THE MEMOIR OF EDNAH SHEPARD THOMAS PERSPECTIVES ON WRITING Series Editors, Susan H. McLeod and Rich Rice The Perspectives on Writing series addresses writing studies in a broad sense. Consistent with the wide ranging approaches characteristic of teaching and scholarship in writing across the curriculum, the series presents works that take divergent perspectives on working as a writer, teaching writing, administering writing programs, and studying writing in its various forms. The WAC Clearinghouse, Colorado State University Open Press, and University Press of Colorado are collaborating so that these books will be widely available through free digital distribution and low-cost print editions. The publishers and the Series editors are committed to the principle that knowledge should freely circulate. We see the opportunities that new technologies have for further de- mocratizing knowledge. And we see that to share the power of writing is to share the means for all to articulate their needs, interest, and learning into the great experiment of literacy. Recent Books in the Series Laura R. Micciche, Acknowledging Writing Partners (2017) Seth Kahn, William B. Lalicker, and Amy Lynch-Biniek (Eds.), Contingency, Exploitation, and Solidarity: Labor and Action in English Composition (2017) Barbara J. D’Angelo, Sandra Jamieson, Barry Maid, and Janice R. Walker (Eds.), Information Literacy: Research and Collaboration across Disciplines (2017) Justin Everett and Cristina Hanganu-Bresch (Eds.), A Minefield of Dreams: Tri- umphs and Travails of Independent Writing Programs (2016) Chris M. Anson and Jessie L. Moore (Eds.), Critical Transitions: Writing and the Questions of Transfer (2016) Joanne Addison and Sharon James McGee, Writing and School Reform: Writing Instruction in the Age of Common Core and Standardized Testing (2016) Lisa Emerson, The Forgotten Tribe: Scientists as Writers (2016) Jacob S. Blumner and Pamela B. Childers, WAC Partnerships Between Secondary and Postsecondary Institutions (2015) Nathan Shepley, Placing the History of College Writing: Stories from the Incomplete Archive (2015) Asao B. Inoue, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: An Approach to Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future (2015) Theresa Lillis, Kathy Harrington, Mary R. Lea, and Sally Mitchell (Eds.), Work- ing with Academic Literacies: Case Studies Towards Transformative Practice (2015) THE MEMOIR OF EDNAH SHEPARD THOMAS Edited by David Stock The WAC Clearinghouse wac.colostate.edu Fort Collins, Colorado University Press of Colorado upcolorado.com Boulder, Colorado The WAC Clearinghouse, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1040 University Press of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80303 © 2017 by the family of Ednah Shepard Thomas. This work is licensed under a Creative Com- mons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. ISNB 978-1-64215-009-4 (PDF) | 978-1-64215-010-0 (ePub) | 978-1-64215-011-7 (pbk.) Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pending Copyeditors: David Stock, Susan H. McLeod, and Mike Palmquist Designer: Mike Palmquist Series Editors: Susan H. McLeod and Rich Rice This book is printed on acid-free paper. The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. Hosted by Colorado State University, and supported by the Colorado State Univeristy Open Press, it brings together scholarly journals and book series as well as resources for teachers who use writing in their courses. This book is available in digital formats for free download at wac.colostate.edu. Founded in 1965, the University Press of Colorado is a nonprofit cooperative publishing en- terprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, Uni- versity of Northern Colorado, Utah State University, and Western State Colorado University. For more information, visit upcolorado.com. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ............................................vii Foreword ................................................... ix Susan H. McLeod Introduction to the Memoir .................................... xiii David Stock Biographical Outline ...........................................3 Foreword ....................................................5 Forebears ................................................... 11 Harvard Avenue ..............................................29 Brookline High School .........................................43 Mount Holyoke ..............................................53 Bryn Mawr: September 1923 to June 1924 ...........................79 Danielson: September 1924 to June 1925 ............................89 Wisconsin: September 1925 to June 1927. 103 New Haven: September 1927 to June 1928 ..........................115 Settling Down: 1928 to 1932 .....................................121 Domesticity: 1932 to 1943 ...................................... 145 World War II: December 1941 to August 1945 ....................... 183 Transition: September 1945 to September 1950 ......................241 Construction: 1950-1966 .......................................285 Demolition: Sept 1966 to August 1970 ............................367 William Lenehan: A Reminiscence ............................... 455 Lunch at the Madison Club: May 12, 1986 Or the King and I ..........457 Works Cited ................................................463 Afterword ..................................................465 David Fleming v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people made this publication possible and merit much thanks for their contributions. First, to Ednah Thomas’s children, for their generosity in permitting publi- cation of the memoir: Hannah Morehouse, Tom Thomas, and Bill Thomas. A special thank-you to Bill and his wife, Kathy, for graciously welcoming me into their home (formerly Ednah’s) in Madison, Wisconsin and answering questions about Ednah, and to James Thomas, Ednah’s grandson, who took time to share his recollections of Ednah with me. Second, to Ednah’s colleagues and friends who generously agreed to share their time and their recollections of Ednah with me: Jim Nelson, Margaret Lacy, and Charles Scott. Third, to my colleagues: Brad Hughes, for inviting me to join this editorial project, arranging contact with family and friends of Ednah’s, and providing kind encouragement; Susan McLeod, for sharing her recollections about Ed- nah and about the University of Wisconsin-Madison English Department and Freshman English Program, assisting with editing, and constant support and determination in bringing this project to completion; Mike Palmquist, from the WAC Clearinghouse, for showing interest in publishing Ednah’s memoir, assisting with digitizing and transcribing the memoir, and providing additional resources and support to see the project through to publication; David Null, Director of University Archives and Records Management at UW-Madison, for providing access to a range of documents and resources needed to provide con- text for many references in the memoir, securing a copy of the memoir in the university archives, and responding to my continuous requests for additional information or documentation. Lastly, I gratefully acknowledge financial support provided by the Brigham Young University College of Humanities to assist in conducting research for this project. - David Stock vii FOREWORD Susan H. McLeod University of California, Santa Barbara I am delighted to write a foreword to the Memoir of Ednah Shepard Thomas, for two reasons. First, these pages give us an in-depth look at what it was to be a Writ- ing Program Administrator during the period from after World War II up to the time of the early 1970s, a time for which we have little in the way of documen- tation for the work of early WPAs. When she took over the job of coordinating Freshman English, it involved little more than arranging TAs teaching schedules so that they did not conflict with their graduate seminars. Although at that time a male faculty member always held the title of Director of Freshman English at the University of Wisconsin (see her reminiscence of William Lenehan, an addendum to the Memoir), it is clear from the description of her duties that Thomas added to her scheduling job much of the work that we now associate with directing a writing program: training and supervising TAs, advising students, working out curriculum, coordinating placement in appropriate writing classes, and working on issues of writing assessment (norming TA’s grading of papers, for example). It is also clear from what she writes that she was a pioneer in the teaching of writing: for example, she insisted that individual student papers not be graded, but that the whole of the student’s work should be looked at for progress when deciding a grade—an early version of the portfolio system. Her undergraduate degree from Mt. Holyoke was in composition, rather than literature; she had studied classical rhetoric and as she states, she was an avowed Aristotelian; this fact influenced her teaching and her training of teachers. She wrote one of the first handbooks on how to evaluate student themes, a booklet that became a Uni- versity of Wisconsin Press all-time bestseller (Thomas, 1962). One sentence from that publication rings as true today as it did then when discussing the assessment of writing: “No student should be left without hope and no student should be left without challenge” (v). With her colleague Ed Lacy