The Deans' Bible. Angie Klink

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СКАЧАТЬ and it was Elliott who arranged her salary and accommodations in the Women’s Residence Hall. Her son Bill was a student at Purdue during this time. When Lillian was told she would be working on the same campus as Amelia Earhart, Lillian said, “I’m so glad, because I’m one of her ardent admirers.”

      Long before she, herself, became famous, Amelia was a fan of the Gilbreths. She had pasted a photograph of the couple in her 1924 scrapbook.

      For two years, Lillian spent three weeks of every month during the academic year at Purdue. Lillian’s daughter Martha, age twenty-nine, ran the family on a day-to-day basis back home. Lillian supervised from afar. She once wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt on Purdue notepaper asking if her daughter’s middle school class could visit the White House during a field trip to Washington. Eleanor instructed her secretary to invite the class to tea. While at Purdue, Lillian also acted as a consultant at Duncan Electric Company in Lafayette. This was the company founded by Thomas Duncan, who gave the funds to build Duncan Hall, which had been the vision of Dean of Women Carolyn Shoemaker.

      Dorothy said that Lillian’s hands were never still. “She was always knitting, crocheting, or tatting something for someone’s birthday or anniversary.” She kept an extensive birthday book and sent notes to an astonishing number of people. According to Dorothy, Lillian had a great capacity for caring. Perhaps the loss of a child and a husband, and loving a dozen children had increased her empathetic ability. Dorothy said, “Most of us have, I think, a limited capacity as to the number of people we can care for. Dr. G. seemed to be able to take a personal interest in and care for many. She could reach across educational barriers, social barriers, race barriers, sex barriers, age barriers, and find common ground. Some of my experience was too personal to be shared with the public. I am thinking of how Dr. G. visited my father when he was in his final illness.”

      Amelia Earhart garnered much attention in the Women’s Residence Hall where Lillian also resided. Dorothy said that Amelia was “a glamorous figure to all, especially to the students,” and Lillian had a “sense of balance” about it. She continued, “Dr. G. took Amelia’s popularity in stride, went her own quiet way influencing many lives by her interest and wise counsel.” As director of the Women’s Residence Hall, Helen Schleman was in the right place at the right time to play the gracious hostess to two of the most prominent, enchanting women of the time. Helen said of Lillian: “Those of us who were lucky enough to be her fellow residents, or work closely with her on campus every time she came to Lafayette, loved her not so much because she was great, but because she was appealingly human.”

      Lillian would rise early in the morning and send postcards to her children before breakfast. Students learned that they could enjoy time with her if they, too, arrived when the dining room doors opened at 6:30 a.m. Nearly all of her life she walked a mile a day. If Lillian met a student who wanted to talk to her in the Purdue Memorial Union, she said, “Walk with me. I need to pace my daily number of steps.” Lillian walked much, for she never learned to drive.

      Dorothy talked of Lillian’s “intellectual curiosity” and the variety of departments she influenced on campus: “I think she probably saw a wider cross section of people than anyone else on campus. She met with professors from the School of Management, other Schools of Engineering, School of Home Economics, Division of Education, Department of Psychology, and with staff from the residence halls, Office of the Dean of Women, Placement Services for Men and for Women, and goodness knows how many others. At the same time, she kept up contacts with women’s groups in the town and often would speak with them and to them.”

      It was not always easy for Lillian as the only female in Purdue’s male engineering environment. She collaborated with a younger professor, Marvin Mundel, who was an abrasive character. He repeatedly attempted to embarrass Lillian in front of other engineers, calling on her to complete mathematical calculations. Math was not her strong suit. Frank had always done the calculations needed for their motion studies. However, there may have been more personal reasons as to why Mundel caused difficulty for Lillian. She had liked Mundel’s first wife and was affronted by his divorce. Yet, on the whole, Lillian’s Purdue experience was a happy, successful one—so much so, that she donated her papers to Purdue University, where today the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Collection is archived.

      Lillian was an ambassador of feminine knowledge, compassion, and punctuality. A. A. Potter described Lillian as “a master of the art of conducting free discussion until mutual understanding was achieved.” Her natural gift of free discussion was recognized on a grand scale, as she would serve on presidential committees during the presidential administrations of Hoover, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. The committees included civil defense, war production, women in the services, aging, and rehabilitation and employment of the physically disabled. These committees and Lillian’s knowledge gathered therein would influence the lives she touched, from students to women like Dorothy and Helen.

      Decades later, Helen gave a speech to honor Lillian at the 1978 Lafayette YWCA Salute to Women dinner. Lillian had passed away six years earlier. Helen said:

      To me, one of the characteristics of a “good” feminist is strong support of other women. Too many of the relatively few successful women in the past have had a tendency to shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh, any woman can make it if she’s just good enough and is willing to work.” Dr. Gilbreth did not hold with this. She knew that it took caring, understanding, and support on the part of women who had arrived in the professional and work world of men to make opportunities for other women—if very many were ever to be successful at breaking the age old barriers. She understood “sisterhood” long before it was popular.

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       LADIES’ AGREEMENT

      FOR WOMEN, PURDUE WAS FIRING on all cylinders at the end of the 1930s. The synergy of Amelia Earhart, Lillian Gilbreth, Dorothy Stratton, and Helen Schleman beckoned bright-eyed young women who wanted to be a part of the internal combustion that was propelling women forward.

      By 1937, Dorothy and her parents lived at 1007 Ravinia Road in West Lafayette. During Dorothy’s tenure, the enrollment of women at Purdue tripled. Dorothy recalled, “Dr. Elliott brought Amelia Earhart and Doctor Gilbreth to the campus, which was simply overwhelming. I have never known exactly why he did, and I’m not sure that he knew, but he did and it was great. It was wonderful. These two had a tremendous impact on all of us. For a lack of something better to put them in, they were attached to the Office of the Dean of Women. This was a great treat for me.”

      Amelia and Lillian were concerned that there was no bachelor of arts degree offered at Purdue. Many women who came to Purdue in the 1930s wanted what would basically be a liberal arts degree, but for the most part, they were pigeonholed into home economics. Some female students were enrolled in the School of Science, and just a couple of women majored in engineering or agriculture. There was no bachelor of arts degree offered at Purdue because of a “gentlemen’s agreement.” Decades later, Dorothy explained: “At the time, David Ross, president of the Board of Trustees, told me at least fifty times that there was a gentlemen’s agreement with Indiana University that Purdue would never give the BA degree. I still don’t know what happened. When I tried to find out who the gentlemen were who made this decision, I never could find out, but of course gentlemen stick by their decisions.”

      The “gentlemen’s agreement” was an understanding between Indiana University and Purdue University regarding the academic degrees each would offer. Indiana, located in the southern part of the state, would offer a liberal arts curriculum, while Purdue, as the land-grant university in the northwest part of the Hoosier landscape, would offer the sciences, engineering, and agriculture.

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