Page 31 - To Dragma May 1934

28 To DRAG MAI M

splendid president of an alumna? chapter and • v
to do a lot of charity work besides. Even
after her terrible accident on the way home Fields Like This— P
from the .\<>n Convention last July, Janet
did not lose her spirit to "carry on." ly interested in the Federal experiment in the I
Tennessee valley. Last month I went to the s
The fourth helper on the committee is Helen Conference of Southern Mountain Workers. w
Wolfe Erskine, I. '22. Although Helen is This I did, of course, partly because I want c
the baby of the group in years, she is not in to keep abreast of what others are thinking z
deeds. Always is Helen most efficient in all and doing in this mountain area; but a very w
that she does, whether it be running her important aspect of my interest in this con- s
household, in acting as Study Plan Officer for ference centered about that part of the pro- f
AOn. or in serving as statistician of the
"Clothesline Committee." Many times does B
Helen work far beyond her strength to do
more than her part. s
i
With helpers such as these it is a joy to be T
chairman of a committee.

P. S. No. 2. The chairman didn't say a
word about herself so Helen Wolfe Erskine
sent this about her:

Were you to be on a committee with Vera
Kiebel, you would find her an ardent enthusiast
and a very hard worker. She has served AOIT
ever since she was pledged and especially
since her graduation from Northwestern Uni-
versity in 1913. She was the first graduate
to be initiated into the Chicago Alumna?, she
aided in the colonization at the University of
Wisconsin to establish H chapter, she formed
the Chicago South Shore Alumna- and, as its
president for several years, developed it, she
has been district study plan officer and is now
a member of the National Work Committee.
Because of her efforts, you are now sending
clothes, toys, and dolls to Kentucky.

Vera teaches English at the Lindblom High
School in Chicago. Her students find her an
excellent, inspiring teacher and a good friend.

A more loyal and conscientious worker in
AOII cannot be found.

* Experiment With Lespedeza May

erein O u r ^)oc\a( gram devoted to addresses by Tennessee Val-
ley Authority officials and discussions of that
Wendover, Kentuckv, whole scheme and its significance for the
April, 1934. Southern Mountains. Our immediate area is,
of course, not in the Tennessee valley; but I
DEAR ALPHA O'S: think it is easy to see that our interest in the
T.V.A. is not purely academic. We who try
-4- COULD xov see my present preoccupation to see the mountaineers' needs in their broad
with seed catalogs, agricultural bulletins, outlines and relate them to some proposal for
a thoroughgoing and feasible answer are
the relative merits of Korean lespedeza versus convinced that some such scheme as that now
soja beans as a hay crop, the essential mini- being tried in the Tennessee valley will b*
mum of tools for a mountain farm, the prob- necessary before we can really eliminate this
lems of farmers who have not and cannot buy "human frontier" where people arc left largely
a plow animal, et cetera, et cetera, you might alone to eke out meager narrow, precarious
be inclined to wonder what is happening to lives. If this is true, it steins to me that we
your social case-worker. Exploring further, who occupy lookout posts in areas not now in-
you would find that this is not my only pre- cluded in this Federal experiment can "1
occupation that falls outside the realm of afford to be uninformed on what is happ< l l l l l L j
ease work in its strict sense. in the Tennessee valley, what is the social
philosophy underlying those activities, what is
For one thing, you would find me enormous- the probability of the scheme's being extended
to other mountain areas.

To tell the truth, I carry this interest in the
T.V.A. even further than a matter of trying
to be well informed on the subject myselt.