Dottie and Jack: An Epistolary Friendship
“Schöner Bruder,” “Ma Chère Petite,” “Sonny Boy,” Honey Child,” these are just a few of the salutations used by Dorothy and Warren “Jack” Wirtz in their letters to each other. Although their greetings may have been somewhat tongue in cheek, Dorothy and Jack’s correspondence reveals a relationship full of common interests, good humor, and affection. What helps make this so immediately apparent is that Wirtz kept her family correspondence separate from the rest. Additionally, she transcribed over 1000 pages of it, ensuring its legibility. In fact, the order of and attention Dorothy paid to her correspondence gives insight into how she prioritized her relationships and organized her life.
When I began to process this collection, I conducted a quick survey of its boxes and determined that Wirtz’s correspondence and diaries comprised over half of it. Normally, processing these portions of collections for use would involve a straightforward, chronological order. But, Wirtz was a little more complicated than that. She kept letters from her parents and her brother separate from her letters from friends and colleagues, and kept correspondence with students in a box on its own. Additionally, she kept postcards from her family distinct from all other correspondence.
Although the original letters remained, Wirtz also transcribed many of them, occasionally editorializing. After Jack’s “Hello. Hawaii?” she explained, “This must have been a greeting heard frequently on radio.” In a 1934 letter she had written to her brother about the notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd, “At last you are in no immediate danger. ‘Pretty
Boy’ Floyd has been killed.” Next to her transcription of that letter she wrote in red pen “Mother worried about him being at large while Jack hitchhiked to various places.”
Recognizing Wirtz’s arrangement of her letters as intentional, I chose not reorganize them, but instead followed the archival principle of original order. Except in cases where letters are misfiled, I maintained Wirtz’s order rather than imposing an artificial one. Not only is this simpler for me as a processor, but it gives future researchers the benefit of seeing Wirtz’s correspondence as she did, with the spheres of her life distinct from each other. Dr. Wirtz, professor of French is stern, incisive, and businesslike. But the letters of “Dot” to her family are more playful. It’s a delight to see her brother play right along without interruption. The siblings sprinkled their letters with French and German, closed them with phrases like “all agog” and “d’amour,” and generally infused their prose with a mock formality.
“Would it derange you at all if we drop in on Sunday?” Dorothy asked her brother one September while he was living in Grinnell.
“Derange me?” he responded the next day, “Why I should say not. I’ll be tickled to have you come.”
Born one year apart, the siblings were as close in age as they were in everything else. Both pursued higher education, wrote poetry, spoke multiple languages, and traveled abroad. Dorothy outlived her brother by over 40 years. But you can conjure up parts of their relationship by traversing their correspondence, just as Dorothy might have each time she sat down to transcribe one of their letters.
Dr. Dorothy Wirtz, PhD: A Woman “In the Profession”
“Gentlemen,
As you had hoped, I have found your questionnaire interesting to answer. However, I cannot refrain from expressing my resentment at the phrasing of certain statements, which seem to me to reflect discrimination on the basis of sex.”
So begins Dr. Dorothy Wirtz’s 1969 letter to The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. She followed her opening statement by citing precisely when the Commission assumed that the professors they surveyed would be men. She told them, quite directly, that “Women are people, too, and even manage to exist in the profession.” By 1969, Wirtz knew about existing in “the profession” as a woman, and had been a professor of French at Arizona State University for 10 years.
Dorothy Wirtz had been an outstanding student with a talent for writing and linguistics. While still an undergraduate at Culver-Stockton College, she won the Vachel Lindsay prize in poetry. After transferring to the University of Iowa, her letters home displayed focus and diligence concerning her studies in French and German. She packed her bags for the University of Wisconsin almost immediately upon graduation. There, after writing a dissertation on Flaubert, she received both a Master’s and a PhD in French by 1944.
The path from school girl in Keokuk, Iowa to doctoral candidate in Madison, Wisconsin was exceedingly unusual for a woman in the 1940s. According to a National Science Foundation report from 2006, women received only 27% of doctorate degrees from 1920 – 1999, and 43% of those were issued in the 1990s. As an aspiring professor of French in a field dominated by men, Wirtz must have known she did not exactly meet prospective employers’ expectations.
