I am deeply honored to be invited to give the Alice Louise Reynolds inaugural lecture and asked to look at my life in light of hers. Since I went “back East” nearly a lifetime ago as a member of the class of 1927, I have come home to Utah many times. But today is perhaps the most joyous homecoming of all.

Alice Louise Reynolds made such a profound contribution to this place she so deeply loved that I feel intimidated by her example and inadequate to my assigned task today. And yet, in some ways it is natural to talk about our lives in the same breath, for though she was born in 1873 and I was born in 1906, our roots are here in Utah and here at this splendid university, which helped shape our lives in so many important ways. So to me this is even more than a very special speaking engagement. This is my homecoming. This is where I was born and grew up and went to elementary school and high school and college.

In the sixty-one years since I left Brigham Young University, I have lived and put down roots in many places: Boston, New York, a farm in rural Vermont, Stockholm, Brussels, and, for most of the past half-century, in the Washington, D.C. area. I have always tried to be part of the community, wherever I chanced to live. But even to this day, I find myself unconsciously telling friends that I have just phoned “home” or that I am going “home,” when I mean Utah, and particularly Provo. As for BYU, here on this campus is where my life as a woman and as a worker began. Those were years shaped, in many, many ways by the values Alice Louise Reynolds believed in.

I found my theme for today, “Roots and Wings,” in a recent issue of BYU Today.¹ What better words to describe the power of this institution? Alice Reynolds, my brothers and sisters and I, and oh, so many others had our intellectual roots here and took wing on the strength of a BYU education. What a difference it made in our lives! Since this is the inaugural lecture in the series honoring Professor Reynolds, it is only right to tell you something of her life and background and the forces and situations that helped to mold her. And I want to reflect on them in relation to my life and the lives of others in my time. Too few of us are aware of what women like Alice Louise Reynolds and her predecessors have contributed to the opportunities I and other women have enjoyed in pursuing careers in public service and public life.

Alice Reynolds’s tangible achievements in education and in women’s rights would have been impressive in any age, but they were particularly remarkable in her day, when few women in the entire country graduated from college, and even fewer became full professors, as she did. She entered a man’s world at a time when women were rarely accepted in the workplace. Young women are sometimes kind enough to tell me that I’m an inspiration to their generation, but I tell them what I must tell you, that in the area of women’s advancement my generation is only a follower of pioneers like Alice Reynolds and many before her.

People who knew her spoke about the countless kind words and deeds that she lavished upon her students and friends, about the fact that she felt no need to criticize people and put them down. “Let Us Oft Speak Kind Words to Each Other. . . .”² And yet, at the same time, she sought to challenge her students rigorously because she believed that this was the only way to help them develop their full potential. No wonder she was so greatly loved! She cared about them and they knew it. Indeed, when you think that nearly five thousand students took courses with Professor Reynolds, it does not seem farfetched to picture her as a kind of mother to us all.

Professor Reynolds created the first English literature curriculum at BYU, introducing students to great literature—Chaucer, Browning, the history of the novel, and modern drama, among others. Perhaps even more importantly, she built the BYU library—not the bricks and mortar, but the priceless collection of knowledge within its walls. And she sent her students out into the world so charged by her example that they formed Alice Louise Reynolds clubs, even in New York, sharing and spreading her love of literature and education and at the same time gathering books and material for the library.

Alice Reynolds’s whole life was one of loving service to the people around her, to her university, her church, and her country. We know she felt strongly about our debts to others. Let us not forget our debts. After her death, a poem was found in her diary that clearly expressed this sense of obligation:

Lord, help me live from day to day
In such a self-forgetful way
That even when I kneel to pray
My prayer may be of others.

You will probably know her story, but perhaps, like me, some of you would like to know more about her. In reading Alice Reynolds’ autobiography, her writings, and what I could find that has been written about her, I came away wishing we could learn more about the events she lived through and to hear more of her keen observations of the situations she must have encountered in her efforts to effect change.

I suspect that her life—examined in its context and explored in its implications—has much more to tell us. Perhaps someone in this great institution will take up such a project one day, for I don’t think the writings so far have touched the depths of what she must have learned.

