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Martha Sharp Cogan '26 1 Transcribed by Karen L Martha Sharp Cogan '26 1 Transcribed by Karen L. Schneider, class of 2000, in February 2000. Tape 1, Side 1 This is an interview with Martha Dickie Sharp Cogan (Class of 1926) by Barbara Anton on September 29 and 30, 1987 in Providence, RI. Barbara Anton: The date is September 29, 1987, we're in Providence, RI. I'm Barbara Anton and I will be interviewing Martha Dickie Sharp Cogan, Brown class of 1926. I'll, let's start this morning, Martha, with, uh, by having you tell me a little bit about your family background, uh, where you grew up and your family, members of your family and so forth. Martha Dickie Sharp Cogan: I was born in 1905, on April 25th and on Gano Street in Providence, RI to an English family, recently come to the United States and it happened that my aunt and uncle lived on the ground floor and my father and mother lived on the second floor. And, when I was born, my aunt had uh, uh found that she couldn't have any more children and she'd always wanted to have a daughter and so she shared care for me with my mother and was a second loving parent. Later on, when my parents had to move away, I, my aunt insisted that I stay with her. By this time, however, my, my father and mother had another child, a daughter and then a son and so my mother had two children of her own that kept her rather busy. So, actually, I grew up in the, in my aunt and uncle's home and their name was Dickie, my uncle was a Scot from Edinborough and they were very disciplined people. My, my aunt loved gardening and they always, she always had a garden full of flowers all around the house. And, my uncle worked on the railroad, a very, had a very reponsible job and I use to take his hot lunches to him walking up along the railroad tracks to the Seekonk River bridge which he use to open and close. So, you can imagine what it was like, this child walking out every day with a hot lunch for my uncle. I went to public school and graduated from Hope Street High School, unfortunately in the middle of the year so that I either had to double up in order to finish college because I graduated in February, I mean in the mid-season. And, so I, it meant that I either had to double up in order to go and be the class of '26, or else stay six months longer and be the class of '27 so I decided that I'd double up and take. The most important influence, I think, on any of my life in, in Hope Street High School was the fact that I had a perfectly marvelous teacher, French, Susanna Wy Cushing, whom I admired and who taught us a great deal about France and about the world outside. And, I also had a, I went to First Baptist Church with my uncle every Sunday from the time I was this very small child and so I was brought up to be a God-fearing Baptist and my uncle taught the Men's class, in the Men's class because he loved the Bible and we had, what you would call, a very religious home. And, my Sunday school teacher was Sophie Houland Giled, who was a member of the, of the church and who took a very great interest in me and who began to do all sorts of little things like asking me to come over and help her and work with her in various ways and she'd pay me for it and I was very grateful for the money. And, later on, when I went to high school and began to think about college, Sophie Giled was very much interested and she spoke to her son who was the Registrar of Brown University and suggested that he, see if he could arrange for me to get a scholarship at Brown. Meantime, I had two or three passions besides babysitting and other kinds of activities in order to earn enough money to prepare for the great event of college, I had, I learned to play tennis because the boys in the neighborhood all played tennis and I learned from the boys and played with the boys so that when I came to college, I was able to make the tennis team and played as captain of the Pembroke team. BA: Hm. Martha Sharp Cogan '26 2 MSC: Should I say anything more about the tennis? But, at any rate, I won the championship at Brown and then, also, played as Brown's champion against women in other colleges. Somehow those of us who are at Pembroke were not in, in very much relationship with the men. About my sophomore year, I became so interested in overseas missionary work that I thought it would be great if I could become a medical missionary and so I began to take courses in Biology that would prepare me for a medical degree, without understanding the fact that it would be four years of medical school and that I couldn't possibly afford it and so when I finally graduated from Brown after - actually, Pembroke - after three and a half years, I decided instead to go out to learn to be a social worker because we had had a person who came to the college and spoke to us about the training that one could get in Northwestern University in Chicago at Hull House and thereby graduate with a degree and be a appropriately educatedto be a social worker. BA: Well, I think it was interesting, though, that you back, back in 1923 or whatever, were thinking about medical school because, surely, most women weren't thinking along those lines. Uh, what was it like to be taking all these science classes with, uh, were you the only woman in the classes, for example? MSC: Very often I was the only woman because, and we had to go over to the man's campus to take them, you see, because we didn't have any of that kind of teaching going on at Pembroke. BA: No science? MSC: No science, at least that I had a chance to. I think we must of taken geography and various courses that would be considered partly scientific, but, actually, the business of Biology and all kinds of other medical courses had to be taken there and what I did was to sign up for those, in addition to the regular literary courses that one normally took. And, so, actually, uh, I, when I graduated in 1926, I got a funny degree. It was called P.H.B. and not a n A.B, you see, and, then, decided that I would go to the Recreation Training School in Chicago. So, in 1926, we found out that I was accepted by the Recreation Training School in Chicago and, uh ... BA: Excuse me, can I ask you a few more questions about Brown? MSC: Oh, sure. BA: Go back a little bit about something what the atmosphere was like. What was the social life like at Brown? MSC: Well, the, uh, I loved all of the athletic things. I played on the fistball team and the basketball team and other things and, uh, and coached athletics at the local Wheeler School and other places to make enough money on afternoons and help with my expenses. So, I loved sports of all kinds and, of course, finally concentrated mostly on tennis because, when I made the tennis team, then we had to go around visiting other colleges and playing the other colleges and they had to be women's colleges and not very many women's tennis teams in those days. Urn, but, actually, life was quite separated. The girls did things by themselves. But, the boys would invite us on dates to the fraternity houses for parties and dances and it was great fun and, of course, I met a lot of boys in the Biology classes and so I came to know several boys who always invited me - I think of the three boys that always invited me to anything that was going on, where they had to take a girl along. And, there was none of this kind of, of social life like today. You either got all dressed up and went to a ball or a party, there were no cocktail parties. Nobody drank. I can't even remember ever having a drink of any kind of liquor. Martha Sharp Cogan '26 3 BA: Or anything being served? MSC: Or anything ever being served and there, and the explicit kind of sex in movies and stuff like that just didn't exist then. When we went to movies, they were usually historical films if we went at all or things were really fitted very well with the kind of life that a young person growing up in a Christian neighborhood and interested in the Bible, reading the Bible everyday and believing in that as the principle of life that we were taught in Sunday school. So, it was quite a different kind of experience. And, in the summers, I went, I was asked by Mrs. Oiled to go up and work at her place in New Hampshire - she had a house on the lake.
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