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Chapter 2

Two Lovers

[H]aving both Lila and Lou ‘on the string’ makes me think or conclude that you are getting to be quite a ‘Ladies Man’.

—Aunt Ocie Brown (Letter to Robert Ferrell, September 8, 1953)

Lou is coming out here this spring for some of her vacation. . . . Trouble is that I’m all set to go and she is not. . . . Right now it would not take much bait from any line to bring me in.

—Robert Ferrell (Letter to Bob and Kit Siller, February 1, 1953)

By the time Robert Ferrell came to Indiana University as an assistant professor in the fall semester 1953, he was a rising star in the field of history. Recognizing the merits of his first book, Yale editor Eugene Davidson looked forward to guiding the second volume, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression.¹ Davidson, as with other press editors (including Bernard Perry at Indiana University or Beverly Jarrett at the University of Missouri), would become both a good friend and publishing confidant to the young Hoosier historian, seeking him out as a consultant.² The IU position came partly due to his connections with Samuel Flagg Bemis, and their relationship also brought more opportunities to publish, including a secretary of state volume and a biography. Ferrell’s professional network extended well beyond Indiana too as he served as a highly sought-after lecturer at more than a half dozen universities, including a Carnegie Visiting Assistant Professorship at Yale during 1955–1956 and year-long stints at the American University in Cairo and military academies, the Naval War College, and West Point. Several schools attempted to recruit him permanently.³ At IU, Ferrell was coming into his own as a popular teacher and mentor.⁴

Yet the ambitious Ohioan-turned-Hoosier had reached an age where other personal agendas began to gain some attention. Early on, Bob did not have a wife to share in his success, even as there is evidence that the fairer sex found him desirable. Before heading to Bowling Green State University (BGSU), he enjoyed assuming the romantic role of Anthony to swooning classmate Cleopatra and Romeo to Juliet.⁵ But that was kids’ stuff no doubt, and thirty-year old Bob was no youngster in the summer of 1951 when he met a young girl (a Fifties-era term for a woman) at his cousin Christine’s wedding to Robert Bryant.⁶ The meeting was too brief to be of any moment at the time, but the two, Bob and Loueva (Lou), found themselves seated next to each other at a Thanksgiving Day dinner later that same year, likely orchestrated by Chris (i.e., Christine), to allow for more intimate exchanges.⁷ Lou would recall the sit-down affair as a high point in her time with young men and as a reminder of how much she enjoyed Bob’s companionship. They met at least two other times before the future Indiana scholar shared the relationship with his dad, the first time in Washington, D.C., while Ferrell worked as a research specialist in aerial targeting for an Air Force Intelligence unit in May 1952, and the following month on a rendezvous at Springfield, near Smith College.⁸

By the time Lou had made her presence to Bob of weightier concern, another young woman appeared on the scene to distract the first-year lecturer of history, this at Michigan State College (later university) in the fall of 1952.⁹ Lila was a student of Ferrell’s in an undergraduate American history course in his first semester there (see Figure 2.1). The attractive, young coed captured her teacher’s attention, at least in part, because she wore a red dress, sat near the front by the window, and excelled at history.¹⁰ Bob favored blondes as did Ferrell men generally, and Lila fit the mold. Lou and Lila were only two of several that the MSC history teacher would entertain during these early years, which raises the question whether in fact he had designs on any one woman or merely enjoyed the company of a variety.¹¹ But available correspondence throughout this period provides evidence that these two, Lou and Lila, were the primary foci of Ferrell’s romantic interest from 1952 through 1956.

Figure 2.1 Lila Sprout, a graduate of Michigan State College, had been a student in Ferrell’s history course in the Fall, 1952; she worked as his office assistant in the Spring, 1953. Source: Courtesy of Carolyn Ferrell Burgess.

The Lou and Lila courtships represent, as did the episodes on how young Bob found his way to Yale and the anomaly of his war service, the postmodernist repartee against that of Bob’s unitary, coherent, truthful approach to stories of the past. The extant evidence, particularly from Ferrell’s correspondence, suggests that at least two stories vied for the truth, and even more, it is possible that one truth dominated at times against the other, depending on the volatility of his relations with either or both girls. The two competing stories documented in the letters are that Robert Ferrell was a playboy or that he was desperate, on his way to matrimony. Other evidence suggests too, at times, Ferrell played hard-to-get or was just too hard to please.