This fact was made clear when, after a few years at the University of Minnesota, she tried to join her parents and brother in Arizona. In 1950, Wirtz’s brother, Warren, sent her a list of colleges where she could apply including two Catholic institutions, jokingly adding “if you’d buy a rosary.” Dorothy noted her progress on the job search in pencil with check marks, but had no luck. A friend of Warren’s made inquiries on Dorothy’s behalf but confessed in a letter “The trouble was simply (with some question about ‘research’) that there was not a position open in the upper brackets to a woman. I doubt very much that they would appoint a woman assistant professor in our department. She probably knows this.” He went on to suggest that she try “various junior colleges” in Los Angeles. The job market wasn’t just tight. It was practically impassable.
Without a job offer and only vague plans to teach, Dorothy Wirtz moved to Arizona. For several years she worked outside of academia, eventually serving as the Deputy State Treasurer of Arizona. But the tenacious Wirtz never gave up and in 1959, she secured a position at Arizona State University. She was four years from retirement when the Carnegie Commission sent her their biased survey. Although she did not shy away from making a political point in her letter, true to her field of study, she ended her letter by suggesting that the impersonal pronoun would have been the best choice linguistically and wished them well in their survey.
Thurgood, Lori, Golladay, Mary J., and Hill, Susan T. “U.S. Doctorates in the 20th Century.” National Science Foundation Special Report (2006). http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06319/pdf/nsf06319.pdf.
Public Talk March 24, 2016 at 4:00PM “Jewish Women and Community Life in Iowa”
WE DID SO MUCH BEYOND THE HOME
JEWISH WOMEN AND COMMUNITY LIFE IN IOWA
A talk by Jeannette Gabriel, Graduate Research Assistant, Jewish Women in Iowa Project, Iowa Women’s Archives
Join us to hear the untold stories of Jewish women’s involvement in community activities throughout Iowa history, whether in cities with robust Jewish populations or in small towns where only one or two Jewish families lived.
Thursday, March 24, 2016 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Iowa Women’s Archives, 3rd Floor, Main Library, University of Iowa
Reception at 4:00 p.m. — Talk will begin at 4:30 p.m.
RSVP lib-women@uiowa.edu Questions? 319-335-5068
Save this event to your profile on the University of Iowa Calendar of Events.
Presented by the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries in celebration of Women’s History Month.
Jeannette Gabriel is a PhD candidate in the department of Teaching and Learning, College of Education. Her dissertation is ‘I Don’t See Race’: Examining History Teachers’ Use of Images through the Teaching Amerian History (TAH) Grant to Study African-American History”. The Jewish Women in Iowa Project has helped develop her understanding of historical memory and consciousness. Jeannette is deeply grateful and appreciative for the warmth and graciousness with which I have been received by the Jewish families and communities that have become part of this project.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact (name of person or department) in advance at (telephone number).
Meet Dorothy Wirtz
A few years after the Iowa Women’s Archives opened, Dr. Dorothy Wirtz [1915 – 2013] donated some pieces of her college years at the University of Iowa. Dorothy Wirtz’s 1997 gift to the IWA includes her academic articles and a selection of her poetry. However, the papers mostly concern the exploits of Wirtz and her brother, Warren, as students at the University of Iowa in the late 1930s. Both French majors, the siblings balanced classes with extracurricular activities, worried about finances, and wrote home frequently. Dorothy’s letters are especially candid about her determined penny-pinching, and reflect the struggle of affording college during the Great Depression. “Do you realize,” Dorothy wrote to her mother in 1937, “that I am going to be able to maintain myself for the entire year and also probably pay Ed back within the year? What a woman! After this, remember that I am not to be discouraged in anything I want to do.” Her letters also describe an active social life with parties for French and German students and even seeing “the much talked of Black Angel,” a statue at the local Oakland Cemetery rumored to be cursed.
