AUSTIN LILLY, UK CLASS OF 1919

On a recent Saving Stories segment, WUKY's Alan Lytle and Dr. Doug Boyd, Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, featured UK graduate Austin Page Lilly.  https://www.wuky.org/term/saving-stories#stream/0    

Entering UK in 1914, a friend influenced Austin Lilly to major in home economics, one of the fastest growing departments in the university, rather than chemistry.  Still, her new major required that she complete four years of chemistry with the male students.  She recalled that, "Some of us were better students than some of the men in chemistry.  We weren't taking a back seat!"  Austin thought that during her student days women were well on their way to equality within American society.  

Austin Lilly remained single and spent her career teaching at the high school and college level.  When asked on a 1938 Alumni Questionnaire to give the full name of her husband or wife, Lilly wrote in large letters across the page, “neither-nor.”

World War II and Women's Equality at UK

 

Students Celebrate the End of World War II

Women's Equality Day, 2020, provides an opportunity to look back at the push for women's equality at the University of Kentucky that has spanned nearly a century and a half.  For example, gains made by women during World War II on the UK campus proved to be mostly temporary.

As the war ended "normalcy" again prevailed at UK.  By the late 1940s the percentage of women pursuing higher education at UK actually dropped in comparison to the men.  The gains women had made in leadership roles on campus were systematically reversed both by specific rulings and by default.  Women faculty members, hired to teach "for the duration," found it necessary to find postwar teaching jobs elsewhere.  

Lydia Roberts Fischer, who had been hired to teach mathematics during the war, knew that without a Ph.D. degree she could not continue permanently.  Single and with two young children, she indicated that obtaining a Ph.D. seemed all but impossible.  After leaving UK and taking substitute teaching positions in local public schools, Fischer subsequently obtained a full-time teaching position at Lafayette High School, where she taught until her retirement.

Little evidence exists that women on campus openly resisted the return to pre-war practices.  Only Dean of Women Sarah Bennett Holmes is on record as vocally opposing the most obvious discrimination.  Overall, little overt protests came from either the students or the faculty.  Thus, UK women once again experienced discriminatory rules regarding social life, uncertain academic potential and prospects, and steep challenges to remaining on the faculty. 

Changes taking place in the first half of the 1940s could have set the stage for fundamental shifts; instead, they existed only "for the duration."  The steps towards equality that occurred during World War II would need to be fought again, and again.

Additional information about the history of women students, faculty, and staff can be found in the recently published, Our Rightful Place: A History of Women at the University of Kentucky, 1880-1945.

https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813179377/our-rightful-place/    

Use the code FAU25 for 25% off. 

NATIONAL RADIO DAY

The first radio station in Kentucky began broadcasting at 7:30 p.m. on the evening of July 18, 1922, when Credo Fitch Harris announced to all who cared or were able to listen: "This is WHAS, the radio telephone broadcasting station of the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times, in Louisville, Kentucky.

 

UK President Frank L. McVey

WHAS and the University of Kentucky began a radio partnership in April 1929, when UK President Dr. Frank L. McVey announced into a radio microphone in Lexington:

"The University is on the air."  For the broadcast of educational programs from studios on the Lexington campus, WHAS agreed to install all necessary equipment and direct telephone lines; the university and the station would share equally the transmission charges. This agreement began a partnership which attracted national attention. Dr. McVey remained somewhat apprehensive about the whole idea of radio but was willing to take a chance with it.  He expressed his hopes for the medium during the maiden broadcast:

“Life is faster, filled with greater possibilities and subject to disasters as always.  This is the sort of universe we live in. Now comes the radio, bringing to every part of the world the sound of the human voice from every country of the globe. No such possibilities of good and no such opportunity for mere bunk, have been offered to the public as through this amazing invention. The University of Kentucky is not interested in adding to the trivial, so two important forces for constructive effort in our state have agreed to cooperate in giving to the radio audience, what is hoped will be interesting, stimulating and helpful.”

The University of Kentucky programs aired Monday through Friday at noon, initially for fifteen minutes and expanded by 1931 to forty-five minutes. While primarily offering agricultural information, lectures on a variety of topics, as well as musical presentations, were also offered. From the beginning, the school appreciated its responsibility, and under the guidance of Elmer G. "Bromo" Sulzer programming steadily improved.  Sulzer, who began his work at the University in public relations, energetically and successfully lobbied for the expansion of its radio commitment. Perhaps his most unique and vital role was in the establishment of "Listening Centers" in Eastern Kentucky during the early 1930s to bring battery powered radios to isolated communities.

