Ruth Southworth Brown and Cecil Rigby Nussbaum: A student and a faculty wife reminisce about UW in the 1920s
In the mid-1980s, two women who had a close association with the University of Wyoming (UW) were persuaded to record their memories of the 1920s in Laramie.
Early impressions
“We had no idea where Wyoming was, and it was quite a change,” said Cecil Rigby Nussbaum (1887-1992) about arriving in Laramie in 1925 from Paris, France. She said that it was much easier to get to know people in Laramie than it had been any other place she’d lived.
The Nussbaums went to post-war Paris after their marriage in 1918. There were short stints back in the U.S. at two different colleges, then to Paris again so Dr. Fredrick Nussbaum (1885-1956) could continue his study of the history of economics until the offer from the UW History Department came along.
Ruth Southworth (1904-1990) was a farm girl from Platte County who was a UW student at the same time. To her, coming to Laramie City (as it was called then) was a “big thrill” when she and other students came with her high school principal for an academic contest.
She graduated from Wheatland High School in 1921 and immediately got a job teaching in an elementary rural school after six weeks of summer school training at UW. She paid for summer school with money earned “tramping silage” for farmers. “I went to a rural school myself,” she said, “so I used the things that they did that I liked.” She attended UW several summers, finally starting full time as a sophomore in 1924.
These two women might never have met, though both say that the UW campus was small enough (around 750 students) that “you knew everybody” back in the 1920s. Ruth graduated with a B.S. Degree in Education in 1927. Cecil was a classical pianist who had trained in several conservatories, and had an arts diploma. She was proud to say that in 1929 she graduated with the “first degree in Music that UW offered,” after four years of study.
UW Commons
There had been some military buildup on the UW campus for the First World War effort; one of the holdovers was a building west of the Geology Building called “The Commons.” It had been built as a mess hall for cadets in military training on campus. After the war, it became UW’s only place for food.
In 1924 it may have been a cafeteria for breakfast and lunch, but at supper there were tablecloths on the long tables that seated 10. Southworth worked as a waitress to set the tables, bring the food family style, and clean up after for the next group. It was good to get a table of quick eaters for the early meals, she recalled, because then you were assured of getting to class on time afterward.
Southworth also worked there as a cashier. She recalls that most items on a tray were “two cents, or five cents, or seven cents, so making change was difficult.” If her tally at the end of a shift came out a few pennies ahead, she kept the extras in an envelope in the cash drawer. Then, if behind on the next day, she’d take pennies from the envelope. She remembers being called on the carpet for having tallies that came out precisely daily. “Nobody can be that perfect” her supervisor thought, so she had to confess about her envelope of pennies.
Cecil Nussbaum remembers that the Commons was not big enough to serve as a lounge—it was just a place where students and faculty ate quickly and left. But after hours, Nussbaum said she and her spouse went there for parties.
Campus Buildings
The other main buildings on campus in 1925 were Old Main, built in 1887, Science Hall (1902, now the west end of the Geology Building); Merica Hall (1908); Hoyt Hall, (1916); the Library (1924, now the Aven Nelson Building); and Half Acre Gym (1925). There was also a “Little Theater” (now demolished) that had been built as a small gymnasium.
The campus powerhouse was on the north near Lewis St. It had tunnels distributing heat to all the buildings. Southworth knew the night watchman, Micky Stanton. She was in a group of students he took through the tunnels once for a big adventure.
Southworth remembers that there was no lounging area anywhere for students. She could go to her own Merica dormitory room between classes, but women who boarded in town were out of luck. The girls who lived in Merica Hall got together and convinced the administration to let them fix up a room in the basement for off-campus girls and dorm residents to hang out between classes during the day.
Nellie Tayloe Ross was Governor of Wyoming at the time, and the students named the new lounge for her—later Southworth was invited back when Gov. Ross came for a dedication. Nussbaum recalls going to the Governor’s Mansion in Cheyenne for an event—she and her husband took the train to Cheyenne and a taxi to the Mansion, then left in time to catch the last train back to Laramie.
Getting around
Both women recalled that people walked everywhere in town, and Laramie was small—“Hoyt Hall was about the east edge of town,” Nussbaum pointed out, and there were “ranches south of Sheridan St. and to the east from there.” Southworth remembered that there wasn’t much beyond Clark St. on the north side of Laramie.