An added part of the intrigue highlighted in his engagement with these two love interests was their training and commitment to the profession of social work.¹² This adds more paradigmatic richness because Ferrell-type traditionalist historians were fighting a battle against an onslaught of social science disciplines (e.g., political science, sociology, psychology, statistical demography, economics, among other fields) that were muddying the boundaries and the distinctive contributions and outlook of formally trained chroniclers of the past.¹³ American historians were also opening new avenues of interest and pursuing stories, those of racial and ethnic minorities and women (by women), that Ferrell’s preparation and/or personal biases had dismissed. Ferrell found himself fighting battles on both professional and personal fronts: The ambitions of professional, career-oriented, future potential mates, and the interdisciplinary mix that underlay their career training, particularly sociology and psychology, set against its encroachment on the young professor’s work.¹⁴ A significant strand among these complexities, however, was a simple truth. Ferrell wanted a 1950s-era traditional wife, mother, and family caretaker, not a working professional equal.¹⁵ As he wrote a friend and former history professor at BGSU, “Above all, I want just some common, ordinary person who will cook potato soup and talk sense. No cocktail parties and sophistication.”¹⁶

Before turning to the main thrusts discussed here, in this era of the “Me-Too” movement, it is useful perhaps to address the potential for unwarranted accusation borne of the historical notion of presentism, that professors in the 1950s who engaged their students romantically were somehow unethical or predatory or unworthy of the profession, as the alarm is raised today. It is fair to say that while these relationships can be problematic to all concerned, the result in many cases, especially at mid-twentieth century, were long-lasting, reasonably felicitous marriages. To this point, an older history department colleague, Maurice Baxter, shared the following insights with Ferrell soon after the Yalie had joined the IU history faculty. Bob passed on the full context to Lila in a letter:

Baxter saw me [Ferrell] coming out of a bookstore, and so brought me home in his car, after which we sat around and talked for a couple hours. . . . He turns out really to be quite a good person. He kept asking when I planned to go to Washington (for the American Historical Association meeting), so finally I broke down and told him that it was after you [Lila] arrived. This reminded him, he said of how he got married (not, he added, that he was suggesting such a thing to me). It seems that he picked his wife out of the junior—no, it was the sophomore class here [at IU], and married her when she became a senior. After that she took her M.A. in history and started work in the library. . . . The way he got acquainted with his wife was by playing bridge!¹⁷

The chronological narrative of Bob’s early-to-mid-1950s love life, its nod to postmodernist allegory, and the intriguing mixture of parallel professional antagonisms is the story told here. The conflicting disciplinary angst of these antagonisms was borne of the underlying expertise thought to make social workers something beyond amateur do-gooders and similar disciplinary confusions mucking up Ferrell’s conception of the discipline of history.¹⁸

Few details remain of the first meeting between Bob and Lou during the summer of 1951 wedding celebration.¹⁹ Reflections years later, however, reveal a restive attempt by the first-year history lecturer to learn more about his cousin’s former roommate. What he came to discover in the initial courtship was perplexing yet worthy of pursuit.²⁰ Bob shared his thoughts and optimism with family, childhood friends and colleagues. His dad learned of the budding romance perhaps at first after his son borrowed a car to use on an outing with Lou. The oldest son wasted no time after the date, writing, “I don’t know where I stand with this girl [Lou], although I would marry her if the chance presented itself.”²¹ Such boldness may have reflected some desperation, given his younger, only brother’s success creating a family, and of course, the coming-of-age professor had arrived at middle age.²² To friends Kit and Bob, Ferrell confessed that when Lou came to see him during a Christmas break in Washington, D.C., “I don’t know where I stand [with Lou],” but that he “was all ready to go,” yet she “was not.”²³

Lou certainly had qualities that recommended her to Ferrell as a first-class future wife. One gets the sense of this as the young MSC history lecturer introduced her to his dad.

