Friday, Nov. 6, 1964 University Daily Kansan Page 15
Book Traces Home Ec. History
By Irvana Keagy
Viola J. Anderson was a member of the home economics department's teaching staff from 1919-1960. During
Ten years ago an extensive research began concerning the establishment and history of the KU home economics department. The information concerning the fifty years life of the department was screened and composed into a book entitled "The First 50 Years," by Viola Anderson, associate professor emeritus in the department. During Miss Anderson's intermittent absences, however, Edna Hill, professor of home economics and former chairman of the department, has become the successful promoter of the book.
At first glance, "The First 50 Years" seems only a history, from 1910 to 1960, of one university department hidden in a few rooms behind the great stone walls of Fraser Hall, yet there is more to this book than a collection of facts. It brings to life the society of administrators and students that comprised the University of Kansas campus at that time and relates many important events that affected that society.
this time she saw the University transformed from a campus of small buildings connected by narrow dirt paths into an ever expanding maze of blond stone halls set in a network of tangled sidewalks.
During her 41 years at KU, Viola Anderson never left a project just almost right, says Miss Hill. As a teacher and as an author, her goal was completeness and correctness. This book is proof of her dedication. Each phrase, each sentence has been written and rewritten, until the entire 50 years history has been artfully condensed into ninety-nine pages of satisfying reading.
No other department on the University of Kansas campus has had more affiliation with other departments, perhaps, than that of home economics. Almost every department and service of KU is necessary to home economics' full functioning, and the department has given help in its turn to each of them.
Dr. Edna Day, the first administrator of the department, arrived in the fall of 1910 to preside over the department's six rooms in the basement of Fraser Hall. She envisioned a building to be devoted exclusively
to home economics, but that is still not a reality.
Elizabeth Cade Sprague (donor of the University's Sprague Apartments for retired faculty) presided over the department for the longest number of years, 1914-1941.
Miss Edna Hill's administration began in 1941 and ended only this year. The acting chairman, heading the staff this fall, is Dr. Frances Horowitz.
Few facts are told in this book about Miss Anderson herself, yet there is a definite atmosphere about the book which reveals basic qualities in her personality. Judgment, reason and avoidance of exaggeration weave themselves between her remarks and her precise quotes. This is perhaps the greatest stimulation of the work. Miss Anderson did not scheme to make the book exciting. On the contrary, she realized that a book of this type belongs to a certain collection of instructors and students. The book is a tribute, on Miss Anderson's part, to the men and women who have helped to create and keep the department soundly accredited and constantly improving.
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