In 1985, in an interview I did with one of the original faculty members, Miss Edna Wilkin [later Teagarden], I realized how small the faculty at SFA really was in the early days. Also, I learned how flexible the faculty had to be. "We taught what was necessary," Mrs. Teagarden laughingly admitted.

"Why home economics?" She said her mother had told her, " 'You won't have to compete with the men in that field.' So, I'm very happy that I was guided into home economics." She loved to make things and to work with fabrics. She got her job through the recommendation of a friend and came to SFA in January of 1924. She made $200 a month on a nine month contract.

I asked her to tell me what she found when she got here. "I didn't find any building. We were housed in a shack--a temporary shack." Birdwell was in one corner, Ferguson ran the registrar's office from another corner. The library, such as it was, had bookcases along one wall.

She was told that if she would teach typing, she could start mid-year rather than waiting until September. She said her typing classes caused so much noise in "the shack" that they tried to wall her off. It was so cold in the winter that "the girls' fingers would get cold and we wouldn't have class for a day or two." She also taught shorthand. She just found an empty room on the old high school campus and used it. One day, she showed up for class and no one was there. "I stood and lis tened for a minute and I heard a shuffling noise and I opened the door and the class tumbled out--out of this closet. They'd hidden for fun. So, everything was informal at that time ... we were all one great big family." She said, "We did anything we could do to help each other."

Her classes in clothing and textiles were held in the Old Stone Fort. "In the middle of the room, a light cord hung down and had one bulb. To iron, I'd attach the iron after I removed the bulb." Unfortunate, that left no light! She ended up telling the girls to take their dresses home to press them.

I asked Miss Edna to tell me something about her colleagues in those early years. "Each department, I think, had two people in it, the head and an assistant." Miss Edna St. John, head of Home Economics also came from Kansas State. "We had much in common, of course. She taught the foods and nutrition, and I taught the clothing and textiles." Hazel Floyd, the head of the Demonstration School, "was a prodigy of Mr. Birdwell's," she said. "She was our youngest person on the faculty. She was a fine person." Miss Jagoe, who came as Miss Broadfoot's assistant, stayed many years.

"Mr. Birdwell was a prince of a man, genteel, gentlemanly. He didn't drive, he suggested. If you had a problem and went to him, he had time to listen. I was very fortunate ... to have had a man of his stature as the head of our college. ...As many difficulties as we had that first year he never was out of patience with us. He was a wonderful person. A few years later, [during the Depression], when times were hard and we were afraid we would lose Stephen F. Austin, he went to Austin to work with the legislature to try to persuade them to save us and have enough money to keep the college running."

When they moved into the Austin Building, the Home Economics Department was on the top floor. The present Regent's room was used as a dining room for the foods and cookery classes; it was called the foods laboratory. Chemistry was also on the third floor. The auditorium was also a large room at the end of the building. When I remarked that it must have been a small auditorium, she exclaimed, "Well, it looked real big to us." President Birdwell's office was just to the left of the entrance on the main floor. When I used the word "main," she said "the building was called Main Building for a long time, before we knew that it was the Stephen F. Austin Building." Birdwell suggested they use the dedicated name, not "Main."

When asked where the faculty took their meals, she replied:

"Well, places to eat were in demand for sometime. Mrs. Lockey had a tea room, which was open to the faculty, a very nice place. It was located in the place about where Hotel Fredonia is now. Then, across from this high school campus, Mr. and Mrs. Reavley lived, and that was on Mound Street. And they provided meals -- the noon meals and possibly supper. For high school and college faculty, [it was] a very nice place. ... They were wonderful people and, of course, their son Tom, we were all so proud of him. Going to his law work at Austin and coming back to practice now and then. That wasn't his regular work, but he was back for us to meet and feel comfortable with. Very fine person."

Miss Wilkin got her masters in home economics from Columbia in the mid-1920s. She never worked on a doctorate. When asked about Mr. Birdwell's policy on doctorates, she said there was never any pressure: "Birdwell didn't care whether we had it or not. He wanted us to be good teachers in our field." On the other hand, Birdwell did encourage them to do frequent summer post-graduate work. Miss Wilkin did summer work at Iowa, the University of Washington, and Columbia, studying such subjects as advanced textiles, teacher education, psychology, and sociology.

Miss Wilkin became an instructor after she returned with her master's degree, and then she became the head of the Home Economics Department around 1930 when Miss St. John retired to get married. She remained as head of the department until, as she said, "I retired in July of 1961 to marry that man that showed up."