If you haven’t met her, I’d like to introduce you to Alice Louise Reynolds, a “founder” of The Lord’s University, a beloved BYU professor and one of our favorite Mormons.
It is estimated that Reynolds taught over 5,000 students in 20 different literature courses during her 44 year tenure. She was the first female at BYU (and second in Utah) to become a full professor. She taught the first classes at The BYU in Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton. In 1911 she was the first woman to give the BYU Founders Day address. In 1999 BYU Magazine named her among the Top 10 BYU professors … ever: http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=172.
Not only did she teach English literature and composition, she also taught theology courses and established the first library collection at the school. When giving student feedback, she opined: “tough criticism [will] help them to grow.”
Her legendary absent-mindedness endeared her to all. According to anecdotal evidence, she purportedly:
* carried her teakettle mistaking it for her purse,
* wore dresses inside out,
* entered a classroom through a window, bloomers first, and
* walked through a herd of cows while reading a book, swatting at them with her purse.
In addition to teaching, Reynolds was an inexhaustible contributor to LDS magazines as well as author of numerous lessons appearing in the Mormon church’s manuals, including writing 10 years of literature courses for the Relief Society.
She never married. “To some of you,” she once said, “the sweetest word in the English language is ‘husband,’ to some of you, ‘child,’ but to me the sweetest word in the English language is ‘friend.'”
Reynolds’ energies were not confined to her Mormon circles of influence. She was also a political activist. As a women’s advocate and active Democrat, she served on the Democratic Party’s National Committee and as a delegate to its national conventions, as well as a delegate to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National American Women Suffrage Conventions, and the League of Women Voters at the Pan American Convention.
Shortly before her death in December 1938, she said to her sister: “I am not afraid to die. I have lived the best I could, and I am sure no girl or woman ever had a more wonderful life, with more opportunities, more privileges, and more friends. I have been most fortunate and for all these blessings, I am sincerely grateful.”
In 1933 her former students and friends organized the Alice Louise Reynolds Club to promote libraries and the study of literature across the U.S. “Members found in her a champion of their sex, a custodian of their cultural and spiritual values, and an exponent of friendship. They continued to send back books and money, and to sponsor an English student scholarship. Their meetings became spontaneous centers of continuing education.” Her legacy of independent thinking and action inspired a later group known as the Alice Louise Reynolds Women’s Forum to meet between January 1978 and April 1981 to discuss feminist issues, in particular the Equal Rights Amendment, as these matters related to the LDS church.
Alice Louise Reynolds, we consider you our friend.
Sources: Reba Keele, “Alice L. Reynolds,” in Sister Saints (BYU Press, 1978); Amy Bentley, “‘Comforting the Motherless Children’: The Alice Louise Reynolds Forum” (Dialogue, Fall 1990); and A Book of Mormons.
I can’t get past the sentence that says there were LITERATURE COURSES for Relief Society. Salivating . . .
Heather,
Before the 3-hour block, weekday RS meetings had monthly lessons on 1) literature–later broadened to cultural refinement and including music and art, 2) social relations–with topics like being good friends and neighbors (no emphasis on sharing the gospel), 2) mother education, (mother ed and social relations were taught the same day with sisters choosing the lesson that best met their time of life), 3) spiritual living. Spiritual living focused on studying one of the scriptures or a book like Jesus the Christ in depth. One meeting a month was devoted to working on bazaar items or other fund-raising projects since RS sisters raised their own funds and spent them without needing male approval.
Writing about what we have given up made me realize why I no longer bother to attend RS.
This was a wonderful introduction to someone I would be honored to have known. What a woman! She’s my new favorite Mormon indeed.
There were rumors that Alice was the plural wife of George Brimhall, but I found no evidence of that. I believe there is evidence that she was the plural wife of Benjamin Cluff.
Margaret, if so, that Ben Cluff was one lucky man. Heck, if so, even his other wife was one lucky woman.
Another winner.
I’m lovin’ this series.
I had an absent-minded professor at BYU. In the early 80’s he taught at BYU and worked part-time at Signetics (a semiconductor company at the top of the hill on University Drive (near the University Mall in Orem). He had a friend who worked full-time at Signetics and helped him teach a few classes at BYU.
Anyway, Dr. B. would sometimes forget whether his car was at BYU or at Signetics and just walk home without it. His son (about my age and a friend of mine) would then go out with a sibling to drive around and find dad’s car. I worked for him for two years and found that he was terrible at keeping track of keys, money, books, grades, time, pretty much everything. At first it was annoying, but it became humorous and another student and I became proficient at predicting what he was going to lose and arrange to be standing next to him with the object in hand when he started looking for it. Fun times.
Reynolds sounds like a fascinating person.
Michael, that’s pretty funny that you both took up his slack.
The “absent-minded” term is interesting too. It’s really more like a narrowly focused mind that has no peripheral vision, but I guess average people who remember keys viewed it from their perspective and their descriptive term won out.
Very funny, I really enjoy reading it.
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Indeed, an amazing woman. For the record, Alice Louise Reynolds is my great aunt. Our family records (and LDS family history records) show no mention of any marriages or sealing to a spouse, but I agree that anyone would have been lucky to have her as a wife or sister-wife. She was a favorite to countless – family member or not. For a deeper look see http://signaturebookslibrary.org/?p=1059