolled for the Ph.D. in Slavic Studies at New York University. While still in China from 1942 to 1945, Mrs. Walker had served as an editor and translator for Havas Telemondial, the French News Agency in Shanghai. She was an instructor from time to time in the adult education program of the Poughkeepsie Schools, and was an instructor of Russian at Dutchess Community College between 1959 and 1962. During the summer of 1965 Mrs. Walker returned abroad to study at Moscow State University. The success of the Institute for teachers of Russian held on campus for the four years mentioned in the 1960's has been attested to by the rise and popularity of Russian studies in Dutchess County schools. The inauguration of the program in the Arlington High School, for example, is directly attributable to one of her students. Many students, subsequent to their fanned out in to high schools in other states. They found, courses in other institutions of Mrs. Walker's other teacher study in the Vassar institute in surrounding areas, as well as also, that when they enrolled in to pursue further work, Mrs. Walker had given them a rigorous, strong, and rich preparation in a dif- ficult and demanding discipline. Although her central concern was with her students in the class- room, Mrs. Walker constantly opened her expansive Russian heart to those who needed her personal help. In most recent years, under the burden of her increasingly debilitating illness, she HELEN WALKER - continued shared the warm cordiality of her lovely modern house in the woods near Vassar with her colleagues on the faculty and her students. The memorable gourmet delicacies that she created and served introduced those who visited her to Russian food; while the talk and fellowship simultaneously revealed other glimpses of her previous life in a different culture. Soon after Mrs. Walker came to Vassar it was discovered that she had an incurable congenital kidney ailment which threatened her life. Notwithstanding, she courageously accepted her con- dition, and acted to give and gain full measure from her daily professorial comitments. One of her colleagues has sumed up her qualities as a constant thirsting for intellectual activities. "She was a most con- scientious, unselfish, and talented pedagogue, considerate and very thorough and kind." In her quiet and modest way she sus- tained the highest standards of language teaching and criticism Respectfully submitted, Richard Gregg Charles Griffin Elizabeth Daniels, Chairman . ¢_ a< *4 ‘ ' Z ___,_./I’/1,‘: 4~' 5, )/)C$.... ,,,-’,‘;v* ‘.4. ~' * ' " I. ;' I % { .,’ ’ 4;‘ ‘I,/:.’{:»t7‘;l*”€~"$ ‘L ‘ii 5/ /7; if /'
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- Title
- Kitchel, Anna Theresa, 1881-1959 -- Memorial Minute:
- Creator
- Sandison, Helen E., Mercer, Caroline G., Turner, Susan J., Daniels, Elizabeth A.
- Description
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- Date
- [After 1959]
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__I Ir \_ \ \ \ C 90 ANNA THERESA KITCHEL 1881 - 1959 From the moment when Anna Theresa Kitchel joined the English Department at Vassar College she was a force in the classroom and in the college community; she was a friend of students, and of colleagues on both the teaching and the non-teaching staff. Warm, open, frank, she immediately gave expression to her vital interest in the people she encountered, whether casually or professionally. One younger appointee to the faculty recalls how, in...
Show more__I Ir \_ \ \ \ C 90 ANNA THERESA KITCHEL 1881 - 1959 From the moment when Anna Theresa Kitchel joined the English Department at Vassar College she was a force in the classroom and in the college community; she was a friend of students, and of colleagues on both the teaching and the non-teaching staff. Warm, open, frank, she immediately gave expression to her vital interest in the people she encountered, whether casually or professionally. One younger appointee to the faculty recalls how, in the anxious hour of being interviewed, she was introduced to Miss Kitchel, who emerged from a classroom to meet her "with so warm a smile lighting her beautiful face that all tension dropped." To this unfailing personal interest her students responded enthusiastically, as they did to the sound scholarship that came to vivid life in her classroom. Honors here and elsewhere marked Miss Kitchel's career. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Smith College, where she majored in history, held several fellowships from the Univ- ersity of Wisconsin, where she took her doctorate in literature, and was the recipient of The Markham Travelling Fellowship to work at the British Museum (1923-1924). At Vassar College in 1946 she became the first holder of The Henry Noble MacCracken Chair of English Literature, established to honor our president- emeritus at the time of his retirement.V These awards recognized her distinction as a teacher at West Division High School in Milwaukee, at the University of Wisconsin, and then at Vassar College (1918-1948). They recognized also her scholarly studies. Miss Kitchel's interests were steadily focused on the Romantic period and the wealth of figures in Victorian England. She brought an unusual richness of historical perspective to her study of the Romantic Poets; and the course in which she taught their works for many years — "English poetry from Blake to Keats" - brought her students sharply up against the currents of philosophy and history from which these poets were shaping their verse. _ But, although Miss Kitchel taught many other periods and subjects her abiding interest was with the Victorians and her special research was always directed towards George Eliot. Her investi-* gation of George Eliot's career as writer, critic, and editor led her to a study of the relationship between that author_and George Lewes. She was the first scholar to show that George Eliot's notebooks and diaries were an important source for Victorian intellectual history. Her pioneer work was acknow- ‘\ \ . 91 ANNA THERESA KITCHEL (continued) ledged by Professor Gordon Haight of Yale University when he brought out the definitive edition of George Eliot's notebooks and diaries. The material in her book George Lewes and George Eliot is widely used by scholars working in the period. Her further research in George Eliot led her to the publication in 1950 of Quarry for Middlemarch. In this work Miss Kitchel made available the record of George Eliot's studies of Victorian medical controversies which gives substance to the characteriza- tion of Lydgate in the novel Middlemarch. Quarry for Middle- march was published by the University of California press in 1950 with the aid of the Lucy M. Salmon Fund for Research. To Victorian scholars,.consequently, Anna Kitchel's name is familiar wherever the careers of George Eliot or George Lewes are mentioned. Deeply interested in Miss Kitchel's senior seminar in Victorian literature, many a Vassar alumna going on to graduate work was encouraged to acquaint herself with the Victorians in an era when such enthusiasm was far from fashionable. With her remarkable capacity for understanding and drawing out people in her own surroundings, Miss Kitchel had a special talent for making the figures of her Victorian friends breathe life. Her depth as a scholar endowed her gifts as a teacher. ‘Keeping both of these attributes humane was a vigilant common sense which did not seem to fail her. It was always ready, not only for herself, but for others. . Helen E. Sandison Caroline G. Mercer . Susan J. Turner .Elizabeth A. Daniels, Chairman XV - 193-194
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