Jane Blankenship, President of the Speech Communication Association, 1978
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Jane Blankenship, President of the Speech Communication Association, 1978 By Jane Blankenship, from Review of Communication, 6(3),187-203. (Revised 1/17/02-scholarship and 1/06) In 1934, I was born unexpectedly early in the home of my maternal grandparents. As the only child of my parents, the first grandchild of my maternal grandparents and the first niece of three doting aunts, in my home town of Huntington, West Virginia, I thrived on their attention, love, and unconditional support; their influence on the “meaning” of my life is almost inexpressible. My family taught me to read, write, and do arithmetic before I went to first grade. Fostering an early interest in music, Mother and Dad provided piano lessons, beginning at age four. I do not remember our home without music. Nor do I remember it without newspapers, radio news, and political talk. In the earlier years, we “watched” the radio, and I remember FDR’s voice. My family cried when he died, and early on I began to realize something of “the President’s” connection with “the people.” In sum, they encouraged me to open my mind to the world beyond their front yard. Absorbed by local and national politics in 1936, Granddad Taylor (a medical doctor) put a pencil in my two year old hand and lifted me up to mark on the ballot so, later, I could say, “I voted for FDR.” He was widely read in history and political science, served in the West Virginia State Legislature, and later became a reform mayor of Huntington, then the largest city in the “Mountaineer State.” An engaging speaker, he was invited often to address local audiences on public issues. From the time I was born, he sent me a stream of letters framed in the historical issues of the day, which Mother pasted in big hard-bound albums, so I could read them in another century, another millennium. Echoes of the “Great Depression” and, later, World War II shaped my early life. Dad earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Marshall College as a pre-med student, but the Depression and my arrival required him to put aside thoughts of medical school. Rather, he taught in rural Kentucky schools, including, at one point, a one room school house. Hard work, saving, sharing, and concern for those less well off were part of a larger family ethic. I attended first grade in Huntington and began to enjoy "performance" activities. My first piano recital had been at age 4, and as a 1st grader I narrated the school Christmas play. These were probably extraordinarily important, because I did not know I was supposed to be afraid. I received audience applause and many hugs from my family. During World War II, I attended grade school in two small Indiana towns while my Dad worked at a DuPont munitions plant. My grade-school teachers knew a lot, enjoyed their jobs, and were helpful. First, in the safety of bucolic Sellersburg the centers of our life were the Clover Farm store, the church, the Saturday afternoon movie, and our house, surrounded by fields of bluebells and small farms. This contrasted sharply with our second Indiana home in Charlestown, where we lived in temporary one-story duplexes, largely without yards. There, the war was omnipresent -- in everyday talk, speeches on the radio, in the fence surrounding Jane Blankenship, page 1 the Plant and the search lights plowing through the night sky. In the early grades we collected tin foil, milkweed pods (for life preservers), and knitted scarfs for the troops. I was much better at collecting than knitting. After peace came, we moved to the “big city,” Akron, Ohio, where Dad worked at Goodyear Tire & Rubber. He had been raised on a farm and, wherever we lived, his avocation was gardening; many admired his roses and vegetables. He taught me to fish, brought me my first chemistry set, recited poetry, and taught me the values of solitude. My mother, who had attended high school in Huntington, was a meticulous home-maker, quick witted, vivacious, had a keen sense of humor, loved language, and won most “arguments.” She taught me values of sociality. Early influences included both public and private people. One of my “best friends” was my doll Eleanor (Roosevelt). In 1948, my Granddad sent me a newspaper article about Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas (D-CA), which I dutifully pinned up on my early-teen bulletin board. In college I realized how very extraordinary she was, and in 1994, I finally delivered on a promise to myself that I would someday write an article about her. Active girls in novels with identities and important things to do also contributed to my formative years. Nancy Drew did things. I also vividly recall a book series after WW II about Nancy Dale, Army Nurse and women in the WAVES and WACS. I discovered the myriad of worlds in East Branch Library, and when I was old enough, I went to work there. By the 6th grade I knew I wanted to be a teacher and writer. In high school, I seemed always on the run: I played Annie Oakley in the senior class play, wrote the words to the senior class song, sang in the glee club, worked on the newspaper, and was a member of the National Honor Society. The University debate coach heard me the Sunday I was youth minister at church and asked me to join the team. In undergraduate school, I planned to double major in chemistry and music. It did not take long for the folly of that to become apparent, so I majored in English. I debated, delivered original oratory, and was active in theater production. I belonged to a sorority and did the usual work on homecoming floats. If the Great Depression and World War II shaped much of my early life, the Ban the Bomb Movement of the 50‟s and the Civil Rights Movement of the 60‟s helped shape my college years. Later in life, one of my favorite teaching assignments was the Rhetoric of Social Movements. My teaching career began with a Sunday school class, a day camp counselor position with the City Park System and student-teaching in grades six and eleven as part of my college program of study. I taught Grades 2-3 full-time while taking my last 6 credits at the University of Akron. Working with highly vulnerable and often abused children in a low income part of the city was a profoundly formative experience. To this day, I remember their names, their faces and the often sad stories of their lives. I graduated in 1956 with a B.A. During my high school and undergraduate years, my family continued to “mentor” (a term not used at that time) me to prize knowledge, integrity, sustenance of family and respectful relationships. In addition to Helen Gahagan Douglas and Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson helped fuel my interest in politics, ethics and civic behavior. High school teachers were also influential, particularly those women who taught me literature and sustained my interest in writing. Theatre Arts Magazine and Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera fostered dreams of big cities and marvelous music and developed my interest in theater. English professor Julia Hull was the single-most influential figure in my undergraduate life. The Jane Blankenship, page 2 first woman I met who finished graduate school, she was demanding, bright, took my writing seriously, and opened me to un-dreamed of depths in Huckleberry Finn, The Odyssey, etc. Many years later, just before her retirement, my parents sent me a news clipping that she had won a distinguished teaching award. My congratulatory note said, “It’s about time!” then proceeded to tell her that I was working on an article about Coleridge to whom she, seriously, introduced me. Ruth Putnam, who taught the Bible as literature and took us to Cleveland to see plays, had a softer style than Hull. From these two women I also learned that there are a number of ways to be a good teacher. Quite accidentally, the University of Illinois (Urbana) became the site of my graduate school life. The summer after my B.A., I went to California to live life on the beach while I wrote the great American novel. Later that year, an “out-of-body experience” occurred and a total stranger told me, “It’s time, kid, for you to go home now.” I called my former debate coach and said that I needed order in my life. The karma must have been good, because Illinois chair Karl R. Wallace told him that a grad TA had just withdrawn his appointment. Soon, I was in Urbana. I don’t know that I had ever heard of “rhetoric” as a discipline and had given no previous thought to grad school. Although I was scared most of the time, within a semester I knew I had found an academic home. In my graduate program at Illinois there was only one woman professor (Marie Hochmuth Nichols, aged 50-55) teaching in the Rhetoric emphasis. I was the only woman in my rhetoric classes at Illinois. Throughout my entire academic life, Nichols, an extraordinary scholar-teacher and friend, was my central role model on whom I could always count when I needed counsel. Richard Murphy directed my dissertation, and Tess Murphy, his wife, provided tea, muffins, and “You can do it!” as she shoved me out of the door to my oral defense of comprehensives and dissertation defense.