Her name is Loueva Pflueger (what a name!) and she comes from a very small town in Nebraska. She has an M.A. from Smith College in Massachusetts, a very good school—in fact, considered at the top for girls’ schools in the East. . . . As for the social graces, she is the sort which could travel in any sort of company. She knows how to act in all occasions. . . . No smoking, no drinking; and a lukewarm Lutheran.

Lou’s physique and age were less endearing (“rather tall and quite thin” and “26 years old”), and these along with occupational choice, a social worker (“a dead end for any girl . . . where [one] meets few eligible men”), marked her, in Ferrell’s mind, as reaching the upper limit to find a mate or “be left out.”

In their early exchange of letters, the history lecturer cum professor fumbled a bit in describing the desirability of social work.²⁴ The confusion as Ferrell described it stemmed from his belief that social work and by extension its workers were plying a trade long thought within the Christian duty to care for those less fortunate, yet social work training and professionals tried to dress themselves up in scientific garb. Recognizing social work as a “Christian calling,” and “demanding some Christian principles to serve as fixed points for purposes of guidance,” would demonstrate the unnecessary resort to finding best practice through science.²⁵ Of course, social work did have deep roots in religious efforts to ameliorate social conditions. Lou attempted to meet Ferrell half way: Nonjudgmental psychology had to be practiced within a sensible ethical framework.²⁶ By the end of 1954, Ferrell would learn a lot about the intricacies of social work from both Lou and Lila, and its demands came in conflict with what the rising star in history circles wanted from a potential mate. Part of the science of social work training, in practice, came from psychiatric consultants who coached social workers, most of whom were women that they must push beyond society-sanctioned roles. For Ferrell, this seemed to be the case with Dr. C. in Lou’s training, requiring that she become “an emancipated female of the sort of which there are already far too many.”²⁷

Nearly six months after what Ferrell had uncompromisingly shared with his father, his desire to marry Lou, the second semester-MSC history lecturer reversed direction. His revised message to Lou sounded the alarm that there was no potential for a permanent relationship: “I believe our likes and dislikes and aspirations and general outlooks are so different that we could never hit it off together.”²⁸ In the same missive, he continued, “we are such different people that for me friendship is the only logical conclusion” and that “we [must] adjourn seeing each other until perhaps this summer.” Not surprisingly, Ferrell’s sudden shift coincided with his interest in Lila, an MSC coed, whom he had come to know more intimately after taking her on as an office assistant in the history department.²⁹ But Ferrell was hardly finished with Lou, even as he shared with his dad, that he had sent her a “Dear John letter.”³⁰

Ferrell kept his brother Ernie (or June), among others, informed during the early developing romance between himself and Lou and Lila.³¹ He certainly prided himself on capturing the attention of such a pretty girl, Lila, while sharing her picture with others (“the pleasantries of East Lansing life”); Lou, contrarily, was tall and thin, and this required some defensive remarks. Lila was a decade younger than her favorite MSC history lecturer; Lou, only six years his junior. History teacher and Lila relished traveling to big cities, Chicago and Detroit; she enjoyed cooking for him; Lou did not. As Ferrell coyly mused when introducing Lila to his long-time friend, Waldo, “my office assistant here has been doing some assisting at the apartment—frying pork chops for hungry history teachers, making popcorn, reading books to history teachers with tired eyes, running around the apartment with green shorts, etc. etc. Lila is quite the girl.”³² A month later, he was bragging that by ten o’clock, Lila had cooked “up some steaks . . . [wearing] blue shorts . . . and time passed quickly, without thinking of eating.” In the same letter though, Ferrell admitted that there was a “confusing situation in Springfield, Mass. which I have to look at in August.” This, of course, was his continued interest in Lou. But, again, to friends Bob and Kit, after the Spring semester at MSC had ended, Bob shared: “my present research assistant . . . is staying around working . . . and what time she has to spare, she spares it in my apartment wearing red shorts. Ummm.”³³ Both Lila and Lou studied psychology and sociology to prepare for their careers caring for the underprivileged, yet Lou relished the opportunity to expound social science theories, whereas Ferrell underscored that Lila “never talks in the psychological jargon which we both detest.”

