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Red Headed Stepchild
(The Barrett family memoir of Navy Life)
by Sophie Ruth Meranski with photos

WEB PAGE 55 contains CHAPTER ONE to FIVE "SOPHIE BARRETT EARLY YEARS". 
p 55#1080 RED HEADED STEPCHILD Part I Sophie Barrett's Early Years 
Chapter I Meranski family, Hartford, Mount Holyoke 1901-1923

1901=1923 Sophie Barrett's early years- parents David Meranski and Thalia Goldfeld + family- Hartford + Mount Holyoke -Sophie Barrett 1901-23 "RED HEADED STEPCHILD": CHAPTER I Meranski Family Hartford and Mount Holyoke College Sophie Barrett memoir Thalia Goldfeld Meranski 1869-1925 To the best of my knowledge my mother Thalia Goldfeld Meranski came to Hartford Connecticut from Vienna Austria with her younger brother Jacob, when she was a girl.I understood that she and my father were married in Germania Hall at the corner of Main and Morgan Street in Hartford August 8, l890. 

My first memory of my mother finds her standing in the living room, holding my infant sister Babe in her arms on Pleasant Street when I was five years old, in l906. Babe was her eighth and last child - all healthy.I was her sixth born in a family of four boys and four girls. My mother was of average height, slender, black=haired and black-eyed.She was a good cook, but I never saw her sew or mend, because by trade my father was a tailor,which he learned in Cairo Egypt as a very young man.My earliest memories are of him working at home on Pleasant St. Hartford about l906.He made men's expensive overcoats of dark blue woolen material with velvet collar.One habit of his I remember that reflects the cold climate he came from- he would put a lump of sugar inside his mouth and pour tea from the teapot directly on the sugar.My father was an excellent tailor who enjoyed his work until his eyesight was strained by the use of fine needles and dark thread on dark blue overcoats and black velvet collars. Apparently around l909-l9l0 as he got into his mid-forties, it became difficult to adjust to the close work. 

In l906 owing to a financial Panic my father found it very difficult to support his large family of ten in Hartford, where very few customers if any could afford a custom made overcoat. Through a friend Samuel Schlimbaum he found work as a tailor in New York for a time in l907. He located a cheap tenement at Twenty-Seventh Street near Third Avenue and wrote my mother to bring the family.Less than a year old my sister Babe was an infant in arms suffering from the measles when my mother gathered her brood in a horse=drawn carriage and took us to the Hartford railroad station. 

My sister Esther remembers my mother keeping Babe's face covered with a blanket as we rode in the coach train to New York city.My three older brothers slept on the floor,and one night Ben stepped on Al's hand, which was sore for weeks afterward.I was too young to go to school, though my sister Bertha did attend New York schools for some time. I spent most of my time looking out the window, as my mother had two very young children to care for. Although I was less than six years old, my mother would give me ten or twenty cents every noon, and I would go to the store to buy the baloney.

We had no bathroom of our own and had to share the toilet out in the front hall with the other tenants on that second floor.To supplement our diet, we had a corn popper and popped corn on the coal stove nearly every night.My brothers would take a coal hod down to the railroad tracks and spend long hours trying to fill their hods with coal that might have fallen from the coal trains. Wood was difficult to get, but my brothers searched endlessly for kindling wood. 

One evening my father's friends the Schlimbaums had the ten of us for supper. We went to their flat by streetcar, and I can remember my disbelief at the number of courses and quantity of food on the table. As a matter of fact, I believe we ate at their home several times. 

At Halloween, looking out the window at our home I saw some mean tricks as teenage boys would hit passersby with long socks with a heavy brick inside. One morning I was standing in the front room when my father unexpectedly came home. My mother without a word followed him from the entrance down in the kitchen to the front room and watched the poor man put his scissors and his tape measure on the table. When she questioned him with her expressive eyes, he told her that there was not enough work in the tailor shop, and as the last man hired, he had been fired. 

Only a few months after our arrival, my father was laid off as he had least seniority.He communicated with his friend Elizah Cohen, who found us an inexpensive tenement on Portland St. in Hartford,where my father used the front room as his tailor shop & managed to make a living sewing custom fitted overcoats for Gimmel Burnham We returned to Hartford and lived on Portland Street. I attended the Second North School in first and second grades. My sister Babe had rheumatic fever when she was about four years old. There are Portland Street neighbors named Goldfield listed nearby in 1909 directories, but we have not been able to find out if they were relatives of my mother. 

In Boston in the l970's we spoke with a widow Celia Goldfield of Milton, whose husband had come from Rovno in eastern Poland, on the same railroad line as Brody,where my mother came from.The name probably dates back to an Austrian taxation plan of the later eighteenth century.My mother had a family photo album. We believe her parents named Abel and Bertha were deceased in Austria before 1890.Ellis Island opened in l892, and immigration records from New York from the 1880's are said to have burned. 

We lived on Portland St.until he bought a restaurant at 25 Morgan St.from Charles Abuza, father of Sophie Abuza, later well known as Sophie Tucker the singer.She sang in local restaurants & married Albert Tuck & changed her stage name to Tucker.In l9l0 or l9ll the Meranski family posed for a formal picture. 

All of us had new clothes for the fall holidays,so my father and mother with the eight children posed for a picture that did justice to every one of us.I still have a framed picture of the group that my sister Babe gave me.The picture shows my father David Meranski l865=l933, my mother Thalia Goldfeld l869-l925, my brothers Harry l89l,Ben l892 Abe l896 & Israel Peter l903 and my sisters Esther Nov. l9,1894.,Bertha July 25, l898, Rebekah ("Babe") Nov. l, l906 and my self,Sophie Ruth born October 4, l90l at l9l Front St. 

My mother had a wooden barrell into which she put large quantities of blue Concord grapes to make the wine for Passover.I enjoyed putting the grapes in the hole in the barrell & enjoyed the wonderfully sweet, clear wine she made every year.

I remember the big coal stove at 25 Morgan St. & the big pots & pans my mother used to cook the noon meal for her 25 regular customers & her family of ten.We never had customers for breakfast or supper - just for dinner at noon. She usually started the meal with pickled herring (or soup meat if preferred) followed by noodle,or rice,or pea, or barley, sliced bread,prunes or dried apricots, & tea. They charged thirty=five cents for dinner, & tips were unknown,even when my sister Bee helped my father serve his customers.I remember one diner who came into the kitchen to fill small bottles with very weak tea. He claimed to be an eye doctor & he used his bottle of tea as medicine.

A diner of long standing had epileptic fits in the restaurant. One diner,a handkerchief salesman paid my sister Bee (Bertha) & me to fold handkerchiefs for him. 

One day I was standing at the coal stove reading "BLACK BEAUTY",when the book accidentally fell into a large pot of soup before my mother had skimmed off the grease-I was horrified as I fished it out & tried to dry it out.It was a library book, but I blotted the book again & again & dried it out.I returned it to the library in fear,but I never heard from the library about it. (The Hartford Public Library had the first full-time Professional U.S.children's librarian, Carolyne Hewins,native of West Roxbury Massachusetts on Emmonsdale Road)My mother made blackberry wine in a pottery jug & used it as medicine for stomach ache.She frequently pickled a large crock of herring & onions, which she served in the restaurant & the children ate as an after school snack.