Until the day that such a study is made of Professor Reynolds’ life, I must be content to read between the lines as well as to follow some of the threads that wound through both our lives: the vibrant community and family life, the deep values and great dreams that many of us shared in the early years of this century. In this beautiful state with its peaks and valleys, the inspiration of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the triumphs of pioneers provided “growing ground” for all of us. And what a fertile growing ground it was.

It could not have been easy to do all that she did, but on the other hand, there was in a number of ways a greater willingness in those days to accept women in the world outside the home than there was in later decades. After all, Brigham Young had taught that the woman’s place was in the counting house as well as the family house. And don’t forget that women’s rights and the right to vote were enshrined in the Utah Constitution at the time of statehood in 1896. I wonder how those pioneer women who had worked for that would have felt two generations later to find their state reluctant to step forward in answer to a new call for women’s equality.

Mormon women had begun to take part in political activities early in 1870. Although they could not hold office, they actively participated through discussions in meetings and writing about women’s disadvantages. They did this through publications such as the Women’s Exponent, from which Exponent II takes its inspiration.³ They sponsored meetings through the Relief Society⁴ and the Utah Suffrage Association and they sang songs of their rights—including one to the tune of the Mormon hymn “Hope of Israel”:

Freedom’s daughter, rouse from slumber:
See, the curtains are withdrawn,
Which so long thy mind have shrouded,
Lo! thy day begins to dawn.
Woman, ’rise! thy penance o’er.
Sit thou in the dust no more:
Seize the scepter: hold the van.
Equal with thy brother, man.

Surely, Alice Reynolds benefitted from the climate that this early activity permitted.

In light of the tolerance of that period, it was not surprising to find that Alice Reynolds, a woman of the university, was also a woman of the political world outside, that she once walked several miles to deliver tickets to a speech by William Jennings Bryan so that some missionaries could hear him. She was active in the Utah suffrage movement, and in 1920 she seconded the nomination of William MacAdoo at the Democratic Convention.⁵ She was an example of the best kind of American, one who took her citizenship rights seriously.

Alice Reynolds enjoyed the loving care of a large, supportive family, as I have. Her nickname in the neighborhood—“Princess Alice”—suggests that she was somewhat pampered compared to other children of her day, and if this is so it seems to have contributed to the self-confidence and lack of concern with petty matters upon which many of her contemporaries remarked.

It was unusual for children to attend preschool in those days, but Alice’s father, George Reynolds,⁶ saw to it that she was sent to school when she was only four years old, and at thirteen she entered Brigham Young Academy. George Reynolds recognized his daughter’s intellectual gifts early and took pains to guide her education, of which travel was an important part. You might say that he always had his hand on her shoulder.

As sheltered as she was, Alice also experienced suffering as a child. She later referred to her father’s two-year imprisonment for polygamy⁷ as a very painful time. And her mother’s death when Alice was twelve was a serious blow. It seems safe to assume that the nurturing she enjoyed seems to have contributed to her formidable strength and self-assurance, and that this, along with her experience of suffering, enabled her to empathize with others.

Between the lines of Professor Reynolds’s writings is a lively, impish sense of humor. In one of the many articles she wrote for the Relief Society Magazine, of which she was editor for some time, she recounted a story about a well-known feminist, Lucy Stone (later Lucy Stone Blackwell). Lucy Stone was a graduate of Oberlin College. She wrote a paper her senior year that so excited the faculty that they decided to have it read at commencement. However, they felt they couldn’t allow her to read it because she was a woman. Lucy, reacting to the illogic of this situation, refused to allow her paper to be read.

Years later, Oberlin invited Miss Stone to give a commencement address, and at some point during the festivities, she was asked how women’s struggle for emancipation was faring. “It is certainly making progress,” Miss Stone replied, “for when I first began campaigning for women’s rights it was customary to throw rotten eggs at me; now at least the eggs that are hurled are fresh eggs.”⁸

The common threads in Professor Reynolds’ life and in my life begin in the early years at home. They say that as you get older your memories of childhood become more vivid, and in my experience this is so true. Alice Reynolds spoke of the importance of family discussions in her home; they were also terribly important in mine. How clearly I remember our family sitting around the dining room table and talking and talking and talking. Though I was the youngest girl, my brother Luther insisted that I be included in the discussions, which ranged from the teaching of evolution to the League of Nations. I even remember U.S. Senator Reed Smoot⁹ sitting at our dining room table and assuring us that the great wall of import tariffs that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was raising around our shores would guarantee “insular prosperity” to America. Unfortunately, it became one of the factors that led to a world economic crash.

