RAMble, the University Libraries' blog

The latest library exhibit highlights The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, which the Frederick Douglass Institute (FDI) of West Chester University has chosen as the focus of the One Book program at WCU for 2017-2018. 

The book is an extensively researched, reflective first-person work in which Skloot traces the fate of a sample of cancer cells taken in the 1950s from Henrietta Lacks, an impoverished African-American woman, without her consent. The cell line grown from this sample, known as HeLa, became the basis for a huge amount of scientific research as well as a source of profit, while even Lacks’ name was unknown within the scientific community. Intertwined is the history of the Lacks family, before and after her death, and their experiences of poverty, racism, illness, imprisonment, and abuse. This gripping book connects the United State’s history of racism with bioethics, medical ethics, and scientific research.

In Spring 2017, the book was adopted by several courses in the English Department, and engagements across campus and in the broader community are planned for the coming months.

A visit with two members of the Lacks family, Shirley Lacks and Veronica Robinson, will take place on Wednesday, September 27, at 7 pm in the Emilie K. Asplundh Concert Hall. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved at the box office on the ground floor of Sykes Student Union or online at wcupatix.com. 

More information about upcoming events is available on the FDI webpage. 

Gertrude Alice Dunn, known as Gertie, was born in September 30, 1933 in Sharon Hill, PA to Victor and Gertude Dunn. After high school, she was a shortstop for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1951 to 1954, and played for the Battle Creek Belles and the South Bend Blue Sox. She was Rookie of the Year in 1952 and was fourteenth among players in the league in career batting average at .261.

After the League folded in 1954, Dunn attended West Chester University, which did not have a women’s intercollegiate baseball or softball team. Instead, she excelled at lacrosse and field hockey. She majored in Health and Physical Education, and graduated in 1960.

After graduation, Dunn played on the US national teams for both lacrosse and field hockey. She also served as an umpire for 20 years in the Philadelphia Women’s Lacrosse Association, and worked as a physical education teacher for many years.

She was inducted into the U.S. Field Hockey Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2007, and in 2012 she was the first lacrosse player inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame.

She passed away at the age of 71 on September 29, 2004, when the single-engine aircraft she was piloting crashed shortly after take-off.

Ten West Chester co-eds named to All-College Hockey Team. First Row: Gertrude Dunn,
second team; Janet Bickel, second team; Margaret Walter, second team. Second Row:
Nancy Hubbard, forth team; Elizabeth Wolle, second team; Barbara Clyde, second team;
Patricia Melrath, third team. Not Pictured: Joan Waterfield, second team; Marguerite
Crowley, fourth team; Shiela McHugh, forth team.

Updated 8/11/2021 by Christian Sammartino & Jenna Bossert, for accuracy and clarification.

Another notable woman to include in West Chester University’s Women’s History Month is Dorothy Ramsey, Assistant Professor of English, West Chester State College, 1928-1961.

Miss Ramsey was born in New York City on December 29, 1896 to her parents, Rebekah Evans Roberts, and noted artist Milne Ramsey.  Miss Ramsey received her Bachelor’s degree (1919), and later her Master’s degree, from the University of Pennsylvania.

She began her teaching career at West Chester State Normal School in 1928 as an English professor.  During her 33-year distinguished career at West Chester, Miss Ramsey was the faculty advisor to the student literary magazine, ”The Purple and Gold.”  Later, she was the faculty advisor to the new student newspaper, the “Quad Angles,” which is now known as “The Quad.”

Dorothy Ramsey was also very active in the college’s dramatic programs.  She wrote, directed, designed, and made costumes for many student shows.  She was also a distinguished author, playwright, and poet.  Several of her works can be found in the stacks of the Francis Harvey Green Library.

A Shakespearean scholar, in 1952, Professor Ramsey became the curator of the college’s recently acquired Shakespeare Folios.  She wrote a very informative guide for the college’s Shakespeare Folios that is still used today.

1961, Miss Ramsey retired from the college.  She was one of the most respected and popular faculty members among colleagues and students alike.  In honor of her outstanding work and devotion to West Chester State College, Miss Ramsey was awarded the title Professor Emeritus in 1966.

 In 1967, a new dormitory on campus was named in her honor.  Ramsey Hall stood on the grounds where the Student Recreation Center now stands.

Dorothy Ramsey died at her home in West Chester on April 30, 1974.  Her home was just one block from the dormitory named in her honor.

Her survivors included her adopted daughter, Mary Dietrich.

Blog post written by Neal Kenney, Interlibrary Loan and Special Collections Library Assistant.

Grace Dietrich McCarthy was a member of WCU’s English Department for thirty-four years from 1910 to 1944, served as the Chairman of the English Department, and was the first Dean of Women.

Born in Calvert, Texas, in 1879, she grew up in New York City and Carthage, Missouri with two sisters. After studying at the University of Missouri, where she was elected to the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, she began her teaching career in the Carthage public schools. She traveled around the US and Europe, at some point studying at the University of Geneva.

