Gail McDonald Oral History Collection
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Oral history interview with Suzanne Rogers Bush
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Suzanne Rodgers Bush (1933-2011) graduated from Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, now UNC Greensboro, in 1955, with a degree in English. While at the college, she was a member of the Coraddi literary magazine staff and participated in the Arts Forum. After graduating, Bush moved to Washington, DC, where she taught school, served as a staff member on Capitol Hill, and volunteered at several organizations. Bush talks about growing up in Scotland Neck, North Carolina, her reason for attending Woman's College, and her dislike for teaching in an urban setting. She mentions the excellent quality of the education at Woman's College and the outstanding professors in the Department of English, such as Marc Friedlander, Lettie Hamlett Rogers, Peter Taylor, and Robert Watson. Bush discusses her favorite professor Randall Jarrell's teaching method, poetry, reading style, and shyness, as well as his love of T.S. Eliot poems. She also describes the influence Jarrell had on her poetry analysis, poetry appreciation, confidence during class discussions, study habits, and writing style. Bush recalls the loving relationship between Jarrell and his wife, Mary Jarrell, and meeting Saul Bellow, Robert Frost, and Flannery Connor during her involvement with the college's Arts Forum festival.
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Oral history interviw with Mary Jarrell
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Mary Eloise von Schrader Jarrell (1914-2007) graduated from Stanford University in 1936 with a degree in philosophy. She was a patron of the arts, an editor, a writer, and the widow of poet and English professor Randall Jarrell. After Jarrell's death in 1965, she dedicated her time to memorializing his life by editing and writing several books about her husband's life and poetry. In 1995, she gave an interview and spoke about her life with Randall Jarrell, as well as his teaching method, rapport with students, his interest in T.S. Eliot's poetry, and his feminine and masculine sides. She discusses her husband's time as an English professor at Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, now UNC Greensboro, from 1948 to 1965. Jarrell recalls that her husband preferred to teach female students because of their knowledge of the Bible, but not male students because they asked too many questions in class. She gives the reasons why she thinks Randall Jarrell referred to Woman's College as a "Sleeping Beauty." She suspects it was because he had written two poems about "Sleeping Beauty," he liked women, and he thought of his female students as being asleep, and his teaching as the catalyst that would wake them up to the wider-world. Jarrell recalls her husband bringing his literary friends to campus for the annual Arts Forum and the impact it had on the students when they met poets and writers that they had studied. She mentions poets and writers Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Flannery O'Connor, Ezra Pound, Karl Shapiro, Peter Taylor, and Robert Watson. Jarrell recalls the campus-wide curriculum controversy of the early 1950s during the time of Chancellor Edward Kidder Graham. She also talks about her husband's depression, which revealed itself in several of his poems. Jarrell attributes her husband's depression to wanting approval from the college and his peers, not winning the Pulitzer Prize, feeling passed over, and aging.
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Oral history interviw with Robert and Betty Watson
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Robert Winthrop Watson (1925-2012) received a Bachelor of Arts with honors in economics (1946) from Williams College; studied art history (1946-1947) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland; and received a Master's (1950) and a PhD (1954) in English literature from Johns Hopkins University. From 1953 to 1987, he taught English, poetry, and creative writing at Woman's College of the University of North Carolina/UNC Greensboro. In addition to his role as a professor, Watson was a novelist, playwright, and poet. He married Betty Rean in 1952. Betty Rean Watson (1928- ) graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in art history (1949). she received a Master of Fine Arts (1965) from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Watson studied lithography with the abstract-expressionist John Opper and has painted portraits of poets Randall Jarrell and Allen Tate. She has exhibited in galleries in Chapel Hill, Greensboro, New York City, Norfolk, and Provincetown, as well as many other cities. Robert Watson talks about his education and how he came to Woman's College in 1953. He explains how the college offered him and other writers the opportunity to make a living teaching while pursuing writing. Watson recalls that the college could not afford to hire PhDs, so they hired people like Caroline Gordon, Randall Jarrell, Allen Tate, Peter Taylor and other writers as English professors. He mentions the number of famous writers such as Robert Frost, Flannery O'Connor, Adrienne Rich, William DeWitt Snodgrass, and many others, who came to the college during the annual Arts Forum/Arts Festival to give lectures, participate in panel discussions, and judge student works. Watson gives his thoughts about the writings of T.S. Eliot, Randall Jarrell, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound. He believes that Jarrell called Woman's College the "Sleeping Beauty" because of his fondness for fairy tales, his women students who did not talk much in the classroom, and his desire to wake up the students to a wider world. Watson believes the reason Jarrell said that he had a "semi-feminine mind and poetic" was because he had empathy and understanding for women. Betty Watson recalls that women students at her alma mater, Wellesley College, as well as Woman's College, did not talk very much or ask many questions in the class room. She attributes this to the position of women in society during the 1950s and 1960s. She mentions the college rules and regulations such as not wearing slacks or shorts on campus, signing in and out of the dormitories, and forbidding men in the dormitories. Watson remarks that Randall Jarrell was not a "man's man" although he loved tennis, football, and cars. She states that he was very sympathetic to women, very positive when evaluating his students' writings, had a marvelous mind, and wrote and spoke in clear and simple terms. Watson also recalls Jarrell's mental decline before he died in 1965.
