barbara kirkpatrick stroup

so, you may think this is weird, but i get google alerts emails with anything that references "gettysburg college," and the other day an obituary came up that interested me because it referenced that she'd taught at gettysburg. i doubted i knew her, but i thought that it would be a shame not to learn a little bit about the life of community member here in gettysburg.

so i clicked on the link, and started reading. as i read, i tried to imagine the progress of the little girl to the teenager, to the young adult, and so on, living through a world that i normally only read about as "history." i am always fascinated by my elders-they have so many stories to tell, and indeed, so did barbara. a graduate in english (yay!) from dickinson college in 1940, and a recipient of a master's from ship u., she also took graduate courses at columbia, uconn, nc state and penn state. plus, she had many interesting adventures moving around the country and teaching in one-room schoolhouses, with "a pot-bellied stove," says the article.

i thought of my own grandmother, who was a wellesley graduate, and who received her own masters in education, and it made me proud of the intellectual ambition of these women, when i remember my favorite 18th century lit. professor telling me once that, when she was in graduate school, one of her older professors told her she'd never make it in the professional world because she was a woman. funny that people still say such things. but foolish people obviously can't stop those who have a will, and spirit, and heart in what they do.

so anyway, if you want to learn more about this incredible woman, i think taking the minute and a half that it takes to read her obituary is a tribute we can all afford to make: http://www.gettysburgtimes.com/articles/2009/12/05/obituaries/doc4b1a54d38dcd9828554081.txt