Born in Keokuk, Iowa and a 1939 graduate of the University of Iowa, Wirtz left her home state for an impressive and lengthy academic career. She and her brother Warren “Jack” Wirtz, a composer, led lives that reflected their artistic passions. Professor of French, pianist, published poet, and deputy treasurer of the state of Arizona, Wirtz’s life was full, but her single box of papers at the Iowa Women’s Archives did not match the extent of her accomplishments. We know that the Wirtz siblings made their home together in Phoenix, Arizona from the 1950s until Warren’s death in 1972. But after 1939, the correspondence and their collection nearly stops. Aside from a few poems, compositions, and papers, Dorothy and “Jack” Wirtz might as well have disappeared.
But th
at is about to change. Dorothy Wirtz bequeathed the IWA approximately 12 linear feet of materials: letters, diaries, and artifacts from an extraordinary life. The materials in these 16 boxes should fill in the gaps, giving a more complete picture of the lives of two incredible University of Iowa alumni. Wirtz’s gift included enough funds to hire me as the Dorothy Wirtz Graduate Research Assistant. This year, I will process these papers for researcher use and share my progress on the IWA blog and tumblr. Stay tuned for updates!
— Annie Tunnicliff, Dorothy Wirtz Graduate Research Assistant
Two Women’s History Month Events in March
Mujeres Latinas: Every Woman Has a Story
Saturday, March 5, 2016, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Join us in the Iowa Women’s Archives to learn about the rich history of Latinas, their families, and organizations in Iowa.
~Bring a memento from your past to share with the group.
~Learn how to preserve it.
Refreshments will be served!
Iowa Women’s Archives, 3rd Floor Main Library, University of Iowa
RSVP: lib-women@uiowa.edu Questions? Call 319-335-5068
Presented by the Iowa Women’s Archives and Kirkwood Community College
Latino Americans: 500 Years of History has been made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.
See this event on the University of Iowa Calendar of Events
We Did So Much Beyond the Home:
Jewish Women and Community Life in Iowa
Thursday, March 24, 2016, Reception at 4 p.m., Talk will begin at 4:30 p.m.
A talk by Jeannette Gabriel, graduate research assistant, for the Jewish Women in Iowa Project
Join us to hear the untold stories of Jewish women’s involvement in community activities throughout Iowa history, whether in cities with robust Jewish populations or in small towns where only one or two Jewish families lived.
Iowa Women’s Archives, 3rd Floor Main Library, University of Iowa.
RSVP: lib-women@uiowa.edu Questions? Call 319-335-5068
See this event on the University of Iowa Calendar of Events.
Accommodations
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa–sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the sponsoring department or contact person listed in advance of the event.
January 28: Injections, Itches, and Institutions: The Experience of Rural Medicine in Iowa, 1910-1950
The University of Iowa History of Medicine Society and the Iowa Women’s Archives
invite you to hear:
Injections, Itches, and Institutions:
The Experience of Rural Medicine in Iowa, 1910-1950
Jennifer Gunn
History of Medicine Endowed Professor
Director of the Institute for Advanced Study
University of Minnesota
Thursday, January 28, 2016, 5:30-6:30
Medical Education Research Facility (MERF) 2117
Free and Open to the Public
When Clara Skott, an Iowa farm wife living in South Dakota during the 1918 influenza pandemic, received a series of injections to stave off the flu, the hypodermic needle was a symbol of modern medical practice. Iowa doctors’ ledger books show “hypos” were a staple of their treatment repertoire. What was in the hypo was not always clear. Clara was given a homegrown influenza vaccine; other patients received barbiturates, vita-mins, or placebos. $1.00 for an injection was beyond the reach of many Iowans. This talk explores country doctors’ practices and the range of ways rural Iowans handled health issues in the first half of the 20th century.
If you are a person with a disability requiring an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Donna Hirst, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences (donna-hirst@uiowa.edu), 335-9154. The UI History of Medicine Society website is located at: http://hosted.lib.uiowa.edu/histmed/
Piñatas of Christmas Past
By Vitalina Nova, Preservation Projects Librarian
Season’s greetings from the Iowa Women’s Archives! This is the time of treats and parties. Seen below are photographs of children in the 1960s – partaking of all the joys of holiday parties.
