Collecting area: Oral history

The linguist Audrey R. Duckert was a pioneer in the study of American regional English. Born in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin, Duckert studied dialect at the University of Wisconsin, and after completing her doctorate at Radcliffe College in 1959, she joined the faculty at UMass Amherst. During her forty year career at UMass, Duckert became a founding member of the Dictionary of American Regional English (1965) and she was the first UMass woman admitted to Phi Beta Kappa. In addition to her linguistic work, she developed an avid interest in local history and was involved with several local historical societies, including the Swift River Valley Historical Society in New Salem.

The Duckert oral history collection consists of a series of 53 audiocassette recordings containing interviews with persons displaced when the Swift River Valley was flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir in 1939. The histories include rich recollections of life in the towns of Greenwich, Enfield, Dana, and Prescott, with village life, education, family, and the changes that accompanied the inundation of the region. The original audiocassettes are in the possession of the Swift River Valley Historical Society.

A voice of the radical working class during the Great Depression, Jack Conroy was the son of a union organizer, born and raised in the mining camps near Moberly, Mo. His novels The Disinherited (1933) and A World to Win (1935) were among the best known works of “proletarian” American fiction to appear in the 1930s.

The Conroy Collection includes a series of 24 letters from Jack Conroy to Lewis Fried, a professor of English at Kent State University and UMass PhD, along with a small number of letters by associates of Conroy, and a selection of publications associated with or including work by him. Of particular interest are Fried’s oral history interviews with Conroy (1971) and Sally Goodman (1978).

Between 1929 and 1934, the Granville Brothers Aircraft Company manufactured their distinctive Gee Bee aircraft at the airport in Springfield, Mass., using a hangar converted from a former dance hall as their plant. Originally from New Hampshire, the five brothers drew upon their self-taught mechanical ingenuity in the years after the First World War to transform an automobile and aircraft repair business into aircraft design and production. The brothers flew their first craft in Boston in May 1929, a biplane they advertised as “the fastest and most maneuverable licensed airplane for its horsepower in the United States,” moving operations to Springfield later that year. Although only about two dozen Gee Bees were ever manufactured, the planes gained a wide reputation for their innovative aerodynamic designs, raw power, and extraordinary success on the air racing circuit. Gee Bees claimed speed records and numerous prizes, including the coveted Thompson Trophy in 1931 and 1932 won by pilots Lowell Bayles and Jimmy Doolitte, but the death of the eldest brother in a flying accident and the impact of the Great Depression caused the company to shutter in 1934.

Aviation historian Tom Nallen conducted a series of interviews with former employees of the Granville Airplane Co. beginning in the late 1970s, recording memories of the company and its workers, the Gee Bee planes, and their performance during the golden age of air racing.

A long-time agricultural and environmental writer and editor, Susan J. Harlow has deep roots in New England and Vermont agriculture and organic farming communities. Harlow Farm, where she lives and grew up, was one of the first organic vegetable farms in New England, and was named Vermont Sustainable Farm of the Year in 1998. Her interests in journalism, communications, and farming have led to numerous publications, projects, and collaborations, including a period as Associate Editor for the Farm Progress Companies, serving as the Director of Communications at Antioch University New England, a published history on the University of Vermont Extension System, and numerous articles, including recurring pieces in American Agriculturalist.

The Susan Harlow Organic Farming Oral History Collection consists of six audio oral histories and additional notes from other interviews conducted by Harlow with Vermont organic farmers. Many of the interviews were part of a 2013 exhibit “Plowing Old Ground: Vermont’s Organic Farming Pioneers,” a collaborative effort with photographer John Nopper, who photographed the subjects of Harlow’s interviews. The visual exhibit featured interview summaries and quotations alongside photographs from six farms and their farmers, all pioneers in the history of organic farm production, marketing, and distribution in Vermont. The collection contains Harlow’s notes and transcriptions along with oral histories and interviews with: Jake and Liz Guest, Jack and Anne Lazor, Joey Klein, Bruce Kaufman, Howard Prussack, Paul Harlow, R. Houriet, Samuel Kaymen, Will and Judy Stevens, Richard Wiswall, and Enid Wonnacott.

David R. Inglis enjoyed a distinguished career in nuclear physics that ranged from theoretical work on the structure of the nucleus in the 1930s to the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s and work on renewable energy in the 1960s and 1970s. A Professor of Physics at UMass from 1969-1975, Inglis was a founding member of the Federation of American Scientists and from the mid-1940s on, he dedicated himself to informing public policy on the dangers of nuclear technologies.

The Inglis Papers offer a perspective on the life and career of a theoretical physicist who grew from an early involvement in the Manhattan Project to becoming a committed critic of nuclear weaponry and nuclear power. Although the collection is relatively sparse in unpublished scientific work, it includes valuable correspondence relating to Inglis’s efforts with the Federation of American Scientists and other organizations to influence public policy on issues relating to disarmament and nuclear power.

