RAMSEY COUNTY Honoring F. Scott in St. Paul: 35 Years of Fitz and Starts David Page and Lisa Heinrich —Page 16 HıstoryA Publication of the Ramsey County Historical Society Spring 2017 Volume 52, Number 1 A Legacy of Civic Engagement: The Junior League of Saint Paul, 1917–2017 Yvonne Hundshamer and Abby Sugahara Moeller, page 3 These photos show the many ways in which the Junior League of Saint Paul has been actively engaged in the community then, left, and now. Photos courtesy of the Junior League of Saint Paul. RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY RAMSEY COUNTY President Chad Roberts Founding Editor (1964–2006) Virginia Brainard Kunz Editor Hıstory John M. Lindley Volume 52, Number 1 Spring 2017 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE MISSION STATEMENT OF THE RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS ADOPTED BY THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS ON JANUARY 25, 2016: James Miller Chair Preserving our past, informing our present, inspiring our future Jo Anne Driscoll First Vice Chair Carl Kuhrmeyer Second Vice Chair C O N T E N T S Susan McNeely Secretary 3 A Legacy of Civic Engagement: Kenneth H. Johnson The Junior League of Saint Paul, 1917–2017 Treasurer Yvonne Hundshamer and Abby Sugahar Moeller William B. Frels Immediate Past Chair 16 Honoring F. Scott in St. Paul: 35 Years of Fitz and Starts Anne Cowie, Mari Oyanagi Eggum, Thomas Fabel, Martin Fallon, John Guthmann, David Page and Lisa Heinrich Susan Handley, Richard B. Heydinger, Jr., 23 Janine Joseph, Sandy Kiernat, Judy Kishel, Two Graves in White Bear Lake: David Kristal, Robert W. Mairs, Jeffry Martin, The Story of Claude and Daisy White Father Kevin M. McDonough, Nancy W. McKillips, Lisa Dickinson Michaux, Jonathan H. James Lindner Morgan, Robert Muschewske, Chad Roberts, Roxanne Sands, George T. Stephenson, James A. Publication of Ramsey County History is supported in part by a gift from Stolpestad, Susan Vento, Jerry Woelfel. Clara M. Claussen and Frieda H. Claussen in memory of Henry H. Cowie Jr. EDITORIAL BOARD and by a contribution from the late Reuel D. Harmon Anne Cowie, chair, James B. Bell, Thomas H. Boyd, John Diers, Martin Fallon, John Guthmann, Lisa L. Heinrich, John M. Lindley, Jeffry Martin, James Miller, John Milton, Laurie M. Murphy, Robert Muschewske, Paul D. A Message from the Editorial Board Nelson, Richard H. Nicholson, Jay Pfaender, David Riehle, Chad Roberts, Steve Trimble, Mary Lethert Wingerd. n 1917–18, the new St. Paul Junior League was just beginning its long HONORARY ADVISORY BOARD Itradition of service with volunteer women leaders in the community William Fallon, William Finney, George Latimer, Joseph S. Micallef, Marvin J. Pertzik, helping local charities. Scott Fitzgerald was living intermittently in St. James Reagan. Paul, starting his career as a writer. And in less well-known circles, Claude RAMSEY COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt, chair and Daisy White, a young couple, survived the famous Cloquet fire be- Commissioner Toni Carter Commissioner Blake Huffman fore moving to White Bear Lake and sadly, succumbing to the “Spanish” Commissioner Jim McDonough influenza pandemic. All of these events, described in our magazine in this Commissioner Mary Jo McGuire Commissioner Rafael Ortega issue, formed a mosaic depicting life in Ramsey County just one hundred Commissioner Janice Rettman Julie Kleinschmidt, manager, years ago. We are fortunate that the St. Paul Junior League and the F. Scott Ramsey County Fitzgerald Society chose us to help tell their stories. We are proud of the Ramsey County History is published quarterly by the Ramsey County Historical Society, 323 Junior League’s tradition of involvement and that the Fitzgerald Society Landmark Center, 75 W. Fifth Street, St. Paul, MN 55102 (651-222-0701). Printed in U.S.A. Copy- has chosen St. Paul as the site for their biennial conference this summer. right © 2017, Ram sey County His torical So ciety. History is important, and as readers, you can participate by honoring these ISSN Number 0485-9758. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted organizations and learning more about how the past has informed our pres- or otherwise reproduced without written permission from the publisher. The Society ent. Here’s to the next hundred years! assumes no responsibility for state ments made by Anne Cowie contributors. E-mail address: [email protected]; web site address: www.rchs.com Chair, Editorial Board 2 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Honoring F. Scott in St. Paul: 35 Years of Fitz and Starts David Page and Lisa Heinrich n the fall of 1982, the University of Minnesota’s Office of Continuing Education organized a weekend devoted to “F. Scott Fitzgerald: St. Paul’s INative Son and Distinguished American Writer” in various venues through- out St. Paul. The conference featured such notables as Fitzgerald’s