My four years of high school English were taught by Mrs. Gladys Kephart at West Chester High School and Mid-Prairie Community High School in Iowa. She now lives at a retirement community in Champaign, Illinois. In 2016 she came to Washington, Iowa, my birthplace, to attend the 55th year reunion of the West Chester part of the Mid-Prairie Class of 1961 reunion. We have been friends on Facebook since the time of the reunion. Mrs. Kephart taught me a lot about written composition and helped me with literature. During my two semesters of taking world literature at Park I made the decision to change my major from high school English teaching to elementary education. I had taken world literature as an elective in place of the freshman English course that I tested out of during freshman orientation in the fall of 1961.
Taking a required speech class during my freshman year at Park was a welcome change from reading for my other classes. In high school I had taken declam as a sophomore, junior and senior. I chose to participate in the original oratory section as a junior and senior and was therefore able to write and memorize a speech of my own. I wrote and presented "The Decade of Man in Space" in my junior year and "Greetings, Extra-Terrestrials!" in my senior year. Mrs. Kephart was my advisor and coach. In the Southeast Iowa district contest I received a II rating as a junior and a I rating as a senior.
Here are excerpts from the 1961 and 1962 diaries I kept at Park pertaining to my participation in Dr. Hill's introduction to speech course:
Wednesday, September 13, 1961: I don't have to take freshman English (among 35 who don't!) but will have to take a semester of speech.
Friday, September 15, 1961: Speech, which will be mainly oral, will be informal in the Meetin' House. [The Meetin' House was dedicated in 1933 as a home for YWCA and YMCA members on campus and is still in service for classes, meetings, seminars, lectures, forums, dinners and receptions.]
Saturday, September 30, 1961: I got an A- on my audience characterization paper for speech.
Saturday, October 14, 1961: This morning I had speech class and was able to hear my criticisms. They were pretty favorable. I need to work more on articulation and projection. I'll concentrate on that when I give my next one, a narrative, which should take less thought on subject matter.
Monday, October 23, 1961: This afternoon I looked up some books in the library to find a picture resembling our family's meteorite. I found some interesting books on the subject, and I saw several titles on life on other planets. I hope my speech will suffice but if we're not supposed to memorize them I can hardly see how we can "practice"!
Tuesday, October 24, 1961: I'm floored! The others thought my speech on the meteorite was very good, perhaps "too well prepared"- and I didn't even begin it until last night.
Tuesday, November 28, 1961: I got a B on my speech about a major in English. I got favorable constructive criticisms - I mean they were able to say what I did wrong constructively and not just generally.
January 1, 1962: If you'd call taking notes on Benjamin Fairless's book "completing" my "planned vacation" homework, it was really down to the wire because it was the last thing I did tonight! [The pro-union steel company executive lived from May 3, 1890 to January 1, 1962.]
January 2, 1962: This morning on the car radio we heard that Benjamin Fairless died yesterday. That beats all - but I guess I'll have to give my speech in memory of him.
Tuesday, January 23, 1962: I got a B for the speech course - I'm proud of my first college grade.
About the diary writer
- Barbara McDowell Whitt
- Kansas City, Missouri, Alexandria, Virginia, United States
- ~ About: A 1961-65 Park College Diary ~ As a high school girl and then a college coed in the first half of the 1960s, I wrote nightly entries on the pages of one-year diaries. In January 2010 I began transcribing the entries into a blog and gave each one a title. I grew up on three farms within 30 miles of Iowa City and the University of Iowa with its Iowa Writers' Workshop. As the oldest of four daughters, in my diaries I sometimes referred to my sisters as "the kids" or "the girls." We helped our parents, but we also had good, wholesome fun - a characteristic I took with me to Park. Park is 300 miles southwest of West Chester, Iowa, in Parkville, Missouri, on the Missouri River 10 miles northwest of Kansas City, Missouri, and across the river from Kansas City, Kansas. In 2000 Park College became Park University. Today Park's flagship campus is in Parkville and there are an additional 41 campus centers across the nation. Park was one of the first educational institutions in the United States to offer online learning. My last post was on May 22, 2018. I may be followed on Twitter @BarbaraMcDWhitt.
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