The restaurant was heavy work for my mother & the advent of the automobile allowed salesmen to cover more territory & eat on the road= the volume of business fell off,so my father decided to give up the restaurant & go into the tailors' supply business. He bought threads, needles, scissors,tape measures, linings, wax,, tailors' chalk etc & stowed them in our house & tried his luck without any success from the start.

So in fall l9l6 he bought a house & general store at 4 Wooster St.The house had three tenements. We occupied the second floor, six rooms.The first floor had only three rooms because of the large store.There were six rooms on the third floor,which we rented out.The general store had a full line of groceries- bread, fresh fruit,fresh vegetables,penny candy &hardware, especially pots & pans. We enjoyed a victrola,a telephone,& Esther bought a piano,which Babe used for many years. I shared a bedroom with my sister Bertha while my eldest and youngest sisters Esther and Babe had another bedroom. 

I often wore Bee's outgrown clothes.I was a sophomore at Hartford Public High School-walked the two & a half or three mile route every day - rain, snow,or shine.At first I walked with my sister Bee (Bertha)& after she was graduated I walked with my younger brother Pete, but he soon deserted me for the boys.One of my earliest school recollections concerns third grade when I transferred to the Brown School on Market Street near Main Street right around the corner from my home at 25 Morgan St.

My third grade teacher Miss Murphy & another teacher Miss Flynn were outside my room talking in the corridor just before class was to start at nine when for no reason at all that I can recall,the girl in front of me screamed loudly. When Miss Murphy rushed to her,she said, "Sophie pinched the back of my neck."Although I denied the charge, Miss Murphy,whom I feared,got her strap & strapped my hands several times.(Conversation: the students sometimes used to say,"Oh Miss Murphy,just drop dead."), My fourth grade teacher Miss Drago was a young,kindly woman of Italian extraction who was an excellent teacher & through her I became an excellent speller somehow,& she also interested me in geography.

Because the fifth grade was too crowded,I was promoted from the fourth to the sixth grade=unfortunately,I now believe as I missed a lot of history,especially English history. However my sixth grade teacher Miss Callahan worked hard with us, was a fine disciplinarian & insisted that I be promoted to the eighth grade,again causing me to miss important geography & history information= subjects that I had to try to learn in adult life as I took no history courses in college & only ancient history in high school.My eighth grade teacher Miss Ensign lived in Ensign, Connecticut- a young,kindly woman who seemed to me to embody everything fine.I was just thirteen years old when I entered the ninth grade at least a year & in most cases almost two years younger than the other students in the course.

The fifteen-year-old boys & girls enjoyed each other but except for one boy whom I didn't like & wouldn't date none of the boys or girls paid any attention to me.I was short & thin=lonely until a new girl came to our class named Mildred Vien.Her parents ran a rooming house on Main Street.She sat across the aisle from me in school & occasionally she invited me to her home to do homework.I can't remember whether or not she was smart,but I do remember that she got on my nerves by starting out very fast when we had arithmetic tests- writing quickly even before I had finished reading the questions.I should have realized that she was older than I, that she had had fifth & seventh grade arithmetic I had missed,but instead of concentrating on the job before me I was upset by the headstart that she had on me.So I stayed out of school, and that worried my kindly mother who had a husband & eight children to care for not to mention her doing all the cooking for the restaurant she & my father ran to earn our living.

Finally Miss Clark,our ninth grade teacher,a wonderful,tall,heavy,kindly understanding woman,came to our house to see why I was absent so long from her class.She could have sent the truant officer,but she didn't even report the absence to the principal-merely entered it in her attendance book.I remember her sympathetic patience with me that late afternoon-school didn't even close till 3:30& she always kept some children after school for disciplinary purposes. When I finally confessed that sitting so close to Mildred Vien had unnerved me, she immediately offered to change my seat,so I sat in front of Andrew Diana, a handsome fifteen-year-old who went steady with Josephine Avitui.

Miss Clarke put me in the "B" class section rather than with the brighter students in the "A" class.I soon recovered my composure & with her enouragement I decided to take the college course at Hartford Public High School.I was the sixth born in my family,but no one before me had taken the college course or studied Latin.Just before noon one morning,I had finished our arithmetic test,when Andrew Diana whispered to me,"Sophie, let me see your paper."

I gave him my paper, but as Miss Clarke was walking up & down the aisles she spotted Andrew copying my paper & invited both of us to remain in our seats when the lunch bell rang.She took Andrew's test & tore it up,saying his grade for the test was "zero".Calmly she got her strap -gave me three hard strap blows on my right hand,& to this day I have never again cheated on a test or examination.

She continued to be most kindly toward me, & Andrew also graduated in June.So I was still thirteen when I entered the Hartford Public High School,& it was a long walk from my house to the school.I was really afraid of the stern Miss Taylor who taught the ancient history and even more afraid of my Latin teacher Mr. Coffin....I memorized every word of the history assignments & studied my Latin grammar until I fell asleep at night.

On the final day of my freshman year we were far back in the auditorium at the exercises for the graduating class.I was startled when someone punched me in the back & said,"Go on up, Sophie.They are calling your name."When the principal started awarding prizes,I paid no attention as I took it for granted that the prizes were only for the graduating class.Bit I received a five dollar gold piece for being the best Latin Student in the freshman class.I put the five dollars in the Dime Savings Bank,where I still have an account (l97l).It was my first deposit.The summer of l9l5 I had a vegetable garden near the East Hartford bridge on the Connecticut River east of the city. I prepared the ground with a spade, made rows for seeds with a fork,and planted my seeds. In the first row I had little red radishes, then carrots,then beets, then green beans, then peas,onions, lettuce & other vegetables. I also grew tomatoes, cabbage, turnips, and swiss chard. 

As soon as I was fourteen years old I got a working permit & worked as a salesclerk for W.T. Grant company on Main Street in Hartford.I sold dry goods from nine in the morning until ten o'clock at night every Saturday & received fifty cents for my long day's work.I went home for lunch,carried back my sandwich for supper & enjoyed a chocolate soda,which Grant's sold for five cents.

Sophomore year (fall l9l6) we moved to Wooster Street even farther from high school,& I invariably walked to & from school. Our l9l9 Class song was (tune Chopin A FLAT polonaise), {""Nineteen,dear old NINE-teen. -Fairest class of old NINE teen. Fairest class at Hartford High -Love for you will never die NINEteen dear old NINEteen Fairest class of OLD NINEteen."..My home room & English teacher was Miss Harriet Barstow, a young (l9l5) graduate of Mount Holyoke College,interested in missionary work. Her sister was also a teacher. Miss Barstow encouraged me to apply for Mount Holyoke College. Many of the girls had given up the idea of college because the best girls' colleges just that year had decided to require college entrance examinations for the first time in the year we were scheduled to enter. [p.15] But Miss Barstow was persistent with me and helped me to make out an application to Mount Holyoke College.She had sent for the form. So I took the College board exams in English, Latin, and mathematics as required at that time. Mount Holyoke agreed to accept me on condition that I take trigonometry my freshman year, as my grade in geometry in high school was unsatisfactory. So I reluctantly agreed to take mathematics my freshman year at Mount Holyoke. 