Looking back, it is easy to see how important these family discussions were in encouraging us to think and to ask questions. In our family, as in Professor Reynolds’ family, great store was placed in development of one’s gifts, especially one’s God-given intelligence. Somehow I think this was easier to do before we had television. The presence of boarders in our home—even Ernie Wilkinson¹⁰ boarded with us for a time—meant that we were exposed not only to stimulating conversation, but also to diversity—to different people with different opinions. Do children experience this today, talking face to face with people with points of view different from theirs? This experience prepared us to enjoy a broad variety of people of many races, creeds, and cultures later on. It would be impossible to overestimate its importance to me. It is obvious that Alice Reynolds, who also loved to travel, cherished diversity as well.

What were the other values? The work ethic, of course was one. Like Alice Reynolds, I never cared much for household chores, important as they are. But I loved working in the fields and helping my father with the livestock, and I look back on memories of doing those “chores” with great fondness—even helping to clean the manure out of the cow barn.

Combined with the work ethic was a sense that “you can do” whatever needs to be done, a conviction that we inherited from our ancestors who had crossed the Plains. We were all raised on Brigham Young’s idea that we don’t have to go to California to get gold—we’re going to make this land right here beautiful. And, indeed, the extraordinary achievement of irrigating the desert taught us that anything was possible.

Responsibility for others was also high on the list of values that shaped our lives. This was driven home to me when my mother became matron of the poorhouse after my father became ill. If you remember, we had no pensions or Social Security in those days. My brother Mark and I went to the poorhouse with mother and helped her clean. We placed the legs of the beds in cans full of kerosene to kill the bedbugs, and we helped to scrub everything, including the bathrooms. It did not occur to us that we should be paid for this—we were simply fulfilling part of our obligation to people less fortunate than we were. I believe that in our hearts our Sunday singing came back, “Have you done any good in the world today? Have I helped anyone in need?”¹¹

The importance of group effort was another given in those days. It was taken for granted that we needed each other, and the idea of going it alone was unheard of. The assumption that you must win support from others and give credit to them has stood me in good stead all these years, just as it did Alice Reynolds, who freely shared the joys of her accomplishments.

Possibly, the anthropologists would say that our religious sense of interdependency was a very practical reason for the notion that we had to be considerate of each other, and this was drummed into us as well. However, I must confess to occasional lapses in sisterly devotion. For instance, we had a rule in my family (there were four girls) that the last one in at night had to mix the bread for the next day, so I figured out a way to stay out as long as possible without being last. I tried to be the next to last one. It was a way of having my cake and eating it, too, I suppose.

BYU in those days seemed to carry forward all of the values that we had been taught at home and in church. So it was natural to accept them as a foundation on which to build, and this was furthered by many fine teachers.

I was not in one of Alice Reynolds’ classes, but in a broad sense I was certainly one of her students. And to paraphrase a public figure much in the news these days, had I known sixty-some years ago that I would be standing here at this time, I most certainly would have signed up for one of her courses! Nevertheless, through my sisters Algie, Thelma, and Anna Marie I knew about Professor Reynolds and felt her influence on this campus. And we were delighted by the stories we all used to hear about her professorial absentmindedness, her teakettle purse, and the time she crawled through the classroom window.

Even though I did not study with Professor Reynolds, I was influenced by her and was nourished by other outstanding teachers. William J. Snow in political science opened up the world of government for me. He pressed us hard to think. Wilford Poulson in psychology had me read many works on the psychology of religion, and Professor Hugh Woodruff imbued me with the philosophy and history of the many different religions so vital to understanding diverse cultures throughout the world. Walter Cottam and Vasco Tanner in botany and zoology, Carl Eyring in physics, and John C. Swenson in sociology helped prepare me for the work I did later in the sweatshops of New York and Boston and for my teaching at Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. George Hanson, the geology teacher, taught us how long it took to build the great mountains—it took millions of years—and he said to the students, “You must be patient.” But his final words were, “Don’t be too patient.”

