UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #236
ALLEN, ETHEL K.

ALLEN, Ethel K. (1906?-2006)	
Undergraduate and Graduate Student, Bacteriology; Wife of Oscar Allen (Professor of Bacteriology)
At UW: 1924-30

Interviewed: 	1982	
Interviewers: 	Dorothy Collins and Laura Smail
Length: 	1 hour, 28 minutes
Series: 	Faculty Wives
		Women in Science and Engineering

Abstract: In her December 1982 interview with Dorothy Collins and Laura Smail, Ethel K. Allen talks about her five decades of collaboration with Oscar Allen and service to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She recounts her training in bacteriology with E. B. Fred, her marriage to and research with Oscar Allen at Hawaii, Maryland, and UW, and their track record of publication. She also offers her perspectives on being a woman scientist and faculty wife during the mid-20th century, and on major personalities of the period. This interview was conducted for inclusion in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives Oral History Project.

Keywords: University of Wisconsin-Madison; bacteriology; Oscar Allen; E. B. Fred; University of Hawaii; World War II; University of Maryland; Elizabeth McCoy; University Club; Ira Baldwin; University League; Daughters of Demeter; Sigma Delta Epsilon; The Leguminosae (1981); Ruth Dickey; faculty wives.

First Interview Session (December 16, 1982): Digital File

00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:22	[begin tape 1; side 1] Allen gives her birth date and talks about her 1928 degree in botany. She couldn't get work, so returned to UW for bacteriology under E.B. Fred. Oscar Allen came to UW from Texas in 1927.  Both got degrees in 1930.  He was hired by the University of Hawaii and they spent the next 15 years in Honolulu. Her interest in both botany and bacteriology led to research in leguminous plants and nitrogen fixation.

00:02:49	EA discussed her family background and expectations for education.

00:04:23	She related her and her family’s feelings about leaving Wisconsin and family for Hawaii. She remarked about her symbiotic relationship with her husband and about working in his lab without pay.  She mused about her role as a faculty wife, her scientific career, and the culture at the University of Hawaii.

00:08:15	She described their return to the US, a research trip to Europe, returning to Hawaii in 1937 and three summers at University of Texas in Austin. She reminisced about the war in Europe in 1939, talking about her war diary, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and what Hawaii was like during wartime.

00:10:38	She explained why Hawaii was such a good place to study leguminosae.

00:12:32	EA talked about her role in the lab. She enjoyed the freedom to do what she wanted when she wanted because she was not paid and discussed types of work she did.

00:14:44	EA observed that their publication was always joint and that she had a level of recognition by their colleagues.

00:16:25	She remembered how WWII shortages and laboratory reallocation (for water testing of new pipelines) effected them and other families in Hawaii. She suspected that the stressful situation caused many families to break up. 

00:21:56	EA recalled how they managed household affairs during the war years—they read a lot and had to endure shortages

00:24:23	She recounted how they returned to the US to teach at the Univ. of Maryland in 1942, which she considered to be a mistake. In 1943, they accepted an invitation from E.B. Fred to returned to UW to rebuild the department, which had been the foremost bacteriology dept in the country but had declined out of “lack of interest” in practical application science for agricultural purposes.

00:28:19	She reminisced about Elizabeth McCoy, who was in Europe when EM got her MA, but with whom EA lived until they could moved into a home they bought. This allowed EA to “help" Oscar in lab. 

00:31:17	[end side 1; begin side 2] She discussed the traditions at the University Club. EA used University Club for lunch "always through the side door."

00:32:22	She returned to talk about McCoy's background as a farmer and relationship with E.B. Fred. She quipped “she should have been a man,” and was a good teacher and writer.

00:35:09	EA related E.B. Fred’s disappointment that she’d gotten married. She quipped about the bad advice Fred had sometimes given her, none of which she took. She described him as somewhat selfish and strongly opinionated, but surrounded by very good advisors like Ira Baldwin.

00:40:10	EA described what UW was like in 1924-30, calling it a "social school." She talked about her performance in her courses and inability to get a job during the Depression. Later on she got work during the war period in a blood bank because of her teaching background. She also reviewed her teaching in a Hawaii boarding academy. 

00:43:29	Returning to her student days, she related her experiences in dormitories, student activities, refusing to join a sorority, and favorite classes. [end tape 1; begin tape 2] She remarked that college life and classes were wasted on youth.

00:47:33	She compared the wartime privations in College Park, Maryland with campus when they came back to UW in 1943. She explained why the Freds turned down Olin House initially, and described Mrs. Fred’s social life.

00:49:55	She recounted the growing population at UW and the building of dormitories and Quonset huts to house the GIs and create temporary classroom space. 

00:51:51	She discussed the social life of the postwar period, entertaining students and being involved in the University League and Daughters of Demeter. She recalled the reaction of other faculty wives to EA's lack of interest in social groups.

00:53:51	She discussed her involvement with McCoy, Glassow and Dickey in the scientific honorary fraternity, Sigma Delta Epsilon. EA joined in 1939 and described meetings.

00:55:31	She remembered going to theater in Madison with Oscar.

00:56:34	EA shared her perspectives on the rapid expansion of UW after WWII, which she thought was unhealthy and overwhelming. She saw it as the beginning of the disenchantments of the 1960s.

01:01:15	Oscar died in 1976 after two years of retirement. They published their last joint paper together that year.

01:02:11	EA related the decline in student interest in Allens' research field from 1940s to 1970s, and how their work cycled back into popularity with the conservancy era in the 1970s.

01:05:01	end tape 1; begin tape 2] She talked about publishing The Leguminosae, which they’d researched together, after Oscar died. She described the research of cataloguing these species in Hawaii, Europe, and the US starting in the 1930s, beginning on the writing after Oscar’s retirement, professional disagreements, and publication of the work.

01:11:04	She discussed her honorary degree from UW, noting that a person didn’t have to have a degree to succeed in the field, citing the head of the dept E.G. Hastings. She speculated whether someone currently could do the same things she had done—observing that she and Oscar relied on one another.

1:13:49	She observed that she was accepted completely by other scientists, though some Asian scholars thought their family situation was strange. She denied feeling the need to find own identity, which Ruth Dickey didn’t understand. She didn’t understand newer feminist attitudes by women about the working world of the mid-1900s, having experienced real partnership and wondering about evidence of discrimination. She felt McCoy was recognized and respected for her work, even by the sexist E. B Fred.

01:21:29	She reflected on attitudes in the Ag School toward girls in sciences, noting that she looked down on the Ag School before she began working in it. She talked about how she and others began working with Fred under a Thrash Fellowship, which was started by a man who invented a new process for making fertilizer.

01:25:18	EA quipped about not typical faculty wife, but other wives did not resent this. They felt she was “helping” my husband—they probably thought she washed the dishes.

01:26:33	EA mused about whether she would be able to get a Ph.D. today.  She could do the research and writing because she always did what she like to do.  She would not have the "gumption to take courses required today."

01:27:27	End of First Interview Session

End of Interview #236