My high school subjects senior year were English, German, Latin, and Chemistry. I do not recall my grades and have no record of them. As soon as I was sixteen years old, I started to work Saturdays and summers at G. Fox and company.'s department store on Main Street, where my brother Ben worked in the shipping department. I sold notions. When I left at the end of the summer 1919 to enter college, the department gave me a sewing basket filled with all the pins, needles, darners,cotton,scissors,tape measure that a college girl away from home really needs. When I wrote to the college accepting admission, I asked for work to do to help pay expenses, and the college gave me a job waiting on table for lunch and dinner seven days a week, except no Sunday supper. Since none of my older brothers or sisters had attended college, we were all enthusiastic, even though none of us knew how we could finance the venture beyond my freshman year. My savings from working at Grant's and at Fox's would cover freshman year but allow nothing for clothes or recreation., To a seventeen year old girl who had never been farther from home than high school, a trip to South Hadley, Massachusetts seemed too much. So my beloved brother "Al" (Abe) volunteered to accompany me on the train to college the Saturday before classes were to begin.

My oldest sister Esther, a bookkeeper for Swift & Company loaned me her suitcase,which was more than ample because about the only clothes I had were those I was wearing.She also gave me her fur lined leather winter coat which I used all four years at school Since it was really only a jacket I really needed the woolen skirt I wore with it. It was an uneventful trip - we took a train to Springfield, changed there to a Boston and Maine train for Holyoke, then had a long trolley ride to South Hadley. I was to live on the fourth floor of Pearsons Hall [on the west side of the main road near the President's home] , and as it was geting dark that September afternoon, the small room with its bare furnishings did not look inviting, and I think my brother would have taken me home if I had asked him to. At this point my "big sister" appeared. She was a member of the class of 1921, who had written to me during the summer. She was pretty and cordial, and her greeting to me and to my brother helped, but she left almost immediately saying she would get in touch with me again. Al had to leave for the trip home- so he was off, and I was alone- left to a lonesomeness which I survived but which led many of my classmates to leave. 

Fortunately I was scheduled to have dinner at 5:30 so that I would be free to wait on table at six,& after the wholesome generous warm food I felt a little better & managed to wait on my table without seasoning the food with tears. But that Saturday evening was an eternity. Freshman week was not observed at Mount Holyoke. I stood by the window in that small room on the fourth floor looking out at the awful darkness and struggled against my loneliness with nothing to do, as I had so few possessions to unpack and so few stamps to waste on letter writing. Eleanor Hall had the cubby hole next to mine, and Olivia Sherrod had the one across the hall from me, and Clara Michal was next to Olivia. I didn't meet Eleanor or Olivia for some time, but I met Clara on Sunday because she too waited on table. Soon I knew all the girls who waited on table. and when I heard Olivia sobbing in her room I went in to comfort her - but before the first week was over,she had left Two freshmen Becky Smaltz and Frances David from Germantown Friends School had a double room on that fourth floor -but the rest of us had single rooms- there were Kay Trufant, whose family grew cranberries on Cape Cod, Mildred Janney, Ruth Connally,, Anne Bell, and Agnes Cormack.18- Soon after Olivia went, Anne Bell and Agnes Cormack gave up too and went home. 

I was crazy about the cook,Elizabeth & she liked me, gave me extra steak & vegetables & always offered me extra dessert. Her warmth kept me there when others gave up & went home,& her food added seventeen pounds to my weight so that the only way I could use my one woollen skirt was to keep it together by a horse-blanket-sized safety pin supplied by the cook,who could even make hash taste good.Since I always wore a white middy blouse,the safety pin did not show.At most I had three middy blouses but kept them clean in a well supplied laundry in the basement of the dormitory. After I left Pearson's I went back every year to see Elizabeth even after I became a member of the faculty. Those of us who waited on table fared better at dinner than the other girls because we ate first just as soon as the food was cooked & of course before there was a shortage of any item. We had our lunch after the others ate. My subjects freshman year were Chemistry, Trigonometry, German, and English. Except for the "Trig", which gave me some trouble, I had no academic difficulty. I concentrated on making friends with Clara Michal, Mildred Janney, Ruth Connally, Becky Smaltz, and a few seniors. The greatest thrill of my life up to that time came the Wednesday before Thanksgiving- because I was going home after I served brunch. 

I could hardly breathe for excitement, as my sister Esther had sent me the price of the round trip. I rarely wrote home as I had used the few stamps I had and had no cash to buy one-cent or two-cent stamps. I remember my joy when Julius Aronson, my brother Al's best friend,wrote a letter to me enclosing one dollar early in my freshman year. I used it at the college bookstore for theme paper. As I left the building where my last Wednesday class let out at noon, I was overjoyed to be going home. I greeted my father first downstairs in the grocery and general store heowned - then my mother up in the kitchen - then my sisters and brothers as they came home from work and school.I walked home from the railroad station with my suitcase, and then walked back to the station Sunday afternoon with Esther and my younger brother Pete. The next summer 1920 I went back to Fox's notion counter and spent my sophomore year residing at South Cottage and again waited on table to help meet expenses.My courses were German, Physiology Economics, and Sociology.. Sophomore year I roomed with Eleanor Hall who had lived next door to me in Pearson's,who drew a lucky number enabling her to choose a room very early on the list,& she invited me to join her in spacious quarters for two. {Eleanor later studied library science at Simmons College. I saw her at reunions in 1978 and 1983]. 

There in South Cottage there was quiet for study & soon after the mid year examinations I received a note from Professor Alzada Comstock saying that she had given me a grade of 98 on the Economics exam and considered my paper the best she had ever read by a student. We used Taussig's text and recited from David Ricardo: "Corn is not high because rent is dear. Rent is dear because corn is high."

Sophie Meranski Barrett Chapter One continued Mount Holyoke College p 54-1081

One of Sophie's stories possibly from Morgan Street Hartford or else from social work days concerns a woman who frequently got drunk and when being escorted into the police patrol would holler loudly, "Make room, make room." Amy Hewes [1877-1970] was the chair of Mount Holyoke's large department of Economics and Sociology. She invited Sophie to be her assistant in the department and statistics lab 1923-1925, advised her on her master's thesis, and helped her find jobs 1924-5 at Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor; at Commonwealth Fund NewYork-Philadelphia 1926-9 and as Director of Personnel Research Macy's stores 1929-30. One of her characteristic sayings was "This well to know when 'tis done." Mount Holyoke President Mary Woolley took a great interest in individual students and remembered them all long after graduaion.Some students did not find conversation easy going through reception lines at college functions.There was a story that no matter what you said, you would get a perfunctory reply, "How nice". Supposedly one girl decided to tell the hostesses "My grandmother died last night," as she went through. Sophie told this story once or twice. She liked to quote a saying "Character is resistance ro environment" and another "Reputation is what others think of you. Character is what you think of yourself." During the early years of World War 2 she wrote sayings of this sort lightly on the paint above the kitchen sink at 2415 Ala Wai Boulevard Waikiki. - During the years after World War I there was a period of great enthusiasm for singing at the college. Our l923 class song "The SPHINX" was written (lyrics) by archaeologist Marion Nosser with music by classmate Ruth King Dunne freshman year,"Wind hushed, the desert lies dreaming Under the far eastern sky Only the Sphinx keeps its secret, Waiting for daylight to die.Now 'neath the warm blue of heaven,Rousing itself with a sigh,Softly it speaks & its whisper Floats to the dome of the sky.Hark don't you hear the far echo? Borne on the night wind to us? Now has the Sphinx told its secret "NON SIBI SED OMNIBUS" (for all, not self).Faithful,we'll guard it forever, Marching Beneath it unfurled Until the age-long secret lies in the heart of the world." . After a fire destroyed Rockefeller Hall one November, forcing residents to live in the gymnasium, several girls of our class wrote a "Fund=Raiser" song for alumnae & friends, " Holyoke's RAISING College-BRED (BREAD) From the Flower (FLOUR) of the land. From YEAST (y'east) & West with plenty of SPICE She makes a superior brand.We KNEAD (need) a lot of DOUGH To RAISE the Fund 'tis SAID. But WE are NEEDED (KNEADED) too,you see, For WE are COLLEGE=BRED (BREAD)." Mildred Holt participated in that and led us in"Competitive Class Sing" which we frequently won. One song used the melody of Triumphal Chorus of Verdi's AIDA to the words "Where Peace & Freedom Reign, the Happy Songs of Children Rise. The desolate of all the earth find here their sorrow dies."That sophomore year I made the acquaintance of a Massachusetts Agricultural College senior who occasionally came over to see me.His name was George Quint,a journalism major whose fiancee Sade Slonim of Hartford was my sister Bee's girl friend. (Their son Bert Quint was CBS-tv foreign correspondent East Europe-Near East l970's.That summer between my sophomore & junior years I worked with my sister Esther at H.L. Handy company near the railroad tracks.Across from the company where I did filing that summer was the Cohen Coal company, where a young man worked & smiled at us when we were going to or coming from work. He was often outside directing his coal truck drivers. When I returned to college for my junior year,my finances were precarious but Mount Holyoke had initiated a new system of reduced rates for some rooms,so I took a fourth floor room where I waited on the table of Miss Amy Hewes, who was at the head of the Department of Economics & Sociology.She told Miss Wheeler the house mother that my waiting on her table was a complete joy to her. Consequently in my senior year I waited on Miss Wheeler's table, where all her VIP guests ate.