Julia B. Jensen’s impact was tremendous. I studied Robert Browning with her. I had already had the good fortune of studying English literature in high school with Alice Ludlow, who later became Mrs. Ernie Wilkinson. It was she who reinforced my love of reading. These were some of the people who had their hands on my shoulders, who gently pushed me to think critically, to ask questions, and to take risks, all the while reminding me that they were there to explain, to argue, to guide if needed.

As wonderful as all this was, it would be wrong for me to give the impression that everything was perfect, for, like many young people, I was starting to question accepted behavior even then. As a youngster, I rode from Provo to Salt Lake one day with some of my mother’s college student boarders who had been enlisted as strikebreakers during a railroad strike at the Salt Lake roundhouse. I still vividly remember being escorted through the picket line by police on horseback who made a path for our car by pushing back the strikers and their families. At one point our car stopped in the midst of the crowd, and a thin woman with two small children caught my eye. “Why are you doing this to us?” she asked. I had no answer. So even as a child I began to ask questions, and it was often difficult to get answers. In fact, I was sometimes criticized for asking “too many” questions. And later this was difficult to square with what I had been taught in church and in the classroom. Though it was not the main factor in my leaving Utah, if I am to be honest with you, then I have to say it was a factor, along with matters of the heart. But then I was one of many BYU graduates who headed East at that time. There was not enough room for us in Utah’s agrarian economy. Henry Stark, Briant Decker, Walter Cottam, Henry Eyring, Hal Bently, and Nils Anderson were also among that group.

I needed explanations. Why were we comfortable while others were hungry? Even Professor Jenson, when she taught Browning’s “Pippa Passes,” never explained why the little girl was allowed out of the mill for only one day a year. But I do remember Pippa’s happiness: “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” My brother Luther had written from his mission in England about the dehumanizing conditions then prevailing in British factories. But many people did not want to hear about it. And what’s more, it was suggested that people who talked about such things were probably just “troublemakers.” Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my future husband, who was raised in North Dakota, knew more about the copper miners’ strike and the lives of industrial workers in Utah than I did. We did live a “protected” life.

Well, times have changed, haven’t they? It is encouraging to think that concerns and attitudes that once seemed threatening are now widely accepted.

In a sense, though I have lived on the East Coast and in Europe all these years and traveled to all the continents, I have never left Utah. And when I contemplate my good fortune to have participated for nearly six decades in some of the great changes of this century—in affirming the rights of workers, of women, of blacks, and consumers—I have always come back to my roots and to the place that gave me wings.

When I started out, it was no longer remarkable for a woman to graduate from college. The right to vote was something we had already inherited. The right to enter the work force was being accepted more and more. This was already quite a change from attitudes in Alice Reynolds’s youth.

One of the things I would like to know about her is how she accomplished so much at a time when most women were expected to stay home. Remaining unmarried was probably a factor in Professor Reynolds’s career; of course, it was more acceptable for single women to work in those days than it was for married women. Also, I think, the time was ripening for women’s abilities and energies to be brought into service—this simply began to make sense to many people, particularly during World War I.

Lastly, we must never forget that supporting hand on the shoulder—in her case, the hand of her father and other relatives and friends. In mine, it was also the hand of my father, and my brother Luther, and my brother-in-law George Ballif, my sister Algie, and, of course, mainly my husband, Oliver, who was so comfortable in his own sense of self-worth that any honors which came to me were celebrated with me.

In Professor Reynolds’ success, I think we must assume that the way she went about achieving her goals was crucial. In my own experience, you can move mountains if you keep certain principles in mind—guidelines, if you will, for how we ought to treat other human beings. It is, for instance, terribly important to look at the other person’s situation and try to understand that individual’s point of view. This means, in a sense, standing in the shoes of the people you’re trying to understand. It also means approaching opponents respectfully and making a serious effort to understand the reasons for their position. It seems to me that this is more important than ever now, for our society is at a level of such complexity that the “right” answer is seldom easy or obvious. “Avoid simple answers,” George Hanson taught us, “for they are usually unreliable.” And to find reliable answers to the thorny problems we face today, we need all the help we can get. We need each other. We need to hear all voices and try to understand all points of view.

