A tiny white dove on the cover flies away from an imposing Beaux Arts building. At first glance, the dove is barely noticeable. Inside the book, it appears again at the beginning of each section, flying up and away from the stolid, permanent, immobile Academic Building, an edifice that still impresses all who visit…
The story in brief: The death of a young Marine Corps lieutenant in 1907 became a national sensation when his mother, his sister and his ghost challenged the Navy’s suicide verdict. For the American press and its readers, the lieutenant’s mother, Rosa Sutton, came to represent every mother who had lost a son in the…
The influence of a gaping and curious public can have no effect on the conduct of the Judge Advocate in this matter. . . . The hallowed grave of a dead son is no more sacred than the grave of a military reputation and there are a great many military reputations at stake in this…
From the time she was a young child, Jane Hall had an interest in Native American culture, particularly that of the Hopi Tribe, a northeastern Arizona sovereign nation. My mother adored her childhood home in Arizona; she had learned about the Hopi from her father, Dick Wick Hall, who spent time with the tribe as…
What determines who a woman will become? Jane Hall was an orphan at fifteen and a “literary prodigy” according to the press. How did this daughter of Arizona’s most popular humorist become a Depression-era debutante, a successful author of magazine fiction, and a screenwriter at Hollywood’s most glamorous studio? Jane soon found that her ambition…
Tomorrow we will have an unusual celebration of Independence Day– unlike any other in American history. Because there are a lot of people who feel that freedom, independence and equality are under threat right now from the people leading our own government. I thought about writing a post about this unprecedented national dilemma for the…
Margaret Hoover interviews Canadian American journalist Danielle Crittenden this week on Firing Line about the heartbreaking loss that she and her husband, David Frum, faced in 2024 when their 32-year-old daughter, Miranda, died suddenly from complications from a 2019 surgery. Her new book, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey through the Unthinkable, chronicles how…
March is Women’s History Month and PBS’s American Experience recently reminded us about the early twentieth-century activism that formed the background for Rosa Sutton’s crusade for justice for her dead son. Between 1900 and 1910 women’s determination to gain the right to vote increased. Initial efforts, however, did not include Black women who fought…
In the old days, magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping were filled with articles about current events as well as fiction by some of the nation’s best authors. Taking a look at some of these articles reveals what was on people’s minds a long time ago. Emphasis was placed on cultivating character in pre-1950…
He called himself Andy. He was an American Army captain from southwestern Virginia on a journey in the French countryside. When he picked up his pen with its fine point on August 21, 1917, to write to Rose Sutton Parker, he had apparently just traveled into the country by auto from one of the finest…
I came across an article about Thanksgiving in the 1930s thanks to journalist Julie Chang. She notes that, for those who could not afford to dine in an elegant hotel or club, making recipes from scratch compensated for inflated food prices during the Depression. And many Americans remained optimistic despite their troubles. At that point,…
One focus of this blog is life in the 1930s to 1950s– as seen through popular culture. In 1938, the editor of Good Housekeeping, William F. Bigelow, a big fan of Jane Hall’s work, put together twelve articles as “The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book.” Targeting hundreds of thousands of university and college students, as well as…
“Congratulations! You’re invited to participate in KDP’s beta for audiobooks.” The April 3 email offered me (apparently one of a select group of randomly chosen authors) the chance to produce an audiobook version of Such Mad Fun using virtual voice narration. Perhaps I didn’t focus enough on the word “beta.” What that meant is that…
Rosetta Agnes Brant was born on January 27, 1860, into a pioneer family already overflowing with the laughter and tears of young children. Ten years earlier, Rosa’s German father, Joseph, and his Irish wife, Louisa Burgett Brant, had made their way on a journey of close to 2000 miles from Dayton Ohio, to Clark County,…
My grandsons are now teenagers, no longer the little boys they were when I first wrote this post in 2018. Since then I moved to California to be nearer family. In addition to unexpected medical adventures, a lot of my time has been spent sorting through boxes of family papers that have some interest outside…
Travel back to the 1930s…. Movies Jane worked on in Hollywood still play on Turner Classic Movies! These include the following four – in a couple of cases to watch the trailer you may have to skip an ad. Though that’s not the case with These Glamour Girls her satire about life among the debutante…
The November 21, 2022, New Yorker cover, “Low Tide” by Barry Blitt, features a huge grey elephant on a red surfboard looking less than confident about the future. How different his mood from a fellow pachyderm that appeared on the December 31, 1938, cover of the magazine, a gleeful pink elephant by Rea Irvin (1881-1972).…
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