There was likely more to the delight Bob took in Lila, beyond, as he stated, “her obvious talent,” rooted in their shared experiences growing up and hardship.³⁴ She helped out as a farmer’s daughter near Quincy, Michigan; he, on a farm during stretches of the Great Depression after his father lost a banking job. In Ferrell’s words, Lila “came from the farm; her father, Earl Sprout (a typical country name) raised cattle in . . . Coldwater, Michigan. She . . . never had a great deal of help in getting through college. Her father paid her tuition now and then, but that was about all, and Lila earned the rest.”³⁵ Lou possessed a more refined set of social and intellectual skills that likely fit better with Ferrell’s educated set of family members.³⁶ Unlike the Ferrell family, Lila was the only college attendee among her immediate family and smoked and drank.³⁷ But Bob and Lila both knew something of earning one’s way through hard work. The two also shared a common language of evangelical Protestant faith (the Church of the Nazarene and that of the Methodist), if not the devotion, while Lou had ties to Lutheran traditions. Conventional institutional religion, whether based in church doctrine, ritual, or in evangelical fervor, carried little weight with any of them, and Bob was noticeably disenchanted with church members’ hypocrisy.³⁸

By mid-summer 1953, Ferrell sent a letter to his brother’s family, making comparisons between the new love interest, Lila, and the Smith College graduate Lou, reinforcing some points of distinction between the two.

Lou was a very nice girl in many ways, but she was chuck full of psychological jargon and fake sociology, and she also had a lot of false ideas about living in general: she disliked cooking; at one time more than hinted that I might turn her into a ‘domestic’ (lord, I wouldn’t do that to anyone!); whereas Lila likes to cook, can cook excellently, and there’s nothing I like better than to sit down to one of her pork chop dinners. As for vital statistics, Lila is a very pretty blond, about 5’5.

The difficulty, to Ferrell, with either Lou or Lila was that they were not ready to quit the professional track nor take on the family role that the rising history scholar had for them.³⁹ Lila rejected the low-level job prospects Bob had found for her before coming to Bloomington; the pay would not meet livable standards; the work would not satisfy her; and she could not likely “pass a typing test.”⁴⁰ It took little time for Lila to reconsider joining him. By the end of summer 1953, she left Bob for Detroit and a job at the State of Michigan Department of Social Welfare.⁴¹ Lou would move closer (than Springfield, Massachusetts) to the newly ensconced IU history assistant professor but stop well short of Bloomington, perhaps thinking that she could lure him back to his boyhood hometown of Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland.⁴² Breaking away from work to visit their suitor was difficult due to the overwhelming load that social workers engaged. Lila shared that she could not come for a planned weekend as thought due to the busy scheduled “contact day,” when “clients” came by to complain about their checks, etc.⁴³ Ferrell believed such absences created a hardship impossible to overcome.

Cousin Christine’s husband Robert Bryant, a graduate student in theology, counseled his cousin-in-law after trouble appeared between Ferrell and Lou, partly at least stirred by her commitment to social work.⁴⁴ The MSC history lecturer had proposed marriage to Lou in February 1953, but he did not get the response expected.⁴⁵ Instead of a gushing yes, Lou hesitated, “all tied up in psychological doubts and inhibitions and all mixed up in what her future would be or ought to be.” Without allaying her beau’s ego, Lou headed to a conference of psychology lectures in Cleveland, then to a Smith College cocktail party. No affirmative message arrived as Bob waited. Then Lou turned down the possibility of a New York get-together with Ferrell because she had to attend professional seminars that crowded the weekends. Ferrell felt he was “being made a fool of” and wrote several letters to Lou calling the whole thing off. Now, perhaps he was reaching out to his cousins for affirmation and advice.

The problem, as Bryant (and Christine no doubt) saw it, was several-fold. Lou’s mix of professional training and personal insecurity contrasted with that of the research historian’s; Lou’s work focused on a Freudian orientation, from a psychological and/or psychiatric perspective, on analysis of inner conflict, on dealing with personal problems. This training was a break from the narrow upbringing that Lou had experienced growing up, and it required some caution, on her part, in seeing relationships and the world in optimistic, overly simplistic and uncomplicated terms that Ferrell’s words seemed to suggest.⁴⁶ Bryant also described the women’s changing professional expectations that Lou likely felt uncertain Ferrell would appreciate her professional training as a “psychiatric social worker.” To Bryant, Ferrell had to readjust his thinking about the role of wives and respect their professional choices. Requiring wives to be cooks, seamstresses, and household managers, with no consideration of their professional aspirations was an outdated way of thinking.