It was through her travels that she serendipitously wound up at the West Chester State Normal School, as WCU was called then. During a return trip from Europe, she decided not to head back to Missouri but to give the East a try. She disembarked at Philadelphia, and soon was hired to teach English at West Chester.

In the 1915-1916 school year, she took a leave to acquire her B.A. at the University of Michigan. By attending summer school, she earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1921. She also trained at the Columbia University’s Teachers’ College and did special work at the University of Pennsylvania.

Her dedication to her own education and to her work at West Chester led to her being appointed the first Dean of Women in 1919. She was apparently popular with the students – the class of 1923 dedicated their yearbook to her. Cora E. Everett, a member of that class, wrote a laudatory biographical article about McCarthy in the 1923 Serpentine, praising her “firm, sensible, appreciative guidance” of the women students of West Chester (pg. 9). Everett characterizes McCarthy as a person who gets things done, crediting her for obtaining for the students a “much prized lobby [and a] long-hoped-for students’ laundry” as well as enabling “the actual accomplishment of the earnestly desired student government experiment” (pg. 10).

As Dean of Women, McCarthy was also responsible for developing and upholding rules of conduct for the students, and so had a disciplinarian side as well. Everett hints at this when she describes how “a pang may pierce a guilty heart on receiving the official slip signed G.D. McC.” (pg. 10). Similarly, the Daily Local News described her as a “firm disciplinarian.”

Still, McCarthy’s dominant trait as Dean of Women seems to have been supportive and encouraging of individual students and of student organizations. In addition to being instrumental in developing the Women’s Student Government Organization, she spent several years as the faculty editor of the student publication Amulet and was the faculty advisor to the Book Club.

In 1927, she traded her position as Dean of Women for the Chairmanship of the English Department, and continued to provide leadership in that capacity until her retirement in 1944. Although she moved to Oklahoma after her retirement to be closer to her family, she remained connected to West Chester, regularly returning for Alumni Day. In 1960, a new women’s dormitory, McCarthy Hall, located on Sharples Street between High Street and Church Street, was dedicated to her. A portrait of her hung in the Hall. She passed away in 1967 at the age of 88.

References

Daily Local News. “Former Dean of Women at College Dies.” Tuesday July 11 1967

Everett, Cora C. “Grace Dietrich McCarthy, A.M.” Serpentine, 1923. Pg. 8-10.

Untitled. Serpentine, 1914. Pg. 43

A woman as influential as Madeline Wing Adler is a perfect candidate to recognize during Women’s History Month. Adler has numerous accomplishments under her belt, beginning with her academic career. She received her undergraduate degree in Political Science from Northwestern University where she was the only female in most of her classes. She moved on to earn both her master’s and doctorate degrees in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Madeleine Wing Adler has always been a wholehearted feminist. She was a founding member of the Chester County Fund for Women and Girls Board of Directors and a member of the Forum of Executive Women in Philadelphia. Additionally, she was named a Woman of Distinction by the Philadelphia Business Journal, “Citizen of the Year” by the Chester County Chamber of Business and Industry in 1998 along with the county’s March of Dimes’ Woman of Achievement, and Philadelphia’s Business Journal named her a “Woman of Distinction” in 2002.

In August of 1992, Dr. Adler was named the 13^th president of West Chester University, making her the first and only female president in WCU’s history. During her time serving as president, Dr. Adler’s distributive style leadership left quite an impact. The annual number of applications to West Chester University doubled, enrollment increased by 12 percent, and by attracting students of many different backgrounds, WCU became the most diverse school in the PASSHE system.

Over the years, Dr. Adler’s achievements received well-deserved attention as she was offered many different positions at various schools across the country. Fortunately, Dr. Adler always remained loyal to WCU. “I knew this was the best place for me—and it has been” (Pirro mainlinetoday.com).

On June 30^th of 2008, Madeleine Wing Adler retired with an emeritus status. In honor of Dr. Adler’s influence on West Chester University, Swope Music Building opened the Madeleine Adler Theatre arts venue in 2008. Dr. Adler is now on the Emeriti Board of the Chester County Community Foundation working as a community volunteer.

Blog post written by Katherine Mash, Class of 2019, she is a student worker in FHG’s Special Collections Department and a Communications Major. 

Bibliography:

AASCU-Penson Center for Professional Development - Our Consultants. (n.d.). Retrieved March 08, 2017, from http://www.aascupenson.org/adler_bio.html

Marshall, K. (n.d.). Press Releases - Dr. Madeleine Wing Adler named President... Retrieved March 08, 2017, from http://www.passhe.edu/inside/ne/press/Lists/Press%20Releases/pressup.aspx?ID=37&ContentTypeId=0x01006B3D98C5084ABB47927D422E92C00C3300058DFAF00E84824A8F87467AD4FF8E26

Pirro, J. F. (n.d.). The Adler Advantage. Retrieved March 08, 2017, from http://www.mainlinetoday.com/core/pagetools.php?pageid=6576&url=%2FMain-Line-Today%2FJune-2008%2FFRONTLINE-Profile-2%2F&mode=print