By the early 1940s, radio had become much more commercial and educational programs, like those by UK, were cancelled in favor of music and other entertainment that actually made money.  For several years UK experimented with other avenues for educational radio ultimately establishing WBKY Radio as a campus owned and operated FM station.  In 1988 the station's call letters were changed to WUKY.

To read more about the history of WHAS Radio see Terry L. Birdwhistell, WHAS Radio and the Development of Broadcasting in Kentucky, 1922-1942, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (1981).  

Also see oral histories on the history of broadcasting in Kentucky in the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History.  http://libraries.uky.edu/NunnCenter    

UK's First Woman Engineering Graduate

In 1916 Marguerite Ingels became UK's first woman engineering graduate. After college she had a long career with the Carrier Corporation retiring in 1952.  Ingels excelled as a student and endured the stereotypes that came with her college major and career choice.  

Ingels had become interested in the process of condensation as a young girl in her hometown of Paris, Kentucky and set out to learn as much as she could about science and engineering even before entering the University of Kentucky.  The Kentucky Alumnus reported that, "Miss Ingels completed the entire four years of the Engineering course, taking her turns in the forge shops and machine shop and doing the other duties of the engineer with the rest of the `boys,' never shirking a duty, however irksome."

Marguerite Ingels

Ingels was a source of fascination to many as a woman engineering major at the university.  During her sophomore year, while working in the blacksmith shop along with her fellow engineering students, a reporter observed her work.  He noted that "over her daintily embroidered, open-necked waist and her white skirt, she wore a very business- like leathern apron, which dropped to the top of her gunmetal pumps; pulled tightly down over a goodly quantity of wavy, dark brown hair, which persisted in peeping out, was a black sateen workman's cap."  

The attention to physical detail continued with the observation that Ingels was not of the "mannish" type.  Like others the reporter felt obliged to comment whether women in historically male endeavors were "ladylike" and added that, "She is medium height (about five feet two inches) and of slender figure.  She is really pretty; has large, intelligent gray eyes, the slightly tanned complexion of the outdoor girl and the long upper lip that denotes a poetical temperament and a love of ease and luxury.  But this feature is given the lie by the strength of her chin and the way she closes her mouth as she works."  

Machine shop instructor Joseph Dicker tried to exempt Ingels from the heavy parts of engineering work, "but she would not hear of it."  "She keeps pace with the best of her classmates and asks odds of no one.  The contour that her tanned arm displays when she grasps the sledge handle shows that she can suit the deed to the will."  

When asked whether she supported women's suffrage Ingels reportedly replied, "Yes, don't you?"  However, the reporter concluded the article by asserting that Ingels seemed "too absorbed in her work to worry about Votes for Women."

Additional information about the history of women students, faculty, and staff can be found in the recently published, Our Rightful Place: A History of Women at the University of Kentucky, 1880-1945.

https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813179377/our-rightful-place/    

Use the code FAU25 for 25% off. 

SOCIAL DISTANCING THEN AND NOW

New signage greets students to UK this year as they walk across the campus. The message on the signs, "Please Stay 6 feet apart," is deadly serious and is intended to keep the campus healthy during the current pandemic. But nearly 80 years ago women and men students became very agitated over what they thought might become stricter rules for walking together on the UK campus. 

In 1941 the Board of Trustees named Herman Lee Donovan, the former Eastern Kentucky University president, as UK's fourth president. UK students worried because Donovan came with a reputation for requiring strict student behavior, especially regarding relations between the sexes. At Eastern, he allegedly used "Donovan sticks" or rulers to measure the physical space that had to be maintained between men and women as they walked across the campus. 

Moreover, until 1935 Donovan enforced a rule at Eastern that required students to turn out the lights in their rooms by 9:30 p.m. and also ordered that, "No one should be permitted to sit in dark or shadowed spots on the campus after it gets dark." Certainly, such an attitude did not fit with the modern ideas regarding student culture at the state university. 

No doubt to the students' relief, Donovan never imposed such strict rules at UK. The world was changing rapidly and while many rules to keep men and women at a safe distance from one another continued, Donovan and the administration had to turn most of their attention to guiding the university through the tumultuous years of World War II. 

Today, UK faces an unprecedented challenge with Covid-19. Wearing masks, keeping a healthy physical distance, and proper hygiene are only the basics of what UK students, faculty, and staff will need to do to assure on-campus classes can continue through the fall semester. 

Additional information about the history of women students, faculty, and staff can be found in the recently published, Our Rightful Place: A History of Women at the University of Kentucky, 1880-1945.

https://www.kentuckypress.com/97808131793