After more than a year passed, little had changed between the Hoosier historian’s outlook on courtship intentions and that of his girls, Lou or Lila. While arranging a trip to see Bob at IU toward the end of her social work service, Lila wrote: “Forgot while talking with you I would be out in the field all day. Thought this morning I may be able to get back to the office but presently I am at the [Detroit] Welfare offices and see that the two cases I have to read are pretty fat.” Along with large caseloads, there were investigations yet to be finished and “reinvestigations,” at least nine of which were “due at the end of the month.”⁴⁷ In another note, sharing her hectic life as a social worker, Lila relayed that she had put in her resignation at the welfare agency and was preparing to come to Bloomington, close to Christmas:

Everyone is rather disappointed I signed the [resignation] papers. . . . It’s leaving a lot of work for the remaining workers. I’ll have to do 23 reinvestigations besides the 12 applications before I leave. Today . . . I talked on the phone or in Intake all day so there is nothing done. Just more troubles—address changes, budget changes, special investigations, supplement checks, conferences, etc.⁴⁸

Even with Lila’s departure from the State of Michigan job, she communicated ambivalence about joining Bob permanently. Now firmly ensconced at IU, he was having none of that, restating an “ultimatum” given her about his timeline: “I’ve already held forth . . . that I won’t wait any longer than the end of the first semester of school here [in Bloomington].”⁴⁹

As Ferrell grew increasingly uncomfortable with Lila’s reticence to reunite, letters flew back and forth, many from Lou to Bob.⁵⁰ Unlike Lila who shared the practical side of her social work trials, Lou reflected on the theoretical. Annette Garrett, a former Smith College teacher of Lou’s, had come to Cleveland to speak on the “current trends in social work.”⁵¹ Lou responded positively to the message:

They’re finally realizing its senseless to wallow around in a lot of sexual and unconscious [Freudian] material unless you can involve the ego to do something about it. That is now known as ‘management’ as against the old ‘treatment.’ You have to help people control themselves, and in many of our situations there is danger of homicide. My latest client is in this spot.⁵²

By this time, however, Ferrell had become firmly entrenched in opposition to psycho-social theories, what they could offer to social work, and as part of the larger constellation of social sciences and their application to history.⁵³

Ironically, Ferrell’s belief that social work in the 1950s remained in the Victorian era a philanthropical paradigm (a dutiful Christian endeavor) underscored his ignorance of, and/or disregard for, what had transpired in the field during the twentieth century. Long before the future historian would meet either Lou or Lila, universities had created dozens of accredited social work programs across graduate and undergraduate schools in the United States, and their foundation was based on “scientific knowledge and research,” along with field work investigation, new techniques and technology, and increased focus on race and gender.⁵⁴ Freud’s psychoanalytic theory provided a scientific base, and Lou’s letters to Ferrell clearly reflected this.⁵⁵ Addressing immediate client needs and potential resources also were priorities as was mastering organizational insights, group dynamics, aspects of social policy, and research. A social work research journal, Social Service Review, began publishing studies by 1927 to improve practice.⁵⁶ Balancing the broad interests of clients and public needs and expectations was (and is) crucial to social work success, and thus, the earliest academic instruction included a mix of economics, sociology, scientific methods and statistics, and labor and industry, all of which could be brought to bear on social issues and reform.⁵⁷ To underscore the point, the American Social Science Association’s efforts beginning in 1870s were instrumental in promoting the study of social problems and their remedies, central to the social work mission.⁵⁸ Adherence to public expectations and aims would become more pronounced as state and federal governments dictated through programs and funding the ends to be served.

