In this interview, Jean McKaye Tanner '45, discusses life on campus during World War II. Edwards was engaged to be married while at Pembroke and she recalls her urgency to marry her fiancé, Knight Edwards, because of time constraints put upon them by the war effort. Knight Edwards, who was in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), a program that required summer courses for male students to graduate and enlist in the military faster. In the interview, Edwards also discusses her own participation in the Women's Auxiliary Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). In regard to her life on campus, Edwards explains that the strict rules of living in a dorm did not appeal to her, especially since she had a fiancé, so she chose to remain a "City Girl", a female day student who attended Pembroke but did not live on campus. Edwards remembers professors Robert Hudson George and Charles Alexander Robinson, Director of Physical Education Bessie Huntting Rudd, Dean Margaret Shove Morriss, Assistant Dean Nancy Lewis, and Dean of Admissions Eva Mooar, as well as her time in the glee club. Edwards concludes the interview by summarizing her position as class president and reviewing the 1944 and 1945 yearbooks.
Notes:
Class year: 1945
Biographical note: Jean McKaye Tanner attended Hope High School in Providence, Rhode Island and began studying at Pembroke College just four months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During her time at Pembroke, Edwards served as class president as well as she pursued an accelerated program in order to graduate early with her fiancé, Knight Edwards, who was in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). She and Knight Edwards married on February 19, 1945 and she graduated a few months later with her A.B. in English. After Pembroke, Edwards attended Midshipman's School and Communication School at Smith College in order to enlist in the Women's Auxiliary Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). When the war ended, Edwards worked as a proofreader at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and went on to obtain an A.M. in English literature from Radcliffe College and a master's degree in library science from the University of Rhode Island. Edwards worked as the librarian at the Lincoln School in Providence until she retired.
This collection contains oral history interviews with alumnae of Brown University, which admitted its first women students in 1891. The Women's College at Brown was renamed Pembroke College in 1928, and in 1971, Pembroke College merged with the Men's College …
