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Friday, October 3,1975
University Daily Kansan
Reminiscing
Mistle Crumrine is well versed in the history of KU in her own rite. An instructor since 1924, Miss Crumrine, in addition her
duties as emeriti professor of French, is preparing a lecture for Pi Delta Phi, honorary French society, on past French instructors at the university.
Resilience marks early instructor
By FAYE TISON
By FAYETISON Staff Writer
No one seems to know exactly when the University of Kansas began hiring graduate students as teachers. But Mattie E. Crummine, emerita professor of French, was one of about a dozen when she became an assistant instructor in 1924.
Miss Crumrine, 75, is also one of the few who remember KU when its student body numbered only 3,000. Those were the days she was a teacher at KU, it was covered with hundreds of wild daisies, picked for decoration at University ceremonies. And those were the days when a young female faculty member belonged to the Women's Club, whether she liked it or not.
"Tings were simpler in those days," Miss Crumrine has said plavlly.
Miss Crumrine loves to weave tales, and her tapestry, ranging from descriptions of Buffalo Bill to war-time Yale, is full of color and vigor. She is especially qualified to speak about KU because her association with the University is more than 50 years old.
Miss Crumrine came to KU in the fall of 1922 after two years at Cattey College in Nevada, Mo., and a two-year stay near Grund Junction, Colo., where in a rural high school he served, served as school carpenter and played ukeleles once a month for Grane meetings.
KU was not Miss Crumrine's first choice, she said, for it was the state school and not very exile in her imagination. But it was a negative and Miss Crumrine had little money.
"I still think I was probably right in my thinking," she said.
As a student, Miss Crummie had always been interested in French and chemistry. Deciding finally on a French major, Miss Crummie said she reasoned that a woman with knowledge of chemistry had a better chance of getting a job that a woman with knowledge of chemistry.
Having a job was extremely important for Miss Crumrine, who was, for many years, her family's sole provider. When she returned to KU after teaching two years at a school in Highland, she moved her father, mother, sister and two brothers to Lawrence.
She recalls financial difficulties, especially during the Depression. The KU administration announced a faculty cut in the department of French. Miss Crumrine and a colleague faced the question of which one would go.
"We both had family responsibilities so we decided to share the job. That meant that I received $700 that year," she explains.
Miss Crumrine assumes that her colleague received the same amount, but
Miss Crumrine's early KU memories are matched by colorful stories of turn-of-the-
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said, "I've never known what anybody else in my department makes as a salary."
She tells with relish about visiting a wild west exhibit in Paris during her only sabbatical in 1968. AsM the cowboy and Indian displays, Miss Crumrine recalls having said to one of the officials there, "I suppose I'm not supposed to come or even in Paris who saw Buffalo Bill."
She reports that the proper Frenchman was tolerant but highly skeptical.
"I've always told this that (having seen *Infalto Bill*) creates a great deal of confidence."
However, Miss Crumrine was to have her revenge when a few years later a visiting Frenchman also expressed polite skepticism. On that occasion, Miss Crumrine produced a photograph she had taken of the girl she met in the condition," she apologizes, "probably because my sister and I developed it ourselves."
At the time the photograph was taken,
Miss Crumrine lived with her parents in the southeast Kansas community of Independence. Across the street lived the grandfather of William Inge, Kansas plawright.
e explains that in 1916 Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show came to Independence. Because her house was along the parade route, she and her family gathered on the front porch to watch Buffalo Bill, she wrote, "I go out to the barn but drogs a sward, old-fashioned carriage."
Although the occasion was exciting, Miss Crumrine says that she was not, even in those days, convinced of Buffalo Bill's heroism.
"I soon lost my feeling that the people
The distance between the frontier flavor of Kansas and the eastern elitism of Yale University would, for many, seem impossibly great. But when it became necessary for Miss Crummite to leave KU in order to pursue her doctorate, she chose Yale.
who shot all the buffalo and shot all the Indians at sight were heroes," she says. "Quite early in my career, I had a feeling that those Indians were here first."
"I think I must have been a women's libber without knowing it," she said. "Back then I did not think of myself as being such, but I chose Yale over Harvard because Yale was much more prestigious than that of Yale University. For Harvard you had to get your degree from Radcliffe."
The decision to leave was difficult because she had no assurance from KU that there would be a position available when she retired. In spite of that, there were still family responsibilities.
However, possible difficulties at Yale because of the sex, geographical origin or other factors may prevent you from accessing it.
She managed the war years in New Haven without much difficulty. In spite of imposed restrictions, she was able to Crurineum's friends sometimes met in her room to study by candlelight. She bought heavy black cloth to cover the windows as to prevent her from by war planes nor by the local authorities.
As far as feeling out of place at Yale, Miss Crumrine said simply, "I looked around and saw I was doing as well or better than me." He thought I was less anxious. I thought I had a riot to be there."
Miss Crumrine explains her life quite simply, "all my life I've been in the position of being a patient and had to do something or else. And somehow, well, I never succumbed yet."
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