Longtime partners in work and life, Norine Kotts and Cheryl Lewis met in San Francisco in 1980. Kotts, daughter of a law enforcement officer and a homemaker, whose family who moved frequently, was a freelance photographer; Lewis, a biracial Chicago native and daughter of a furniture maker and a schoolteacher, who grew up in Rockland County, N. Y., was an art student in the Bay Area and a lifelong cook. They moved back to the house Kotts was sharing with a group of lesbians, in Somerville, Mass., and eventually into the world of food collectives, restaurants, and hospitality. In 1982, along with two co-founders, Kotts and Lewis opened the cafe Beetle’s Lunch in Allston, a Boston neighborhood. Named “1983 Best Punk Restaurant” by Boston magazine, Beetle’s Lunch became known as a welcoming alternative community space situated at a convergence of queer and feminist politics, new concepts in art and music, and the changing food scene, with a dash of idealism, especially on the part of its young feminist founders. Relocating to Portland, Me., in 1985 Kotts and Lewis opened Café Always, playing a significant role in fostering and shaping that city’s burgeoning food culture: as Portland’s first restaurant to employ local farmers and incorporate local ingredients into the daily menu, Café Always garnered national attention. After selling the business in 1995, the couple opened Aurora Provisions, a gourmet food and wine shop with an in-store restaurant and catering service, which they ran until selling it in 2001. As consultants they continued to participate in and influence the food scene in Portland, helping to launch Portland favorite El Rayo Taqueria in 2009.

The Kotts and Lewis Papers provide glimpses into the formation and operation of several notable New England food establishments, documenting the creative, professional, and personal aspects, as well as the food itself. The collection contains menus, photographs, business plans, correspondence (including a set of letters Kotts wrote to her mother on the backs of menus), recipes and cookbooks, memorabilia, and a guest book filled with diners’ comments. Kotts and Lewis are also the subjects of a series of oral histories conducted by sociologist Janice Irvine.

Non-partisan political organization based in Amherst, Massachusetts that influences public policy through education and advocacy by registering voters, organizing candidate forums, publishing voting guides, and disseminating general information on the legislative process and the functioning of government on the local, state, and federal levels.

Includes minutes, annual reports, financial records, publications, extensive files on specific programs, photographs, video- and audio-tapes, scrapbooks, and newspaper clippings. Also contains information on two league members who rose to national prominence: Lucy Wilson Benson (Under Secretary of State in the federal government in 1977) and Jane F. Garvey (Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1997).

Regina Berger Lederer was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1895 into the family of a successful manufacturing chemist. Her singing career was promising, but never fully realized. With the rise of the Nazi Party and increase in oppression of Jews, she and her husband escaped by leaving for Italy and the United States in 1939. Settling in New York, she worked as a skilled sweater repairer for many years. She died in Maryland in 1988, where she had gone to live near her son Paul.

Transcript of an oral history of Lederer.

John Lederle played a large role in shaping the Amherst campus as it looks today, transforming UMass Amherst into a nationally respected research university and “great public center for excellence in higher education.” Born in Royal Oak, Michigan, Lederle received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1942. Admitted to the Michigan Bar in 1936, he worked with a Detroit law firm from 1936 to 1940 before joining the political science department at Brown University from 1941 to 1944. He returned to the University of Michigan in 1944, filling a number of positions until 1960, when the University of Massachusetts elected him President. Under Lederle’s leadership, the Amherst campus enjoyed its greatest period of growth. From 1960 to 1970, student enrollment more than tripled and faculty salaries nearly doubled. The academic program expanded greatly, particularly at the graduate level, and under his watch, the university instituted an academic press, a public radio station, and collaborative arrangements between the local colleges. The University system also evolved in the Lederle years, with the establishment of the Boston campus in 1964 and the medical school in Worcester in 1962.

The Lederle Papers include professional correspondence, administrative records, subject files, committee notes, reports, and clippings; Extra-University records that document Lederle’s involvement and interactions with governmental and non-governmental organizations at the state, regional, and national levels; personal correspondence, speeches, bibliographies of his writings, biographical information, a transcript of an oral history describing his administration, and materials relating to his professional activities that followed his presidency; and a series of confidential records.

Loomis House logo

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

In 1902, a group of residents of Holyoke, Mass., secured a charter for the Holyoke Home for Aged People, wishing to do “something of permanent good for their city” and provide a “blessing to the homeless.” Opened in March 1911 on two acres of land donated by William Loomis, the Holyoke Home provided long-term care of the elderly, and grew slowly for its first half century. After changing its name to Loomis House in 1969, in honor of the benefactor, Loomis began slowly to expand, moving to its present location in 1981 upon construction of the first continuing care retirement community in the Commonwealth. In 1988, the Board acquired a 27-acre campus in South Hadley on which it established Loomis Village; in 1999, it became affiliated with the Applewood community in Amherst; and in 2009, it acquired Reeds Landing in Springfield.
The Loomis Communities Records offer more than a century perspective on elder care and the growth of retirement communities in western Massachusetts. The collection includes a nearly complete run of the minutes of the Board of Directors from 1909 to the present, an assortment administrative and financial records, and some documentation of the experience of the communities’ residents, with the bulk of materials dating from the 1980s to the present. An extensive series of oral histories with residents of Loomis Village was conducted in 2010.