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Transcript from "Influential Women at UGA"

…the women that made a difference on this campus that you worked with as you worked.

Well, it was a tougher time. When I came here the women students had to have a higher average to get in than the men. That was ‘63, and I remember going to the committee. I wish I could remember the man that headed that committee. He was in the College of Education, it was a faculty committee, and I went to him, and I said, "Why is it that the women students have to have a higher average to get in than the men?" and he said, "Well, it would be overrun with women if…" I said, "Well, if they make that, I said, that is not fair. That is not fair." He said, "Well, women make higher grades in high school than boys." I said, "Why? Why do they?" "Well," he said, "because they are neat and they behave and said so we just have to take that into consideration." I never got that changed. I tried to work with women on the campus faculty, but I never got that changed until the law changed it. Uh, but we had some strong women on this campus, and among the strongest were some of the ones in the Dean of Women's office. Delores Artau, if you wanted to tangle with somebody. She took care of the international students and was really known the country over at that time for her work with international students, and we had a good number of them when you consider how early that was for international travel. She took good care of them. She saw that the faculty worked with them and so on. Then Birdie Bondurant, who was from one of the families of Athens. Her nephew is now a big lawyer in Atlanta. Her brother was the owner of a lumber company. One of her relatives discovered anesthesia. Anyway, she came from a wonderful old family here in Athens, Birdie Bondurant. And then Margaret Singleton,who was on the faculty. Nell Sholtz, she was Dean of Women at Brenau and I brought her to this campus and built Women's Studies around her. We developed the program then, it is still going on the campus as it is on… there was a black studies and women's studies…two things that grew out of movements. The women's movement and the black movement, and they are still programs that are on campuses across the country and that you can still get a major in, I think or a minor at least on this campus in either women's studies or black studies, but she headed up, built that program from the beginning. Then there were some in the College of Education, like Katherine Blake, who was…her research on the mentally retarded and the handicapped students was known all over the country. There were people in Home Economics. Well, the few fields that women particularly were majoring in were education and home economics…very few in the sciences and agriculture like there are now. It was unusual to see them in pharmacy at that point or in vet medicine, even law, and that in some ways became a first breakthrough for women on this campus. They started coming into the Law School. Now it is about half women. So considering that women were in the beginning of the university, kept on a campus out where the Navy School is now, a separate campus, they didn't even get to be on the campus until the ‘40's I think it was. They have done right well.

One other name that we mentioned briefly was Liz Murphy, who came in…

Yeah. There oughta be a building or something on this campus named for Liz Murphy, because she came in at a very difficult time before there was any money or really any support behind women's athletics. They just kind of put it in and brought her in to head it up and, as I said a little bit earlier, they sold cookies and did everything they could to get, used their own vehicles to start the program. But before it was all over, Title IX had passed and things were a different picture because of national law, and I went to her funeral in North Georgia a month or so, two months ago, and all of the coaches were there, and most…with one exception, she had hired them. We had one of the most successful programs in women's athletics in the country. And it was on the back of Liz Murphy. Uh, and I am a , was a great admirer of her at the time because she did it without kicking up any fuss. She just did it by friendly persuasion and by showing that people did care about those sports, would come to them. That she knew how to recruit good coaches, and if you want to know about Liz Murphy, you ask one of the coaches she hired, they would fight for her, and they were at her funeral in support.

She will be missed.

She will be missed. Or she is missed, and they have not replaced that position in terms of title, do you notice that?