Neither woman mentions having a car. Southworth worked several years for a professor’s family, the Otis Rechard’s. They lived at 601 S. 13th St. and she walked there from Merica Hall between classes and after school. She started as a babysitter for them—“no one ever dreamed of picking us up; we walked to wherever we were babysitting.” Mrs. Rechard was pregnant at the time—long-time Laramie resident Dr. Paul Rechard (1927-2019) was the baby she helped Mrs. Rechard care for.
Nussbaum thought that there was no pavement anywhere in Wyoming when they arrived in 1925. Laramie streets would be “absolute bogs,” she recalled—and remembered an incident of being plucked from the mud halfway across a street by a person in a car who saw her plight.
Favorite Professors
Nussbaum was an early president of the faculty wives club, but joked that the membership was so small the entire club could sit down in President Crane’s living room when they had their meetings. Dr. Arthur G. Crane was UW president from 1922-1941 and although known for his aloofness, his wife was a gracious hostess.
Southworth didn’t mention President Crane, but did say that because of small classes, the association with faculty “was a large part of our education.” Her favorite professors included Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, who was “stern” but a good teacher. Another favorite was the professor students called “Dr. Sammy,” but not to his face. That was Dr. Samuel H. Knight, who had begun teaching geology at UW in 1916. His field trips and skill with blackboard drawings in colored chalk were the stuff of legend for students in his classes.
Southworth’s favorite, by far, was Dr. Edwin Blake Payson (1893-1927), the protégé of former UW President and Botany Department founder, Dr. Aven Nelson. She said that in her future career as a teacher she’d remember the way Dr. Payson would answer a student’s question with another question, then another, until the student realized “He was making me think it out for myself . . . to me that was a mark of a real teacher. He was so concerned about each of us.”
But Dr. Payson was struck with a mysterious ailment in 1926 that partially paralyzed his left arm. He taught botany in the 1926-27 academic year, then had non-emergency gall bladder surgery but died shortly after of heart failure. He was 34 years old. Southworth recalls his death as the “saddest memory” of her years at UW.
What became of them?
Both Cecil Nussbaum and Ruth Southworth had long lives and careers that took them away, but both came back to Laramie in retirement.
Ruth Southworth married Donald Brown in 1934 after several years of teaching at Fort Laramie. They moved to Lander, where he taught in the public schools and she taught at the State Training School in Lander.
They had three children and, probably when the children were nearly raised, they went to the Middle East for three different 2-year stints. They lived in places before they became engulfed in today’s turmoil: Kandahar, Afghanistan; Aleppo, Syria; and Tehran, Iran. She taught English as a Second Language at all three locations. From Afghanistan came one of her three published books: “So it was in Kandahar” (1976). The Browns moved to Laramie around 1977; she died here in 1990, her husband the following year.
Cecil Nussbaum gave piano lessons and performed at UW concerts—she was also a leader in the Democratic Party for Laramie and the Wyoming Democrats. In the depression that began in 1929, she remembers that she had one dress that she wore for all fancy occasions—otherwise it was cotton wash dresses or plain skirts. Her husband died in 1956.
In 1959, another UW history professor, Gale McGee, was elected to the U.S. Senate, and he asked her to become a part of his office staff, which she did for ten years, living in Washington D.C. But then she moved back to the little house at 1111 Kearney St. that she had continued to own.
Editors Note: Material for this story comes from copies of oral history transcripts at the Laramie Plains Museum—the originals are in the Wyoming Room of the Albany County Public Library. Other sources are the three books by Ruth Southworth Brown at UW Coe Library and archives of the Cecil and Frederick Nussbaum Papers at the UW American Heritage Center.
By Judy Knight
Source: UW American Heritage Center; Ludwig & Svenson Studio Photographs
Caption: Interior of the now-demolished UW “Commons” in the 1940s when the WWI-era building was again in use as a mess hall for military trainees on the UW campus. In 1925 there were meals served family style, Ruth Southworth worked there then as a student.
Source: UW American Heritage Center; Cecil and Frederick Nussbaum Papers
Caption: The Nussbaums in 1943 “Taken on our 25th Wedding anniversary”.
Source: Laramie Plains Museum
Caption: Ruth Southworth Brown, at around age 70, taken from the book jacket of “Walk on the Sky” (1973), her first published work of fiction, in the collection of the LPM