These images come from the Iowa Women’s Archives LULAC (League of United Latino American Citizens) Council 10 records. Active since 1959, LULAC Council 10 has made great progress in advocating for the human, civil, and labor rights of the Latino communities in the Quad Cities’ area from the very beginning of its history. In the 1960s, Council 10’s priorities included education and activism that led to fair housing and inclusion, as well as cultural and social programming like its annual holiday party featured here. Notable achievements from the 1960s era included working with other activists to secure fair housing legislation, raising money to support scholarships for further education, and advocating for a full-time director of the Davenport Human Relations Commission. Iowa LULAC members worked with other civil rights organizations to form the Quad City Grape Boycott Committee to support the boycott of California table grapes led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
Today, LULAC Council 10 continues to advocate for social justice and enjoys a wide range of social activities. For the coming election year, Council 10 has created initiatives to encourage political involvement, such as mock caucuses to educate voters on the unique political involvement privileges that allow Iowans to shape their parties’ agendas. One of just five Iowa chapters of LULAC at its inception, Council 10 is now one of 11 chapters in the state. The Iowa Women’s Archives’ LULAC Council 10 records span the years from 1959 to 2009.
See the finding aid for more information at IWA’s website.
Iowa Digital Library: Mujeres Latinas Digital Collection
Iowa Women’s Archives: Guide to the LULAC Council 10 records
Iowa Women’s Archives: Mujeres Latinas Project
Many thanks to Jen Wolfe for the animated GIFs.
Remembering Bob McCown
My mentor and friend Bob McCown, retired Head of the Special Collections Department in the University of Iowa Libraries, died on March 31st of this year. To remember Bob on what would have been his 76th birthday–November 21st–I share the eulogy I gave at his memorial service last spring.
Robert A. McCown (1939-2015)
Bob McCown was the first person I met in Iowa when I came for my job interview in 1992. On that April day twenty-three years ago, he was waiting at the bottom of the escalator in the Cedar Rapids Airport holding a sign that read: “Iowa Women’s Archives.” I was full of wonder about this new place that might become my home—amused at the scale of the airport, and charmed by the fact that we were driving past cornfields as soon as we left the parking lot. All during that drive to Iowa City, Bob told me about the history of Iowa—how it was settled, the Mormons who passed through with their handcarts, and other stories I have long since forgotten. What stayed with me was the sense of this kind, soft-spoken man who had such deep knowledge of and affection for his home state.
Bob was Head of the Department of Special Collections at that time. He had earned a master’s degree in history from the University of Iowa in 1963, taught high school history for a few years, and earned his library degree from Illinois before returning to Iowa in 1970 for a position in the University Libraries.
Bob was hired as Manuscripts Librarian at a time when the new fields of social history, ethnic history, and women’s history were emerging. He began traveling across Iowa in the early 1970s, intent on acquiring sources that would make this new scholarship possible. But the recent student demonstrations in Iowa City had roused suspicion about the University of Iowa. So Bob shined his shoes, cut his hair, and put on a coat and tie to allay the fears of outstate residents. In his quiet and considerate way, he tried to persuade potential donors of the significance of their papers to history. He modeled his collecting on progressive institutions such as the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. In addition to the usual political papers, he sought the records of environmental groups, social action organizations, and women. Sometimes he was successful, other times not. But the seeds he planted in those early years continued to bear fruit five years later, ten years later, or even two or three decades later.
Over the decades, Bob built a solid foundation for the study of Iowa history. He acquired farmers’ diaries, Civil War letters, merchants’ account books and railroad records. He solicited manuscripts by Iowa authors, and built on the already strong literary holdings of the department. Special Collections has continued to build on the groundwork Bob laid over three decades.