My courses junior year were German, (with Grace Bacon, who had been in France with Red Cross in l9l9 & sang songs like "Joan of Arc"), Economics (Money & Banking), Bible,Ballads & Psychology.There were several Freshmen on Brigham Fourth Floor & a senior named Cora Hughes, who were fond of me & pleaded with me to attend Junior Prom. I explained that I had no partner, no evening dress,& no money to pay for the ticket & to pay for a man's room.So one freshman named Gray offered me a blue velvet evening gown(which I tried on).Cora Hughes (l922) offered to teach me to run the Mount Holyoke College switchboard saying I could make thirty=five cents a hour , & she would let me take her hours until I had earned enough to meet the Prom expenses,which we small (& I continued Senior year after she graduated.) Now the problem was the man.(George Quint was graduated,about to be married).I wrote to my sister Esther,asking her to find out the name of the boy who worked at the Coal company across from Handy's. I was pleased to learn that he was the son of the owner-&probably would have the use of a car. So I wrote him inviting him to Junior Prom,and when he accepted,all of Brigham's Fourth Floor rejoiced.It was all a pure joy from the time he arrived,until I received his box of candy & thank you note . That summer again I worked at G. Fox & Co.but now at the stationery counter which was short-handed.Also that summer I wrote to the Dean of Mount Holyoke College (Purrington) reluctantly telling her that I couldn't meet the costs of the Senior year. because my younger brother had entered Trinity college & that my brother Al (Abe) was married & that my sister Bea was not working because of illness. Whereupon the dean offered to lend me without interest any amount that I might need to return to college. So I borrowed several hundred dollars,which I returned to the college before the end of the next year (l924). Again .senior year I lived in the cheaper room Brigham's fourth floor,waited on table but had a little more spending money because I worked a few evenings a week & Sunday mornings operating the telephone switchboard,which I enjoyed..My courses were French, Social Work, Statistics, Philosophy,& Art. "Lights Out" was at ten o'clock. All girls in the college were supposed to be ready for bed at this time. Occasionally a girl could keep her lights on later to study,but even then she had to be safely in her room by ten o'clock. Toward the end of the junior year I received a note from a Junior at Massachusetts Agricultural College,who said his fraternity brother George Quint of New York suggested we get acquainted.After that we dated Saturday evenings during the remainder of junior & senior year. His name was Nandor (Ferdinand) Porges (of Hyde Park, Massachusetts). Early in the senior year my friend Nandor Porges told me that he had made the Massachusetts "Aggie" football team.He invited me to the last game of the season against a traditional rival.So I sat alone & saw him on the Aggie bench sucking lemons & wrapped in a blanket.The game went badly for Mass Aggie & as time went on I watched him impatiently sucking lemons,but the game ended without his taking part.He planned to go on to Rutgers to study soil chemistry.On the last Saturday evening of our senior year, he & I were sitting on a bench under a tree near my dormitory.It was after nine thirty by the Mary Lyon clock, which was illuminated & which we could see from where we were sitting. He had to take a ten o'clock (9:50 pm) trolley for Amherst, & I had to be in my room with lights out by ten o'clock.As we were both about to take final exams & to leave right after graduation, we knew that this was our last meeting.When he asked me to marry him,I agreed to..He pinned his fraternity pin on me,gave me verbally his parents' address in Hyde Park, told me again that he expected to go to Rutgers the next year to study soil chemistry. As his trolley left at ten minutes before ten, he left me at Brigham Hall at 9;45 & rushed off without even a handshake. Exams came & went.I heard nothing from him. Commencement came & went.Still I heard nothing from him.When I had been home (Hartford) a week & was about to leave for New York City (social work) I decided to free myself of a promise made hurriedly to a boy who didn't telephone or write,,so I wrote to him carefully, putting my return address on the envelope, in case I had remembered his address incorrectly & told him I had changed my mind about marrying him & would return his fraternity pin shortly.But I waited to hear from him before returning the pin,thinking that he would surely answer the letter & make some explanation as the marriage proposal came from him although I had never encouraged him to believe that I was interested in him except as a pleasant social contact. I put the fraternity pin in a bureau drawer & forgot to take it with me when I left for New York City very soon after the letter & my father promised to forward any mail that might come from him. I naver heard from him & I never returned his fraternity pin,thinking if he wanted it he would have to write for it. But he never did.At the first class meeting senior year there was a hearsay report that all the previous year's officers should be re-elected unanimously. Some members of the class were indignant that a handful of girls should run the class all the time, so they insisted upon individuals nominations for class officers. I was elected Sargeant at Arms, a post that gave me pleasant duties that year & at reunions.(Class won silver cup for high attendance at 25th Reunion l948 -stolen photo showed Sophie holding the cup with class officers) Before I was graduated,I knew every member of my class.Attendance at morning chapel & at Church Sunday was required. In the Senior year each girl wore cap & gown every morning to chapel.& when the service was over, the Seniors marched out in twos,singing a hymn to the accompaniment of the organ.Every Sunday a well known minister would visit the college to conduct church services.. [near bottom page 23 - John Barrett note{Sophie's father & mother and sisters Esther & Babe Rebekah rented a car to attend the l923 graduation at which Sophie received her A.B. degree. They were guests at the luncheon table of Sophie's advisor & future boss, Amy Hewes, head of Economics & Sociology Department,which was organized l907..The morning speaker had been Alexander Meiklejohn, president of Amherst College,who had strong views on excellence in education and was considered radical..Someone asked "Pa" Meranski what he thought of the speaker,and he replied in his usual loud voice,so that everyone at the table could not miss hearing him,"They'll fire him."(Miss Hewes remained polite & unpeturbed). "Pa" Meranski's prediction proved correct.He was active in teaching English to immigrants through the Moses Montefiore society in Hartford and in helping families make funeral arrangements through Capitol city Lodge..His daughter Babe recollects that around l9l2-l9l4 Boris Thomaschevsky of Yiddish theatre, Second Avenue, New York & members of his family when on tour would sing at the Meranski restaurant on Morgan Street, & Thomaschevsky invited Bertha Meranski to travel as a singer with his company,but her parents considered it inadvisable. She was active in the glee club and girls Business Club in class of l9l7 at Hartford High along with her friends Eva Levin &..Silverberg. Their photos appeared in l9l7 yearbook, but in l9l9 there was no yearbook because of paper shortage after World War I.The three older Meranski brothers,Harry Ben & Abe were drafted late summer l9l8.It made their mother so nervous that she put salt instead of sugar she was making.Two went to Fort Devens, Massachusetts & one to Fort Dix New Jersey. Two had influenza, probably Harry & Ben.Several of the family took middle names or nicknames -Benjamin Franklin Meranski, Sophie Ruth Meranski = she loved the Book of Ruth in the Bible-Israel Peter Meranski & Rebekah "Babe" Meranski Geetter.Sophie sang many World War I songs: "Alsace is sighing, Lorraine is crying Your mother France looks to you.Our hearts are bleeding