Alice Reynolds would undoubtedly be very proud to see how far women have come since her day. I am very gratified to have been a part of that advance through the achievements of President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women. In 1963 it was almost as controversial and embattled a set of principles as Civil Rights was. In Utah, I might add, advocacy of equality of opportunity was often regarded as an attack on the structure of family life and tradition.

At the same time, I am aware that our upbringing in Utah gave us convictions, and I suppose it was these convictions, along with our supportive friends and families, that gave us the courage to speak out. Though Professor Reynolds was a model of gentleness, that did not stop her from doing what she believed in. She was aware of the great currents of her time. She discussed, she led, and she spoke up for her beliefs, fearlessly. As we already know, she was a supporter of early legislation for women, and I’m confident from all we know about her that she would be in the forefront on the big issues that women are facing today: day care for children, shared responsibility in the home, poverty in fatherless homes, and implementation of the principle of equality with tools such as “comparable worth.” There are so many issues we are working on now where the wisdom she demonstrated years ago continues to be needed.

Now the time has come—and I think Alice Reynolds would agree—to talk less about women’s needs and men’s needs and more about human needs. This is not to say that the needs of women have been met. But the commitment now exists and much more understanding is there. They show up in recent surveys among young people—even those with fundamentally conservative views. And there are tools to ensure that these things will become reality. So now it is mainly a question of working out the details. And while I do not wish to minimize the importance of details—which can make or break any dream—I think it is clear that even more pressing business is at hand.

The strength to be different was obviously one of Professor Reynolds’s qualities, and she did not hesitate to speak out in difficult situations. Most people here have probably read her spirited defense of the Church at the National Suffrage Convention in 1904.¹²

I cannot honestly say that I felt strong or impervious during the times in my life when I have been attacked by critics. But at those times, and there have been many, when people on opposite sides of an issue said I was wrong, I always thought of my dear husband’s advice. “Esther,” he said, “when you’re being attacked from both sides, you are better able to stand upright.” This, too, fit in with what ran so deep through my own childhood: “Do what is right; let the consequence follow.”¹³ And it is not always easy to know what is right.

Being under fire from both extremes has been a fairly frequent experience during my years of working for consumer rights. And quite honestly, my background in Utah—knowing what “a good loaf of bread” was and believing that you can do what is right and still make a profit without lying or cheating—gave me strength and credibility. Happily I was even able to “sell” this concept of consumerism to a multi-billion-dollar food chain in the Washington area in the eight years between my White House assignments. Together we proved you could make a profit by treating consumers fairly and respecting their intelligence.

Now, in my old age, my thoughts turn to my grandchildren and to everyone’s grandchildren. It is for them that we must take on the big challenges before us: to rescue the environment, to save our planet, and to broaden the base of opportunity for education and free choice around the world.

Imagine the world we live in as a village of one thousand. In this condensed world, a reflection of our larger world, sixty of the one thousand villagers would own half of the total wealth. More than five hundred of the one thousand would be living in slums and would be hungry. And seven hundred of the one thousand would be illiterate. One more thing about that imaginary village: seven hundred of the one thousand are nonwhite, so it might be a good idea for all of us to rethink who is the minority and who is the majority in this world.

The world is as close as the airwaves that now reach everywhere, even to the remotest villages in Africa and Asia. People, especially young people, are walking around with those little earphones, and they are not only listening to Michael Jackson, they are also hearing the news of the world and becoming aware of the enormous gaps that divide us and them in our world village.

In reading A Lighter of Lamps,¹⁴ I was impressed by a passage that also impressed Professor Reynolds, who, not long before her death copied it into her journal from an article by Kathleen Norris, “What Every Woman Almost Knows.”¹⁵ It is a passionate description of the effect of subjugation on women. But in reading it, I think not only of women, but of human beings in general, human beings everywhere.