Of course, collection development was not Bob’s only work. He organized symposia, published articles, and edited the journal Books at Iowa and the newsletter of the Ruth Suckow Association. (He had a particular affinity for Suckow, not least because she hailed from his hometown of Hawarden.) Bob contributed to the archival profession through his service on the Iowa Historical Records Advisory Board and his longtime involvement with the Midwest Archives Conference. And he brought history home by presenting talks on a various topics to local organizations and clubs.
But I keep coming back to Bob’s efforts to preserve Iowa history, because I believe that was his greatest achievement. Bob’s vision of what Iowa history could be led him to seek out those aspects that that had been neglected by archivists and historians alike. When women’s historians began asking for sources in the ‘70s, Bob combed the Special Collections stacks searching for documents by and about women.
And then he went a step further. He began consciously seeking out women’s history. He acquired the papers of Minnette Doderer, the League of Women Voters of Iowa, and the Iowa Nurses Association. He had the foresight to contact Mary Louise Smith before she rose through the ranks to become the first female chair of the Republican National Committee; when Smith finished her term she made good on her promise to send her extensive papers to the University of Iowa, about which Bob was especially proud.
When Louise Noun suggested in the early ‘70s that the University Libraries beef up its holdings of women’s historical writings, Bob arranged to meet with her in Des Moines, initiating a relationship that would eventually lead to the creation of the Louise Noun – Mary Louise Smith Iowa Women’s Archives at the University Libraries.
Bob’s careful plans for the archives, together with the papers of women politicians, artists, nurses, and lawyers he had gathered over two decades formed the core of the Archives when it opened in 1992. Equally important was the support and guidance he gave me.
When I began work as the first curator of the Archives, I was pretty green, especially when it came to donor relations and collection development. But Bob was a great supervisor! He taught me everything, from how to write a letter and make a cold call to a potential donor, to the more mundane details—like how to get a car from the motor pool and fill out the countless travel forms. And then there were the finer points he’d learned from his own experience. For example, when you’re out in the field and driving a University vehicle, do not have dinner at a supper club—even if it’s the only restaurant in town—because someone is sure to notice the car with the University seal parked out front and report this “inappropriate” activity by a state employee.
Bob guided me with gentle nudges and taught me by example, as when we visited donors together. Our weekly meetings always included some family talk, a shared laugh or two, and some musings about the topic of the day. I was grateful to have such an empathetic boss who treated me with respect and was interested not only in what I did on the job but in my family and my life outside work. Through the years I worked with Bob, I learned a great deal from him, not only about history, but about how to treat one’s colleagues and staff.
Bob contributed immeasurably to Iowa history but also to the lives of those of us fortunate enough to be around him. Bob’s knowledge of Iowa history was broader than the Missouri, deeper than the Mississippi, and a lot more solid than the Loess Hills. Iowa history is richer for his contributions. And all of us who knew him are richer for his friendship and his affection.
–Kären M. Mason, April 4, 2015
Kerber Fund Recipient Uncovers Women’s History
Say hello to Hannah Dudley-Shotwell, a scholar who is visiting the Archives this week, thanks to assistance from the Linda and Richard Kerber Fund for Research in the Iowa Women’s Archives. Hannah is one of the first recipients of the grant, which was inaugurated last spring. She’s a doctoral candidate in History at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and is conducting research on self-help in the women’s health movement from 1970 to the start of the 21st century.
Hannah describes her research as revisiting an area of women’s activism that many assumed ended after Roe v. Wade. She argues that, while the early focus of self-help in the women’s health movement was on gynecology, after Roe v. Wade many self-help activists transformed their work, incorporating fertility consciousness, donor insemination, and holistic medicine.
Hannah’s had a great time here at IWA! Records like those of the Emma Goldman Clinic will provide important primary material for several chapters of her dissertation, and she was delighted to find material on yet another clinic in the Carol Hodne papers. Hannah describes the many newsletters and publications on women’s health that have been collected and even produced by some of the clinics she’s researched here, which played an important role in educating women about their own health.
None of this would have been possible without the help of the Linda and Richard Kerber Fund. It was this fund that first drew Hannah’s attention to our archives; little did she know how much material she would find here! We’ve been enjoying getting to know Hannah this week, and look forward to seeing where her project goes.