Rhonda Keith Stephens

ELLEN ROWE: LETTERS HOME, by Rhonda Keith Stephens, Editor.

The book is just what its title implies, a lengthy collection of chatty letters home to the folks that covers about a dozen years, from 1953 to 1966. These letters to Ellen's parents begin with her first year of college at Ohio Wesleyan. After two years there she transferred to Florida State U, ostensibly so she could get into a better program for Spanish Language, her major. However, in reading her letters, I suspect there was an ulterior motive - to get farther away from her home in Akron, and being at a party school, with more warm weather for swimming and water skiing. (In fact, she became part of a stunt water-skiing team in those years, with some photos here to prove it.) Because these letters reveal, far more than anything else, a girl who LOVED to party - a shallow, spoiled young woman who took shameless advantage of an overindulgent father. (Her mother, it seems, might not have indulged her so freely, had it been up to her. There is one note included here from her mother, saying: "Remember that LIFE is not all fun and play ... So please settle down and get your feet on the ground.") Ellen's letters are full of stories of all the boys she's seeing and the parties they have, as well as constant pleas for more money, more clothes, more everything. And these things remain constant, from the very first letters, when she is eighteen, and throughout her twenties as well, even after experiencing a crippling accident while traveling in Europe. Because her peripatetic college years took her as far as the University of Madrid (and, later, to the exclusive Middlebury College in Vermont). The only time she seems even briefly to consider her life, is when she falls in love with a handsome Spaniard, Fernando, and they quarrel intermittently, sometimes bitterly (all of which she tells in her letters home). She assesses their situation thusly -

"It all boils down to this: I've been a child all my life and he was looking for a woman. That was our whole problem ... All along I thought he wanted to change me into a different person, but it wasn't that at all. He just wanted me to grow up, something I had to do for myself."

Not long after this long-overdue epiphany, Ellen and Fernando are involved in an auto accident which leaves her permanently disabled, weakened hands, wearing a leg brace, walking with a cane and/or using a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Fernando, uninjured, disappears permanently soon after this accident. There is a nearly two-year gap in the correspondence, which begins again in the summer of '63, from Middlebury College. Following that there is another trip to Europe and a couple summer trips with her Spanish class students (from Akron) to Mexico. Because after her accident it appears that Rowe did finally finish her studies and settle down to teaching high school Spanish in Akron for thirty-plus years. Editor Rhonda Keith Stephens was one of her students in the mid-sixties and stayed in touch with Ellen off and on until her death in 2005. Several years before she died, Ellen gave all these letters to Stephens. Hence this book.

Apparently Rowe was a popular teacher at East HS in Akron, sponsoring a Spanish Club, raising money and organizing trips to Mexico. She was also an avid booster of the high school athletic teams and loved to watch figure skating on TV.

I couldn't help but wonder whether Rowe would have ever settled down to a productive life, had it not been for her crippling accident. Perhaps this is more of a woman's book, with all its chatter about clothes and fashion, the latest new cars (which she is always hinting about to her pushover daddy), fads and innovations - color TVs, jewelry, etc. But I wonder if even many women would like this young woman, as presented in these letters. Because I did not. Shallow, flighty party girl. There is one particular phrase that runs through almost all of these letters from beginning to end, and might even make a fitting epitaph for this woman: "Had a ball."

LETTERS HOME will be interesting mostly to Ellen's friends, family or former students. But they do convey a certain flavor of the fifties and early sixties, so may have some sociological value. A few things made me chuckle here and there, but mostly I was kind of repelled. I was glad and relieved to finally get to the end. Whew! Enough already!… (mehr)