Wednesday, March 13, 1963 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
KU Boasts Famous Women Graduates
A stage star and concert singer. A syndicated columnist.
A cancer researcher.
A philanthropist.
Dr. Leona Baumgartner Elias, a 1923 college graduate and former New York City Commissioner of Health, was named an Assistant Secretary of State last September. Her official title is Bureau Chief of the U.S. Agency for Intellectual Development (AID).
Dr. Elias has taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell. She is president of the National Health Council and a member of the American Public Health Association.
These are just a few of the many and varied professions undertaken by famous female KU graduates.
ANOTHER OF KU's doctor graduates is a research specialist of tularemia (rabbit fever). Cora Downs, professor of bacteriology, came to KU from Kansas City, and has remained at the University throughout her career except for one year at the University of Chicago and several years spent in war service at Ft. Detrick, Md. She also spent a year in Oxford, England.
MRS. BARNETT makes her home in Chicago where her husband, Claud A. Barnett, is director of the Associated Negro Press, Inc.
Etta Moten Barnett, American stage and concert star, was graduated from the School of Fine Arts in 1931. In 1942, she opened on Broadway playing the lead in the musical "Porgy and Bess." After the close of the show, she conducted a radio series over Chicago's NBC station WMAQ. And since the radio series ended, she has participated in concert lecture series throughout the United States, Canada, South America, West Africa and European cities.
Miss Downs was named the Summerfield Distinguished Professor in Bacteriology last spring. The award carries with it income from a $100,-000 endowment.
Miss Downs was elected a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1956. The Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow has her photograph in its international gallery of medical honor.
DORIS FLEESON. Washington, D.C., news analyst, began her newspaper career on the University Daily Kansan. She was graduated from KU in 1923. After a short stint on a Pittsburg newspaper, she moved to Washington where she worked as a political writer and correspondent for the "Woman's Home Companion." She covered the North African and Italian campaigns and the invasion of France for the magazine. In 1945 she began syndicated newswriting and today her stories are syndicated in newspapers throughout the country.
HER DISCOVERY and study of tyrosinosis, and her other contributions to the knowledge of cancer, won her the Garvan Medal in 1955. The Garvan Medal is the highest award for women given by the American Chemical Society.
Miss Fleeson is winner of the New York Newspaper Woman's Club Prize and past president of the Women's National Press Club. She won the 1954 Raymond Clapper award for exceptionally meritorious reporting of national affairs. She was the first woman to receive the Clapper award.
Dr. Grace Medes, cancer researcher and retired head of the Department of Metabolic Chemistry, of the Institute for Cancer Research and Lankenau Research Institute in Philadelphia, was graduated from KU in 1904. Dr. Medes has taught at Vassar, Wellesley and the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.
When Dr. Medes came to Lawrence in 1955 to receive her Distinguished Service Citation, she stayed with Helen Rhoda Hoopes, another of KU's most distinguished graduates.
Helen Rhoda Hoopes, retired assistant professor of English, is a 1913 graduate of KU. She joined the KU faculty in 1914. Poet, writer, lecturer and traveler, she helped found Pi Lambda Theta, honorary teachers society, serving as its first president. She was also a charter member of Theta Sigma Phi, professional society for women in journalism.
MISS HOOPES is known in the Middle West for her nonsense verse which once appeared in "The Kansas City Star." Miss Hoopes also wrote for the "Star" pages for women.
MRS. CLAPPER'S husband was a syndicated columnist and news analyst. After his death in 1944, his associates established a memorial association that yearly presents an award to the Washington correspondent whose work embodies the ideals that best characterized Clapper's writing. Doris Fleeson received the award in 1954.
In February, one of her poems about Marilyn Monroe was published in the "Star."
Another writer, Mrs. Olive Clapper, author of the recent book, "One Lucky Woman," attended KU with her husband Raymond Clapper from 1915-1917. Her book is the story of her life with her columnist-husband, Raymond Clapper, who was killed in a wartime airplane crash.
After her husband's death, Mrs. Clapper covered political conventions and compiled a book from her husband's columns. She made her radio debut in 1944 as a commentator in the presidential elections. Two years later, she became contribution editor to "Look" magazine, and late in 1945, she was appointed public information specialist for the Department of Labor.
Mrs. Clapper recently resigned as director of the Washington CARE office, after touring the Middle East, Central America and Europe for the organization.
Ruth Gagliardi, active in the field of children's books and a member of Who's Who of American Women, was graduated from KU in 1922. She is the widow of Dominic Gagliardi, former KU professor of economics.
MRS. GAGLIARDO'S most recent honor came in June, 1962, when she was named president of the Children's Service Division of the American Library. Once vice-president of the organization, she served as the national chairman in charge of the Newberry-Caldecott Awards Committee which annually selects the outstanding children's book and picture book.
Mrs. Gagliardo is known throughout Kansas for her work with the Kansas Children's Traveling Book Exhibit, which she founded 10 years ago.
Mrs. Gagliardo began her career as a reporter for William Allen White on the Emporia "Gazette." She wrote the first newspaper book review column, while working for White in Emporia.
TODAY. MRS. Gagliardo is library director of the Kansas State Teachers Association. Since 1942, she has written a monthly feature "The Child's Bookshelf" which appears monthly in the "Kansas Teacher" magazine.
Mrs. Gagliardo is the author of a recent collection of stories and poems entitled "Let's Read Aloud."
Gertrude Sellards Pearson, is one of KU's benefactors. She and her late husband, Joseph R. Pearson have provided annual housing for more than 1,000 KU students.
THEIR GIFTS have made possible: Pearson and Sellards scholarship halls, and Joseph R. Pearson, Gertrude Sellards Pearson and Grace Pearson residence halls.
Grace Willkie, former Dean of Women at Wichita University. is known throughout the Midwest for her work in the American Association of University Women
(AAUW). She has been both a local and state president of the organization.
Her service and leadership in AAUW have resulted in a scholarship bearing her name. Recently a Wichita University dormitory was named in her honor.
MISS WILKIE was a member of the KU Alumni Board for five years. Another KU woman doctor, Clara Nigg, research virologist, is currently chief of the Bacteriology Division of the Naval Biological Laboratory of the University of California at Berkley.
And so the parade of some of KU's distinguished women ends.
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