The 50th Anniversary Celebration
Post date: Jun 13, 2016 9:22:36 PM
Blog post for June 13
Sara and George
The 50th Anniversary Celebration
The annual meeting of the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association (RSMA) was last Saturday, at the Cedar Falls Public Library; about 13 people came from all over Iowa, and one person came from Wisconsin for our morning meeting. Several regular members were unable to attend, but two of our longest serving board members were there. George, a retired UNI professor, told us the story of getting a phone call from Leedice Kissane, Suckow’s biographer, and a faithful member of the RSMA, who informed him that he was the new president of the organization. He later recruited Barb Lounsberry, another retired professor, who recruited Mike, who recruited me by taking me to the Annual Meeting in Earlville when we were dating. I told the group that story—saying it was his idea of a hot date back in 1999. They were delighted, and he tried to look modest.
Our second long-term member is Sara, another retired professor from Clarke College; she told me her memories of Clarence Andrews, a professor and author whose book about Iowa’s Literary History should be required reading for English and History teachers. She is our secretary and always has something funny, insightful, and wise to say about the selection we’ve just read and discussed. Sara was there for the 25th anniversary and was delighted when we showed her a picture we found of that event.
Our President, Barbara Lounsberry, and I had noticed the big display case empty just a few days before the meeting and got permission to put together a display: some sign boards with information about Ruth Suckow’s life and work, some of her books, a few cats, and some pictures. It was great to hear people talking about the display. But it was also wonderful to report some progress. Barbara has focused her attention on an important task in the last few years: she has scanned in 18 of Ruth Suckow’s short stories and they are now posted on the Iowa Digital Heritage website. It was exciting to see the addition of the last 8 stories right before our annual meeting. In addition, we have four more stories posted on the Suckow website, as the result of the hard work of another member, Bob McCown, former head of the Special Collections of the University of Iowa Libraries.
Since it was also the 50th anniversary, we had a public celebration at 1:00 and 15 to 20 guests showed up: some were simply in the library and wanted free cake, and others made a special effort to attend. Barbara did a brief presentation about Ruth Suckow’s life and work, and asked several members to share their perspectives, and then our special guest, Dr. Paul Theobald, explained his work with the Rural Lit Rally website, which is devoted to preserving rural literature.
From looking at the Rural Lit Rally website and talking to others in the organization, I knew that the Rural Lit Rally folks had spent time collecting over 100 books, many of them classified as “Farm Novels.” However, more recently, they’ve devoted resources to digitizing books that are out of print. It struck me then that both strategies have their place in preserving these authors and books. Dr. Theobald pointed out that Ruth Suckow is doing well in comparison to many of the authors his group is trying to promote: he mentioned Paul Corey, who wrote the Mantz trilogy. Bob McCown describes the trilogy as “a social and economic history of rural Iowa from 1910 to 1930, an era when many changes were taking place on Iowa farms.”
In my early years in the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association, I had searched the web for copies of Suckow’s books, thinking that we could set up collections for book clubs. However, the local libraries would only take so many copies, so I had a surplus of these books: they came in handy on Saturday.
My husband and I were in charge of doing the door prizes and gave people three choices: Suckow t-shirts, Suckow books, or $5 book nook gift certificates to the gift shop located in the library. Surprisingly, most chose a book! We gave away just two t-shirts and two of the gift certificates. Not only that, many asked me about the plots and wanted some guidance. This slowed down the process a little, as people lingered at the table, looking at the various books. As Mike drew a number out of the basket, I helped our winners pick out their gift, and found myself rather amazed and moved to see how delighted they were with their gift. One woman even asked if she could pay for her book! So, silly me: I had dreaded giving away our books because I worried people might throw them away. Instead, almost all of them wanted a book, and when we had only one title left, I dipped into my box and grabbed two more that had been returned from a display.
We also gave out print copies of my favorite short story, “A Rural Community,” and people seemed receptive; at least I didn’t pick up any left behind. As I discovered in my research, Suckow’s short stories were in demand for anthologies between the 1920s and the 1950s, and then seemed to disappear until she was rediscovered in the 1970s and considered one of Iowa’s first feminist authors. If people did not read stories by authors like Suckow in their Literature textbooks, it is not surprising that even most educated people in Iowa have never heard of Ruth Suckow.
Mike commented during the morning meeting that we were seeing the results of our hard work from the past decade, because a search for Ruth Suckow shows our website, the Wikipedia entry, and my Slideshare presentations, among other things. Mike created the original Suckow website and wrote the Suckow Wikipedia entry, and then turned the website over to me. We’re getting more than three thousand visitors a year to the Suckow website; the SlideShare presentations all have several hundred hits as well, and I do not have access to stats for Wikipedia, but know the article is being used. (Slideshare, by the way, is a website for posting and sharing power point presentations, and a great tool for teachers, researchers, and trainers).
It is a paradox, but after putting copies of Suckow’s books into the hands of those seven people, and seeing their anticipation of reading their books, I am convinced that it takes a combination of print and digital strategies to preserve the literary legacy of Ruth Suckow, and all of the other wonderful Iowa writers who have been forgotten about for too long.
Resources Mentioned:
Suckow website – http://ruthsuckow.org
Suckow Wikipedia entry – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Suckow
Ferner Wikipedia entry -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferner_Nuhn
EIGHTEEN of Suckow’s Short Stories are on the Iowa Digital Heritage website (See Page 7 of 8 – People & Biographies, to find the category for Ruth Suckow)
http://www.iowaheritage.org/exhibits/show/browse-all/people7
List of 18 stories on two pages
Suckow Presentations on Slideshare: Slideshare is a website for sharing/find power point presentations. It is connected to Linkedin
http://www.slideshare.net/mrsdargan/the-ruth-suckow-memorial-association-rsma-2013-cherie-dargan -- about our organization (Notice this one has had 623 views!)
http://www.slideshare.net/mrsdargan/ruth-suckow-iowa-writer-presentation-c-dargan -- about Ruth Suckow (Notice it has had 309 views!)
http://www.slideshare.net/mrsdargan/ferner-nuhn-presentation-by-cherie-dargan
Presentation on Ferner Nuhn (Notice it has had 439 views!)
https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/scua/bai/mccown3.htm
Article about Paul Corey, author of the Mantz trilogy
Rural Lit Rally website -- Dean Paul Theobald
Last Updated June 13, 2016