At mid-century, Lila wrote her Bloomington beau about overstuffed casework files and overwhelming numbers of investigations and reinvestigations at the State of Michigan Department of Social Welfare.⁵⁹ This was evidence of the scientific method applied in social work.⁶⁰ To do such work, she and Lou prepared for a wide variety of tasks that awaited them through an eclectic set of program requirements. For example, to be admitted as a social work graduate student at Smith College, Lou completed “at least twenty semester hours in the social and biological sciences,” including “studies in sociology, anthropology, economics, government, history, and in related fields . . . psychology and physiology.”⁶¹ Lila had majored in both sociology and anthropology as an undergraduate at MSC. Psychoanalytic terminology such as “transference” based on client “identification” with a social worker and feelings of security and trust were examples of foundational concepts.⁶² The evaluation of results often centered around attainment of “satisfactory adjustment” and length of case work completion. Ferrell’s potential mates fit the dual tracks that aspiring social workers could take at the time. Lou completed a graduate degree; Lila, a baccalaureate. First track graduates headed principally to the private, nonprofit work world; Lila, as with others in the second track, found work at a public welfare agency.⁶³

But early on, experts questioned the legitimacy of social work as a profession, that it lacked “definite and specific ends,” or “a clear line of demarcation about [its] respective fields.”⁶⁴ In this, Ferrell and his tradition-bound colleagues studying U.S. history also signaled some internal discomfort by the 1950s and beyond. The respectability afforded emerging social sciences and their imprint on the methods, theoretical perspectives, and the work of historians caused part of the alarm. Social scientists engaged a broader critique of the past, encompassing a wider swath of voices heard, a diverse set of purposes served, and conflicting epistemological perspectives.⁶⁵

As an approach to knowledge creation, empiricism drove the modernist conception of history (1800–1960), including Ferrell’s.⁶⁶ More specifically, as historians have elaborated, it is

a simple, common-sense method of objectivity and fact-collection in which all knowledge has to be proven before it can be accepted. . . . It relies solely on experience (or observation and reading) of knowledge. When combined with inductive reasoning, it allows the scholar to move from particular bits of knowledge (cases) to generalizations (conclusions).⁶⁷

These conclusions required “consistency” about what happened in the past. Writing the historical narrative was central and completed the process of constructing history. To maintain disciplinary respectability, the narratives had to pass muster with fellow historians (peer review), then be subjected to further scrutiny with colleagues who revisited the topics. As differences arose among historians, “relevant facts” and “plausible explanations” were evaluated and resolved. Professionalism was judged on the competent capacity to engage these processes.⁶⁸

The rise of the social sciences and their application to history creation met with fierce opposition among Ferrell and modernist allies.⁶⁹ The disagreement was rooted partly in disputes over what was considered credible historical knowledge and theoretical frameworks and partly over what should be the goals served by historians. Sociologists, political scientists, among other social scientists, focused on identifying and understanding rules that explained human behavior. These rules of behavior or generalizations would permit the development of models of the past, to explain, predict, and/or prophesize. Such purposes were antithetical to Ferrell’s beliefs, which encompassed the ‘reality’ of uniquely situated individual action, potential for heroism, human agency, and contingency as powerful forces directing and helping explain historical events.⁷⁰ This, aside from the topical foci, likely underlay much of his repudiation of collegial proponents of Marxist history, the new social and cultural historians, and social work experts relying on Freudian theory.⁷¹ Sociology has been identified as the core of the social sciences, and thus, it is hardly surprising that Ferrell and colleagues treated it with such scorn.⁷² The IU historian’s attitudes toward the social and behavioral sciences may also explain why IU political scientists ignored Ferrell’s expertise in presidential history despite his successful scholarship well beyond his courtship phase—this in studies on Harry Truman, Woodrow Wilson, and Calvin Coolidge, among others.⁷³

Strands of criticism directed at social work as a profession overlapped with those aimed at historians. One of the earliest critics of the former, Abraham Flexner (1915), identified six essential criteria to the work of physicians, lawyers, engineers, among others, that signified professional status: “intellectual operations with large individual responsibility,” the work “rooted in science and learning” and toward “a practical and definite end,” delivery of “an educationally communicable technique,” tendency toward self-organization, and an increasing shift toward altruism.⁷⁴