Are you unheeding Come with that flame in your glance. Through the gates of Heaven Do they bar your way? Souls who passed through Yesterday (chorus:) "Joan of Arc,Joan of Arc Do your eyes from the skies see the foe? Don't you see the drooping fleurs-de-lis? Can't you hear the cries of Normandy?Joan of arc may your spirit guide us through! Come lead your France to Victory!Joan of Arc they are calling you." She sang the Plattsburg March:"Oh it's not the pack that you carry on your back,Nor the Springfield (rifle) on your shoulder Nor the Four Inch crust of khaki-colored dust that makes you feel you're surely getting older,And it's not the hike on the old turnpike That drives away your smiles nor the socks of sister's That raise the blooming blisters-It's the last long mile." (Breitel). She effectivly rendered Irving Berlin's "Oh,how I hate to get up in the morning! Oh,how I like to spend my time in bed! But the hardest thing of all is to hear the bugler call,":You gotta get up,you gotta get up,you gotta get up this morning!Someday I'm going to murder the bugler. Someday they're going to find him dead.I'll put my uniform away,I'll move to Philadelphi-ay & spend the rest of my time in bed."She also liked(with slight variations)to sing his:"I give the moon above To those in love when I leave the world behind,I'll leave the song birds to the blind.."and "Cohen owes me ninety-seven dollars. It's up to you to see that Cohen pays.I have a bill of goods from Rosenstein & sons On an I-O-you-ou-ou for ninety days.If you'll promise me my son, you'll collect from everyone, I'll die with a smile upon my face."From l9l7 also were comic songs music by Bert Grant & lyrics by Sam Lewis & Joe Young"Pat McCarthy hale &hearty Living in Oregon-He heard a lot of talk about the great New York-So he left the farm where all was calm,And he landed on old Broadway- He took the little Mary Ann into a swell cafe: 'Arrah go wan I want to go back to Oregon.I want to go back to stay.I could feed the horses many a bale of hay for all that it costs to feed one chick on old Broadway.Arrah go wan gowichagowaygowan arrah go wan I want to go back to Oregon!'" and "Timothy Kelly who owned a big store Wanted the name painted over the door.One day Pat Clancy the painterman came Tried to be fancy & misspelled the name. Instead of a Kelly with a double L, Y, he painted "Kely" but one L was shy.Pat says 'it looks right,but I want no pay -I figured it out in my own little way.If I knock the "L" out of Kelly. It would still be Kelly to me.Sure a single L, Y or a double L, Y, Should look the same to any Irishmans eye--Knock out the L from Killarney, Sure Killarney it always would be,But if I knock the L out of Kelly,He'll knock the "l" out of me."From early Hartford days Sophie sang "Moving day, moving day. Take you oil stove from the floor.Take your stove,and There's the door." "Oil,oil,kerosene oil- My oil is better than Finnegan's oil. Finnegan's oil is water. Mine's kerosene oil." To the tune "Love me & the World is mine" l907 hit she sang_"I care not for the Hartford Times I dare not read the Evening Post-I do not want the Journal-One cent & the WORLD (newspaper) is mine." She liked Alfred Gumble's l9l3 " When the honeysuckle vine Comes a-creeping round the door A sweetheart mine Is waiting patiently for me-You can hear the Whipporwill Sounding softly from the hill Her memory haunts you Rebecca wants you Come on back to Sunnybrook Farm." A minor key phrase in this song also appears in l9l5 "Are you from Dixie? Are you from Dixie? Where the fields of cotton beckon to me. I'm glad to see you Tell me how be you And the friends I'm longing to see? Are you from Alabama, Tennessee or Caroline? Anywhere below the Mason-Dixon line?Then you"re from Dixie! Hurrah for Dixie! 'Cause I'm from Dix-ie too."(George Cobb-Harry Yellen) Also "In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia In the Trail of the Lonesome Pine. In the pale moon shine our hearts entwine Where You carved your name & I carved mine-O June in the mountains of blue Like the pine I am pining for you.In the Blue .Ridge Mountains of Virginia, in the trail of the lonesome pine." Particularly when her younger brother Pete courted and married a Baltimore belle Jeanette Goldberg, she was fond of the chorus "There's a girl in the heart of Maryland With a heart that belongs to ME When I told her of my love the ORIOLE above Sang from the old apple tree And Maryland was fairyland when she prmised my bride she"d be There's a girl in the heart of Maryland With a heart that belongs to me." To the same melody & rhyme pattern she sang a curious parody:"'There's a man in my room',cried Mary Ann -'Put him out,put him out' cried Sue."I'm afraid,I'm afraid',cried another little maid,'What shall we all ever do? '....'who do you suppose that he may be?' 'No you DON'T put him out', cried Mary Ann-'What's in my ro-oom belongs to ME.'"' end of NOTE} Sophie narrative:-_ ' _ Commencement day my father and mother -24-came to the graduation exercises where President Meiklejohn of Amherst was the main speaker. After his talk at Miss Hewes's luncheon, my father said,"They'll throw him out." Sure enough a year later President Meiklejohn was forced to resign from Amherst because of his controversial views, My father and mother were invited by Miss Hewes to have lunch with her at her table in Brigham Hall. Then we drove home. I have some good snapshots [[stolen 1993]] of me and some classmates taken Commencement Day.Miss Hewes in 1970 when this was written was ninety-two years old and was living in OssiningNew York with Madeleine Grant, another Mount Holyoke professsor. [Every four years Mount Holyoke put on a Faculty play, which usually related to college history. Alzada Comstock of the Economics and Sociology Department had a major role in the 1924 play while Sophie was junior faculty. That play dealt with a Mount Holyoke faculty in episodes twenty-five years apart, - 1874-1899-1924. President Mary Woolley was a highly successful fund-raiser up until the 1930s Great Depression, and she articulated the need for career opportunities for women in Education, business, and government. She had a very active public speaking schedule and spent much of 1922 in China touring on missionary-related activities. She made a point of knowing every student and faculty member, though Sophie's personal contacts with her were not numerous outside of the Sunday chapel, in which Miss Woolley usually spoke and introduced speakers.Miss Woollley was a strong opponent of smoking "a dirty habit." The college was founded as a seminary by Mary Lyon in 1837. Miss Lyon had a major interest in botany as well as religion. Although the seminary was very small, until developed into a women's college in 1889, there was a strong tradition of scholarship, including science. One faculty member found a fossil dinosaur skeleton in the Mesozoic rocks of the Connecticut Valley, but it was destroyed in a 1917 fire. Many of the best-known faculty such as organist -choir director Professor Hammond dated from the 1890s, as did biologist Cornelia Clapp, who had affiliations at Woods Hole marine biology, so Miss Woolley was not entirely responsible for the development of a strong faculty. English was the largest field of study, but there were many concentrators in Economics and Sociology, a combined department organized around the time Ames Hewes came to the faculty in1907 and reflecting her interests as a labor economist and statistician. She was friendly with Dr. Louis Dublin of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company an actuary and pioneer of statistical research in public health and accident prevention - he made studies of tuberculosis and venereal disease. Others in the Department included Alzada Comstock and Ethel Dietrich, who tended to be on the Economic side- and Aryness Joy, who went to the Children's Bureau, United States Department of Labor, where Sophie Meranski worked summer 1924 in Detroit and June-November 1935, with extensive travel. Of Sophie's friends from freshman year in Pearsons Hall, Clara Michalopoulos born Symrna Asia Minor home in Springfield