daughter, Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, esteemed literary critic Malcolm Cowley, and bio- graphers Matthew Bruccoli, Scott Donaldson, and Nancy Milford. The con- ference sold out and local media fell all over themselves to tell and re-tell the story of the chronicler of the Jazz Age, one of the first self-made bad boys of the modern era, who gave and still gives readers some of their most vivid liter- ary moments. Inspired by the success of the weekend, that Fitzgerald and his family counted a loosely knit group of area Fitzophiles among their good friends Lou Ordway pushed for some kind of permanent rec- Jr., whose father founded 3M; Lou’s ognition by the City of Saint Paul for its wife, Josephine, whose father headed brightest international literary star. To Nabisco; Marie Hersey, whose father the surprise of a few members who had was a lumber baron and who herself not grown up in Minnesota’s capital, married William Hamm Jr., of Hamm’s there was pushback due to what the St. Beer fame; Tom Daniels, whose family A publicity photo of F. Scott Fitzgerald after Paul Pioneer Press/Dispatch dubbed “St. helped create Archer-Daniels-Midland the publication of his firstnovel, This Side of Paul’s curiously ambivalent attitude to- Company . the list goes on and on, Paradise, in 1920. Courtesy of the Minnesota ward its famed native son.”1 all the way up to the Weyerhaeusers and Historical Society. Even the suggestion by then-City Hills, whose families ranked numbers 1 Councilman James Scheibel to name the and 2, respectively, in wealth in St. Paul born a half block east of the spot at 481 newly constructed I-35E parkway after during Fitzgerald’s time in the city. Laurel Avenue on September 24, 1896. Fitzgerald met with resistance. “There Insider or not, alcoholic or not, the That was the total extent of the skin the already is a street called Nina next door author of This Side of Paradise, The city had at the time in what would turn to the Cathedral,” wrote Mrs. Peter M. Great Gatsby, and some of the English out to be a decades-long game to give Lang in a St. Paul Pioneer Press letter language’s best short stories certainly Fitzgerald his due. to the editor on August 31, 1983. “Nina deserved a park or a statue in his home- was the madame of a near-to-downtown town, supporters of the move to honor 599 Summit Avenue bawdy house many years ago. Do we Fitzgerald argued. Some city officials In the 1980s, the most well-known need another [street] right below the countered that St. Paul had already Fitzgerald site was 599 Summit Avenue, Cathedral named after a man, who, al- done enough to display its esteem for for it had been honored in 1971 as a Na- though no doubt talented, ended up an Fitzgerald. tional Historical Landmark and a bronze alcoholic?” What exactly had the city done? In plaque hung over the door announc- It would not be the last time the au- 1957 the city had created McQuillan ing it as the F. Scott Fitzgerald House. thor of The Great Gatsby would be casti- Park at the corner of Mackubin Street According to its then-current owner, Ethel gated in the local press, most frequently and Laurel Avenue to pay tribute to Cline, who had purchased the property in for his drinking, but occasionally for Arthur J. McQuillan, head of the vener- 1945, the person behind the recognition his social pretensions as well. Wrote able McQuillan Brothers plumbing and effort was Russell Fridley, director of the one Pioneer Press editorialist in 1995, heating firm. The plaque at the park ex- state Historical Society.2 The application “. he never made the inner circle of plains that McQuillan’s second cousin, for National Historical Landmark status [Summit] avenue’ s wealthy.” Never mind the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, was noted that F. Scott Fitzgerald “embodied 16 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY the essence of the disillusioned post-war During the summer of 1919, accord- literary outlook.” ing to his friend and neighbor Richard Scott’s father, Edward, mother, Mollie, “Tubby” Washington, Scott settled into a sister, Annabel, and a servant had moved third-floor room at 599 Summit Avenue, into the brownstone in September 1918 “writing at a table, in pencil, which while Scott served in the U.S. Army. faced the window. He had an outline and Known as Summit Terrace, it had been schedule pinned to the curtain and stuck designed by William H. Willcox and firmly to it.” Offered a marketing job by Clarence Johnston in 1889. Fitzgerald fa- his friend Benjamin Griggs of Griggs, mously described it as “a house below the Cooper & Company, a wholesale foods average/Of a street above the average.” distributor, Fitzgerald turned it down to After his discharge at the end of World pursue his literary ambitions.3 War I and after a miserably failed attempt On September 4, 1919, he handed the to make it as a writer in New York City, manuscript of This Side of Paradise to Scott returned to St.