The author wrote of the “accumulating weight of injustices down through the ages. To be enslaved, ignored, punished, unrewarded, scorned, belittled even for a few days has a fearful effect even on a child. Thus treated, it may never rise to normal free development again.”¹⁶

The problems facing us in the world are daunting, but they are soluble. As Brigham Young said, we can do it. And it seems to me that our heritage as the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of brave, resolute, and indomitable pioneers is very valuable and relevant in facing the great demands of today and tomorrow.

Forty-some years ago it was considered almost radical for a defeated Republican presidential candidate to talk about “One World” as Wendell Willkie did, to talk about how interdependent we are and how we cannot survive without working together. But sixty, eighty, a hundred years ago in Utah such notions were held by nearly everyone. To be sure, it was a smaller world, and yet those old values are more important than ever today.

Surely, each of us has something to contribute toward widening the freedoms and opportunities for people in developing countries beyond providing the shining example of a free and prosperous America. Many organizations and individuals are doing just that. A great deal is being done to widen opportunities. Right now, I am working hard on a little piece of this idea by representing the International Organization of Consumers Unions at the United Nations, where we are trying, among other things, to prevent the dumping of hazardous goods and materials on the markets of unsuspecting countries. We are also attempting to extend to other people aspects of enlightened free enterprise that we now take for granted in the United States—honest, informative food labeling and dating and safe drugs and pesticides.

Consumer rights and environmental rights are widely accepted elements of the free enterprise system now, although I am sorry to have to tell you that not everyone in power in this country seems to agree. Maybe it’s a hard point to grasp when the well-being of business is seen as being more important than the well-being of people. In the real world they are often intertwined.

President Carter worked with great dedication to get American business to agree to an executive order prohibiting the sale of hazardous products overseas without the full knowledge and agreement of the governments involved. The order was signed and put into effect. Unfortunately, the Reagan administration lifted the order three weeks after its inauguration in 1981—a move that created considerable disappointment among countries that had looked to us for leadership in this area.

These countries then turned to the United Nations for help in making available a full list of all products banned or severely restricted, not only in the United States, but in any other developed nation. But when it was time to reach consensus on publishing the list at the United Nations, the only country that withheld its support for a prolonged period was the United States.

The same thing happened when we tried to adopt the same general international consumer protection guidelines that are mandatory in our own marketplace. There was no compulsion in the U.N. guidelines—only guidance and technical assistance. Yet throughout the debate at the U.N., the United States refused to agree to share the tools to assure clean water, safe pharmaceuticals, safe meat, and so on—standards that we in the U.S. take for granted: the right to be safe, to be informed, to be heard, and to have choice—the consumer rights that President Kennedy enumerated as a Consumer Bill of Rights twenty-six years ago, and that I have devoted countless time on seeing that they are implemented. These things exist only in a truly competitive marketplace. Maybe the bureaucrats and politicians would have been a little more open-minded on this U.N. issue if they had gotten out in the world more and walked through the remote villages. If they had, they might have seen and felt the great respect, almost reverence, in which our country is held by most people in the world, not for our great wealth, which is, of course, envied, but for our democratic ideals and our respect for the individual and for humanity.

In my going around and working, the one name that opens doors for me is the name of Eleanor Roosevelt. These efforts perhaps represent small steps, but one thing I’ve learned—and I feel certain that Alice Louise Reynolds knew it too—is that small steps can eventually get you where you want to go. In fact, very often they’re the only way to get there. Maybe this is part of the reason I keep coming back to a poem that has meant much to me over the years, “Stubborn Ounces”:

You say the little efforts that I make
will do no good: they never will prevail
to tip the hovering scale
where Justice hangs in balance.
I don’t think
I ever thought they would.
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
in favor of my right to choose which side
shall feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.¹⁷

On this campus, and in this world, we are the beneficiaries of many people like Alice Louise Reynolds; of people with stubborn prejudice in favor of everyone’s right to learn and to grow. What a great legacy it is, and how grateful I am to you and to this university for giving me an assignment to prepare for this lecture, which enabled me to rediscover my roots, and wings, in her life.

Esther E. Peterson

BYU Studies Publications