Massachusetts became a social worker in Detroit, Boston, and New Haven - and Rebecca Glover Smaltz was in State Labor Department of Pennsylvania and active in Young Womens Christian Association in Philadelphia. These two remained among Sophie's clostest friends more than sixty-seven years 1919-1987 and saw her at 1933,1948, 1978, 1983 reunions. Becky's friend and roommate Frances David was also in social work and statistics. She compiled an amusing colllection of comic songs "College Crackers 1923" and as an unpaid voluneer she continued the Statistical Reporting Sophie began at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic.Sophie was junior faculty in 1924 in the Statstics Lab under May Hewes. In1988 College History librarian gave John Barrett junior a very interesting photo of Sophie standing in the lab with five students of the class of 1925 seating at typewriters and accounting machines. Unfortunately it disappeared in 1993 thefts. Students included Frances Manning, Emily Miller Noss, Emily Barrows. A member of the 1925 class Ruth Muskrat was a Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma who became for many years an official of the Indian Affairs Bureau of the U.S. government. In Detroit summer 1924 Sophie lived with the Patterson family while doing statistical research on adults who had graduated from schools for the Retarded -they generally were self-supporting and had good family life. Mary and Ruth Patterson were in the classes of 1923 and 1925. Ruth was in the statistics course and invited Sophie's younger brother Pete to the 1925 Senior Prom as her own fiance was far away to attend. It was an opportunity for Pete to see his sister's college, and in 1926 he returned the courtesy by inviting Sophie to a dance at his fraternity at University of Maryland Medical School, and she stayed with the family of his future wife, Jeannette Goldberg and got to know the Goldbergs.] Notebook One page 30- In September 1923 when I returned to Mount Holyoke College to assist in the Department of Economics and Sociology I had a lovely big room on the first floor of Hitchcock Cottage, occupied by sophomores only.They were pleasant girls who gave me no trouble. We had our meals in the large cottage next door where I headed a table and was served by a waitress for the first time as I had waited on table all four of my undergraduate years. I tried to lead the conversation and make sure the girls got enough to eat. One of the girls at my table was Anna Mary Wells, who had just entered the class of 1926 with sophomore standing. She became of professor of English at Rutgers and writer of many New Yorker articles and the 1963 "Dear Preceptor," a life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson 1822-1911 that emphasizes his interest in women's education and careers and his editing and preservation of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, the innovative woman poet who lived in Amherst, Massachusetts and spent a year at Mount Holyoke. Dickinson and Higginson corresponded many years on literature, with the older well-known clergymen in role of tutor and mentor, though they met only twice briefly. Then in the 1970s I friendly correspondence with Anna Mary after I learned from Elaine Trehub that she was researching a second book on Miss Woolley. The second year 1924-5 I lived at Cowles Lodge.,also occupied by sophomores. My classmate Betty Gilman, an assistant in chemistry, lived there too. There was a kindly, elderly house mother. Betty made a pretty red dress for me, with white collars and cuffs, and she even did a good job cutting my long hair into a stylish bob. I still have a fine picture of the two of us taken in academic cap and gown on Commencement Day 1925 when both of us received Master's Degrees. Betty went to Yale in New Haven on a fellowship and received a Ph.D in Chemistry. She married Elliott Roberts Ph.D Yale soon after, - raised two girls and a boy and has lived many years in Westport, Connecticut. When a senior at Mount Holyoke College she was president of the Student Government and has taken as an alumna a vital interest in the development of the college. One of her daughters attended Cornell, another Tufts, and her son completed a five year course for a master's degree at MIT. I sat next to her at Alumnae meeting at our twenty-fifth reunion, and we had a good chance to talk while we ate our lunch there - the box lunch. We also rode together in Ruth Peck's car to our banquet at a Holyoke hotel. I have a real note fron her every year at Christmas time. Soon (1973) we will have our fifty year reunion.END Chapter One Text John Barrett note: One of Sophie's stories possibly from Morgan Street Hartford or else from social work days concerns a woman who frequently got drunk and when being escorted into the police patrol would holler loudly, "Make room, make room." Amy Hewes [1877-1970] was the chair of Mount Holyoke's large department of Economics and Sociology. She invited Sophie to be her assistant in the department and statistics lab 1923-1925, advised her on her master's thesis, and helped her find jobs 1924-5 at Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor; at Commonwealth Fund NewYork-Philadelphia 1926-9 and as Director of Personnel Research Macy's stores 1929-30. One of her characteristic sayings was "This well to know when 'tis done." Mount Holyoke President Mary Woolley took a great interest in individual students and remembered them all long after graduation.Some students did not find converation easy going through reception lines at college functions.There was a story that no matter what you said, you would get a perfunctory reply, "How nice". Supposedly one girl decided to tell the hostesses "My grandmother died last night," as she went through. Sophie told this story once or twice. She liked to quote a saying "Character is resistance ro environment" and another "Reputation is what others think of you. Character is what you think of yourself." During the early years of World War 2 she wrote sayings of this sort lightly on the paint above the kitchen sink at 2415 Ala Wai Boulevard Waikiki. Sopihe TEXT from notebook one p. 203;- When Jack was in Nanking he met Harriet Cogswell- SHE WAS "QUEEN OF THE MAY" AT MOUNT HOLYOKE IN 1922 AND WAS TEACHING AT GIN-Ling college,-- Dec l8, l974 Sophie letter to Elaine Trehub Mount Holyoke, "Dear Miss Trehub In July I sent to Miss Green at Mount Holyoke college my 1919-1925 recollections of President Woolley to comply with a request fom my l923 classmate Clara Michal, who felt MEW should be brought out of the shadows.At our fiftieth reunion in l973 (which I did not attend) that matter came up that more data on our l923 honorary member MEW should be gathered while people still live who knew her.So, when Clara wrote to me as a close friend,I reluctantly wrote up my three personal sharp memories of MEW and sent them in July 1974 to Miss Green at MHC -in the summer before I read in Quarterly that she had just retired.Although I had to wander far from MHC as a Navy wife of a senior line officer in a storybook existence the world over, MHC and MEW remained close to me as I was not only in the class of l923, but I was the assistant in Economics (and Sociology) Department l923-l925 under Amy Hewes - took free courses too and was granted a Masters degree with no cost to me and much guidance by Amy Hewes,who gave freely of her time and affection for Sophie Meranski and got me every one of the fine jobs I had until I left for China to join my husband in l930.Even in far North China in l930-31, we had three Mary Woolley (era) alumnae in the Mount Holyoke Club of North China, and I sent in my small annual contribution from Peking, Tientsin, and even Shanghai.Grace Liang classs of l925 of the Woolley era was one of the three members of the club.Her father had been in the Foreign ministry under the Empress Dowager at the time of the Boxer rebellion and (early l920's) addressed both House of Congress for funds for China. While we were there (he and his wife) invited Jack and me to dinner at their Tientsin compound and then even came to dinner with us