I’m not in this photo, but my mother is.
It’s a photo of the staff in the University of Hawaii Home Economics program in 1940. They had just moved the previous year into their own new building, now known as Miller Hall. It’s named in honor of Professor Carey D. Miller, who arrived in Hawaii in 1922 and had grown the department over the next decades.
My mother, Helen Yonge Lind, is second from the left in the front row.
Miller had a devoted set of students from diverse backgrounds, and my mother was among them. After graduating with a degree in Home Economics, my mother taught in the program for about 7 years before resigning after the start of WWII. She and Miller remained lifelong friends.
You can find a history of the Home Economics program here.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
In the fall of 1950 as a sophomore at UH I ran into a girl from my high school graduating class who graduated at the top of our class. I asked her what her major was. “Home economics, and DON’T laugh!” she replied. In those days it was a usual career path for co-eds, I guess. (On the other hand, my sister, who graduated from high school in 1940, told me several boys from the football team signed up for “home ec” class in high school as a way to meet girls.)
In my mother’s day, Home Economics also was referred to as “household science.” And science it was. Professor Carey Miller was a nutritionist. She and her students set about scientifically investigating the nutritional content of local foods and local diets. It was invaluable research.