Betty Ann Knight

Class of 1938

Betty Ann Knight grew up in Urbana, Illinois, the daughter of UI professor A.R. "Buck" Knight. She remembers, "it was just natural during the Depression to go to Illinois. You were lucky you could go to college. I didn't really realize till I started teaching how many people didn't just naturally go to college." Betty Ann entered the University of Illinois in 1934. 

The Depression

Betty Ann’s father was a well known professor in Electrical Engineering at the University.  His job provided stability for the family during the Depression.  “He [my father] had the job at the University.  Of course... either 15 or 20% of their salaries were cut, everybody at the University.  Can’t you see that happening today?  But everybody took a cut in salary at the University so they could make ends meet…Well, you know, I think that the main thing that I remember, one time, was that dad said, ‘I’ll have a job and we’ll have money, we’ll just not get to do things that we might want to do.’  So we had a lot of mush and milk, which I still love.  He had employment and we were in this house so we weren’t going to be put out, like some people, from their home.”  

Rules for and Attitudes about Women Students

Rules for women differed from those for men.  Dean of Women Maria Leonard lectured the first year women: 

"She told us all, if you were a freshman and you had a date and you were on a crowded bus, you had to carry 
a pillow [to use when sitting on your date's lap].  We had a bus driver with the bus company that always picked up the kids after the late movie downtown and the bus would be packed.  He'd yell, 'Does everyone have their Saturday Evening Post?'  So I think she told you not to wear red and not to wear satin, and most of us had not heard any of that until she told us not to do it." 

“[There] was a person who taught Home Management.  She felt that if you were engaged then life was all right.  So if you were engaged, then you got an A in her course.  And one of my friends was walking down the Broadwalk with a friend, and he was tall, it was just somebody that was in her class, and I’m telling you, she went to the top of the list because she thought she was going to marry this fellow.”

General Campus Rules

"I knew you couldn't have a car on campus.  One person who was living at home backed his family car out on the street and they caught him and he had to go in and be disciplined.  My father was chairman of that committee and when people found out who I was they'd try and get that priviledge, but of course that didn't work." 

"If you walked after class on the grass [on the Quad], the policeman-- Pete Adams was the policeman-- and I tell you that he took care of it that you didn't cross.  Like where they have concrete walks now, that was all pure grass.  Then one couple was out in the cemetery and Pete Adams picked them up and took them out of the cemetery.  He was the campus policeman and how he got around as much as he did... but he was always around." 

Student Health

Student health was a concern for many people at the University.  Student insurance programs and McKinley Hospital were two ways students on campus could receive health care when they were away from home.  Betty Ann recalled that in 1936 there was a “German measles episode.  And McKinley Hospital had all the men on one end and all the woman on the other.”  Illness didn’t stop the social lives of the U of I students.  “You’d go by and you’d know which end was what  because all the fellows would be out talking to the gals through the window.  Actually I was sitting in rhetoric class and I may have been a freshman and I put my hand up there and I had all these bumps.  That’s how you know you had it.  So then you stay home for week and the hospital was just packed with students.” 

Every student met with Dr. Ethridge in the Health Building when they came to the U of I.  “Everyone had to take a physical when you came.”  Physicals and lectures on health were an important part of the U of I students' education. 

After University of Illinois

Betty Ann Knight graduated from the University of Illinois in 1938 with a degree in home economics.  The following year, she received her masters in education and began teaching school in Fairmount, Illinois.  After holding teaching posts in Carbondale and Watseka, Illinois and in California, she earned her masters in social work from UI in 1948.  From 1948 until her retirement in 1978, she served as a social worker for the Urbana school system. 

The tapes and complete transcript of this interview, conducted Janurary 10, 2001,
are available for research use in the Student Life and Culture Archives.

 

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