on our gunboat. GRACE LIANG MARRIED DAN YAPP OF SHANGHAI ,barely escaped with her life when the Communists took over- came to U.S. to teach after losing all possessions.She now lives in Waikiki, Hawaii as Mrs. Daniel Yapp. I have her address if Alumnae Office does not. My son knows many Mount Holyoke alumnae as we have traveled so widely, and I have always sought out MHC people,,as I was a happy sergeant-at-arms of my class- outgoing -knew all the faculty and most of the students in my era, and like MEW I knew names and faces, and my unusual name (Meranski) made me conspicuous!Because Clara asked my help in getting MEW data, John Barrett read the (Jeanette) Marks book (on Miss Woolley) and practically forced me to study it too.When I wrote to my successor ion Economics, Helen Demond, she spoke disparagingly of Marks's book but said archivists advised her there was not enough new material to warrant a new biography of MEW.I accepted that and rested. But John wrote to (MHC) President David Truman and to ?McClung?,and I signed the letter reluctantly.President Truman replied at once that he favored a volume that did justice to Miss Woolley's tenure in office. He said he had released Green from some teaching time to make an oral history and that a well-received alumna author had been making inquiry about her doing a MEW book.He said college had no funds to commission the job but he said he would encourage the alumna to do the job on her own with full cooperation from him.When Betty Gilman Roberts l9l9-1923BA l923-l925 AM in chemistry visited her in July l974 she talked about Woolley with John.- agreed to write to President Truman and to send her own memoir of MEW to Miss Green - which she did in Auguast l974.When roberts was told by alumnae secretary that Anna Mary Wells l926 was researching Woolley, I immediately wrote to Anna Mary who was a student at my table in Byron Smith Halll923-l924 - lovely sophomore.I wrote in great detail to Anna Mary - even about my father's reaction to President Meiklejohn of Ahmerst to whom MEW gave a Ph.d. He was commencement speaker to us in l923 with my father present. studying him and MEW on the platform.My fatheer remarked, "They will throw him out. He is too liberal for conservative Amherst and even for MHC, but I approve the man." Shortly after that the trustees demanded his resignation,and he went to the University of Chicago.MEW admired him, as did my father , and he took University of Chicago out of the dark ages. It was Mary Woolley who abolished the sororities at MHC and made enemies of many soroity members. In my day Amherst college was exclusive, very fraternity-oriented,very opposed to minority groups, to woman students - to all the things MEW was accepting with the changing times as she was open minded even though ... to required church and chapel, to ten o'clock lights out and to required walks in all weather.Had I been allowed to sing in choir I would have accepted church and chapel but I was NO sponge to sit through monotonous services, to listen to others have the joy of singing or to listen to Woolley read from Bible I knew so well from home training. So my mind would concentrate on her peculiar glasses, on her hairdo, on her ample bosom, on her ramrod figure (ample) and even on her New England manner of speech. To this day I can hear her in chapel saying, "Don't be cheap, girls, unutterably cheap." In my China days and in my Panama days she was always at my shoulder whispering to me "No Sophie be aU.S. ambassadress of how fine American women can be.Do not smoke cigarettes, do not take cocktails, hard drinks, champagne, liquers, do not accept light flirtations, do not go to dances with young Navy officers in Chefoo Club in China under the lanterns or in Panama City 4 when the Fleet is in, and your Jack's ship is at sea AND YOU ARE ALONE IN STRANGE PORTS.Wait for him to come back before you dance, and don't drink even with him.Serve your country in every land - don't be cheap."She never said those things to me directly. But she had preached to me so successfully that I could actually hear her admonish me to be a lady.It is true that in Panama- where everything goes -my Navy friends used to say, "Sophie let your back hair down and don't be so superior and saintly. Join in the fun with the Fleet in and our men out on the survey grounds months on end. Jack was Executive officer in very dangerous surf, but I sat home alone - with young Navy officers anxious to dance and have a few drinks in really harmlesss recreation. But MEW stopped me cold.She probably saved my marriage as Jack never wanted me to go out on the town when he was at sea!It wasa MEW Woolley on a Pullman train from New York city to Springfield Massss Sunday morning June 16, l929 who told Jack Barrett he was too complimentary of all Mount Holyoke girls but not really complimentary of Sophie.She remembered my name four years after she gave me my Master's degree! Jack was then only a friend of mine going to my sister's wedding that day In Hartford, Connecticut. When I told my friend Jack that the lady who smiled and nodded to me in the Pullman was MEW of MHC, he jumped up, asked me to present him to her, and launched into praises of all MHC girls. He had met a number through me in New York City l928-l929. She stopped him cold to tell him it was not complimentary to me for him yo say he could date any MHC girl with equal pleasure. I repeat that was Sunday June 16. He must have gotten a marriage license the next day without proposing, as we were married on the twenty-first, two hours before he shoved off for Manila in the Philippines for nearly three years of sea duty in the Orient! MEW was my Cupid- no doubt of that!I do not believe the handsome redhead ever -5- thought of me as anything but a girl at Columbia working on her Ph.d and going placed in the field of research in psychiatric research with problem children!MEW was the agent who sent me the world over even to Pearl Harbor December 7, l941 and took me forever out of good paying jobs that copuld make me liberal (financially) to MHC. We together could contribute very little. But what publicity we gave MHC - what fine students we sent, because - though my own niece was not admitted by Harreit Newhall who told me that (my niece's ) overall picture (academic record) was not good - my niece went to Connecticut College for Women,met and married a Yale man of great wealth, got her Master's degree at New York School of Social Work, and they contribute nothing to MHC but only to Yale and Connecticut College for Women. I try to interest her in Mount Holyoke College for my two great-niece Jessica and Hilary Price. She says, "no, aunt Sophie,No child of mine will have the heartache the whole family suffered when your college turned me down with NO reason given after .. all led me to believe MHC would be gald to have your niece.She refused me at the last minute, and I would have been out in the cold if Dad (Dr. Isadore Geetter MD) had not gone to see the President of Connecticut College for Women." Her father was Trinity and Jefferson Medical School and director of Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford., father of two surgeons who had gone to Trinity - a tradition in his family and mine! But Jack and I decided Mount Holyoke knew the score and we went right on sending very bright girls there, and one got an Emily Dickinson scholarship - Sally Hey, and one got a $2200 annual scholarship that covered the cost of tuition and board and room and even travel from Boston to South Hadley (Marilyn Donovan). I enclose a letter from Becky Smaltz l923. I had sent it to Anna Mary Wells with Becky's consent but asked Anna Mary to retrurn init to me for Archives. Yesterday a second shorter letter came from Becky, which I sent to Anna Mary in the hope she will eventually send tit to you. She prefers npon-confidenbtrial material go to you rather than her as she has access to all your Woolley data. RuthDouglass l923 has been a generous gold mine of material about Mary Woolley and graciously gave me permisssion to give her many points to Anna Mary Wells and I did before I read in