Betty Nelson, age fifty-two, had just completed her first two weeks as Purdue’s dean of students when her predecessors, Beverley Stone, age seventy-one, and Barbara Cook, age fifty-eight, invited her to lunch at the white two-story colonial they shared on Western Drive in West Lafayette, Indiana. Betty thought she merely was invited to a nice lunch with the women who had become like family since she first worked in the Office of the Dean of Women twenty years before. Bev and Barb said the meal would be “something small, just a little salad.” And, as an afterthought, “Oh, Helen and Dorothy might be there, too.”
Neighbors and friends had nicknamed Western Drive “Deans’ Row.” Down the block from the “Cook-Stone” home, Dorothy Stratton, age eighty-eight, Purdue’s first full-time dean of women, shared a contemporary house with her successor, Helen Schleman, age eighty-five. The four former Purdue deans lived their retirement years, houses apart, along the edge of the emerald bunkers and bays of Purdue’s North Golf Course (today named Kampen Course).
Betty arrived and noticed that the deans were dressed in summer suits, pastel skirts, and crisp blouses. Helen wore her gold Purdue pendant watch around her neck. Dangling from Bev’s ears were her signature faux pearl earrings. The table in the breakfast nook with a panoramic view of the golf course was set in style, and the women were in high spirits. Celestial Chicken Salad was served nestled in crisp lettuce cups.
Celestial Chicken Salad was a recipe handed down to Barb from her mother, Thelma Wood. Thelma told her daughter it was a dish to be served when one wanted to impress. The chicken salad was aptly named, for it was heavenly, indeed. The five deans sat at the kitchen table feasting and chatting. The lineage of their common chosen professions was nearly palpable.
CELESTIAL CHICKEN SALAD
Dice cooked chicken (always white meat, of course). Toss lightly with celery, whole mushrooms (whole, not sliced), toasted pecans, fried bacon, mayonnaise (must be Hellman’s—this is important), sour cream (not low fat), and lemon juice. Garnish the luncheon plate with halved cherry tomatoes.
Dessert was served, and at the invitation of Barb and Bev, Dave Umberger, Purdue’s senior photographer, arrived. The women knew Dave loved Key lime pie, and Bev’s southern recipe was a refreshing favorite. It was then that the reason for the gathering was revealed. Barb pulled out a tattered brown leather Bible.
Betty watched, hands folded and resting on her poplin skirt, still thinking she was simply there for a pleasant noontime meal. She loved to hear these women’s stories, some captivating and new, others familiar and deep-rooted like family fables. Betty sat waiting, glancing at the old book in Barb’s hand. It was then that the four past women deans shared with the new woman dean their long-standing secret—the tale of the deans’ Bible.
CAROLYN SHOEMAKER, A FARAWAY LOOK
CAROLYN ERNESTINE SHOEMAKER possessed a Bible, an American Standard. The cover was supple, cocoa-hued leather. The end of the word “HOLY,” embossed with gold lettering on the spine, curled cheerily upward. The spine read:
HOLY BIBLE
REFERENCES
SELF-PRONOUNCING
NELSON
The term “References” indicated that throughout the text, the Bible contained mentions of other passages of Scripture on the same subject. A “Self-Pronouncing Bible” is one where difficult names are broken into syllables and accented by diacritical marks to help the reader pronounce them correctly. “Nelson” referred to Thomas Nelson Bibles, one of the oldest Bible publishers in the world.
Perhaps the Bible was given to Carolyn as a gift when she was baptized or when she graduated from high school and entered Purdue University. Carolyn graduated with a bachelor of science degree in 1888, less than twenty years after the University opened. Two of her classmates were George Ade, an author and humorist, and John T. McCutcheon, the “Dean of American Cartoonists” and Pulitzer Prize winner.
Carolyn was quiet, composed, and cheerful. People said she had perfect poise. Mrs. Mindwell Crampton Wilson, in “A Tribute to Dean Shoemaker” during Carolyn’s memorial service, said that she “loved truth, seeking it above material things.” She had an open mind; she valued friends, loved her two brothers, Jesse and Charles, lived simply, and found joy in work. One of the few photos of Carolyn shows her looking wistfully through her wire glasses, her dark hair in a finger wave, a popular style of the time, with a long strand of pearls accenting her dark, scooped-neck dress with lace sleeves.
Carolyn was a student in the first class Stanley Coulter taught after he arrived at Purdue to teach zoology. Later, he would become Purdue’s first dean of men. Coulter spoke fondly of Carolyn, the student he would grow to know more deeply as a colleague in the following decades. During Carolyn’s memorial service, in a speech titled “Dean Shoemaker, The Woman,” Coulter said: “I recognized in her case I was to deal with an exceptional personality. She had at all times a faraway look in her eyes, which only the years interpreted to me.”
Emma Montgomery McRae was a professor of English literature at Purdue who nurtured Carolyn’s love of language. The two women had studied together and shared a trip to Europe. Carolyn said that Emma was the greatest influence of her adult life.
Emma was a solid, broad-faced woman with hair loosely piled atop her head. She had been a high school teacher and principal in Muncie, Indiana, and she was the first woman in the state to be chosen as president of the State Teachers Association.
A group of women created the Muncie McRae Club in Emma’s honor in 1894 for “intellectual and cultural pursuit” of “education in art, science, literature, and music.” This was during a time when many women did not have the opportunity for education, and the club was an answer to that academic void. The club also discussed social concerns such as suffrage, child labor, and race relations. A program booklet contained the motto, “Study to be what you wish to seem” with a tribute to Emma, “our honorary member—eminent as teacher and lecturer, a woman of rare character and great influence.”
The McRae Club history goes on to describe Emma as a woman who “… filled her niche in life to the fullest, and with it all, remained so gentle, so plain, so unassuming and yet so dignified. Wherever she walked, people were wont to say, ‘A queen has passed this way.’ [Her] lectures were always masterpieces, her travelogues were unsurpassed [and] couched in the King’s best English.”
When Purdue President James H. Smart hired her in 1887, Emma became the “unofficial” dean of women. She was known as “Mother McRae,” and because there were few female faculty members and a small number of female students, she served as a counselor on every academic and personal problem these students experienced. Emma epitomized high character, delivered masterful speeches, and garnered immense respect. With Emma, the die was cast.
Ladies Hall was the epicenter of every academic and social activity for Purdue’s female students and where all of the home economics classes were held. In the early years, home economics was the “foot in the door” to higher education for women. Often, females were “not allowed” to take other courses seen as “unwomanly.” It was the rare woman who bucked the stereotypes and took engineering or agriculture.
The building also was a residence hall where the women and Emma lived. Ladies Hall was a striking redbrick building with imposing twin towers. An iron fire escape wove a path from a third-floor arched window onto a veranda rooftop, then down a ladder that scaled the side of the building to the lawn. The fire escape was a popular place for photographs, with women students posing in a line on each stair step or clinging to the ladder, smiling, in their hats,