Quarterly that material is collected and indexed by Mount Holyoke archivists. I now tell people to write to you rather than to me or to Anna Mary Wells.And I have asked Anna Mary Wells to give you all my material NOT marked "personal" and ofno relation to Mary Woolley I hope you will thank the Editor of Quarterly for quoting from my letter of July and for her fine editorial comment. She pleased a lot of older alumnae including Becky Smaltz, who wrote methat the whole write-up in Fall Quarterly is fine. Free publicity is expensive for Quarterly, so I hope you receive some valuable new data on Mary Woolley.In respons from letters from me to folks in classes of l935, l936, the reply is "Mary Woolley was away a lot and remote but we respected her and hope someone will in our time write something worthy of her." I do not envy AnnaMary Wells.To please many alumnae of the Woolley era is not an enviable job.There are those who wanted changes and those who resisted changes. I favored changes. I knew Etherl Barbara Dietrich fairly well when she lived in President's Home and was a member of Department of Economics. and Sociology in my student days l919-l923 (I had an Economics course with her), and she was kind to me as an asssitant in thgye department l923-l925.. I understand she lives in a nursing home and is mentally keen (source is Anna Mary Wells).But Anna Mary can find NO address for her. Can college sendm her address to me so I can send her Greetings of the season? Douglass thought Helen Demond had her address, but I get no reply from Demond, who may be away.I shall not intrude ondietrich's right to privacy nor question her about Mary Woolley. I would send her address to Anna Mary if I get it and let her take it from there. Anna Mary [6-10 words obsvure on [photocopy) can't find her address. I do not know how she learned Dietrich is alive and in a rest home and won't guess. My job is done about Mary Woolley and I do not intrude on Doug or Anna Mary Wells. They read Quarterly and love me. Very best wishes for a good collection of data on Mary Woolley, a pioneer in many fields. - Sophie Meranski Barrett Marginal notes - to be fitted in proper places page one archives they are lost but I wrote them in greater detail to Anna Mary Wells and hope you will ask her for them for archives. I now go Emeritus.! p. 2 Betty Gilman Roberts and Ruth Douglass wrote Anna Mary too./Some of my closest frienhds complain the concerts there now are noise! 3. I suppose the present students get the music they want not intended for older alumnae. Better not to perform for them! p. 3 Ruth Douglass would allow Anna Mary Wells to send you her material if you do not have it. I not longer contact anybody about Mary Woolley. McClung did the job perfectly (refers to material in Fall l974 Quarterly) p. 4 Mary Woolley called me by name in l924, when she had NEVER spoken to me or I to her." END letter Sophie to archivist Elaine Trehub.. SOPHIE BARRETT introduction + published letter: "July 18, 1974 [to]Editor Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly South Hadley Massachusetts Several of my classmates (1923) fifty-year class Becky Smaltz, Clara Michal, Ruth Peck Doyle, Marion Lewis Smart, Ruth Douglass, Mim Clarke, Betty Gilman Roberts and I would like to see a new biography of President Mary E Woolley while there are enough older alumni around to contribute first hand recollections. If you could publish the following letter in the Quarterly, it might get things moving to establish more of a Mary Woolley archive. Do you know a qualified person to write a more complete Mary Woolley biography than now exists? Any assistance will be appreciated. sincerely, Sophie Meranski Barrett AB 1923 AM 1925. LETTER TO MOUNT HOLYOKE QUARTERLY - TO THE EDITORS July 18, 1974 This letter is addressed to those older alumnae who had personal contacts with Mary E. Woolley. So far as I know the only major biography of President Woolley is by Professor Jeannette Marks of the Mount Holyoke English department. That book is a very personal memoir of their friendship and correspondence,with useful data on Mary Woolley's family, childhood, travels, and efforts for world peace and women's achievement. If there is a gap in Jeannette Marks's book, I believe it is the extreme brevity of the treatment of Mary Woolley's actual life and work on campus at Mount Holyoke developing the faculty and curriculum and traditions of the college. Several of my classmates have been told that there is not much material about this on file now in the Mount Holyoke Library or Archive. I would urge the older alumnae to write down their memories of personal experiences with Miss Woolley so that posterity will have a reasonably complete picture of one of the most remarkable women in the history of higher education. Maybe class scribes of the years 1900 to 1937 could organize a coordinated effort in cooperation perhaps with the Library, archivist, history or English departments and Alumnae office. I think the memories of pre-1920 alumnae would be exceptionally helpful since they knew Mary Woolley in her prime. Perhaps someone reading this would be willing to undertake a new biography of Mary E. Woolley in book form, a long overdue enterprise. sincerely yours, Sophie Meranski Barrett (Mrs. John B. Barrett) A.B. 1923 AM 1925 - July 18, 1974 - 52 Emmonsdale Road, West Roxbury, Massachusetts 02132 BLACK NOTEBOOK EIGHT p 194-5 {{John Barrett note July 2000 - Following this Anna Mary Wells wrote a 1978 biography "Miss Marks and Miss Woolley", which did not entirely achieve the objective, as it focused on the personal relation of Miss Marks and Miss Woolley and the struggle over Mary Woolley male successor in 1937. Anna Mary was a personal friend of Sophie Ruth Meranski, having sat at her table 1923-4 when Anna Mary was a sophomore and Sophie was junior faculty in Economics and Sociology and statistics lab. They had considerable 1970s correspondence, but a study of the growth of the coooege was not entirely achieved. Over many years from 1940 onward I heard my mother speak most reverently of Miss Woolley, of her talks in chapel and her interest in China and women's opportunity and world peace. I knew she recognized every student and faculty member and played a role in my mother's 1929 marriage "Cupid" my mother said. Mount Holyoke was founded 1837 as a women's seminary with religious emphasis, but grew slowly, though there was an early emphasis on science - the founder Mary Lyon had a particular interest in botany. However, many of the outstanding long-term faculty came to Mount Holyoke in the 1890s before Mary Woolley in 1901. Organist music teacher Mr. Hammond was one, and I think biologist Cornelia Clapp and chemist Emma Carr - I will check sources and perhaps add names here. On the other hand Amy Hewes arrived 1907 early in the Woolley tenure and put her personal stamp upon the large Economic and Sociology Department, which was the largest department,along with the English and English Literature Departments, which were separate. There was a strong demand for women's education, and a limited supply of good colleges, and Mount Holyoke had strong trustees and local business and community support and active alumni. Women who wanted academic careers in those decades pretty much had to forego marriage and families. Mary Woolley became one of the ten most admired women in American, a memorable public speaker, stressing opportunities for women. In the 1930s she began to experience an age gap, and the Great Depression affected college financing, and more women were looking to combine marriage and career or simply get general education in preparation for family life. After 1937 Mount Holyoke had three men presidents Ham, Gettell, and David Truman, who were popular and raised funds, but some alumnae particularly career working women were concerned about a "glass ceiling" problem, since all seven of the leading eastern women's college had men presidents in the 1970s. The situation was balanced in 1978 when an alumna, the distinguished classicist Elizabeth Topham Kennan became President, which pleased many of Sophie's 1923 friends.