Betsy Stelck, founding History faculty family

Betsy Stelck and DeWayne Johnson (interviewer)
Betsy Stelck and DeWayne Johnson (interviewer)

I decided — along with a lot of other faculty wives who’d just arrived — that it would be wonderful if we could get together as a family and get our children playing together, and maybe taking swimming lessons together, and doing those kinds of things. So we organized the Faculty Wives group. And everyone was very, very eager to participate in this, and we had wonderful activities. We had a huge Christmas party for our children, and we had swimming lessons, we had parties. . . And then we had our faculty band, and we had our own parties at the Cafeteria — decorated the Cafeteria beautifully. Char Sellers, one of our very artistic members would decorate this so beautifully, and that’s where we would have our Christmas party. And we were so fortunate to have that, because we were all very, very broke. . ..

Well, we decided that there were many students that wanted to come to this University, but just didn’t have the money, and if we could help them in any way– So we decided we were going to give scholarships, but we didn’t have any money to give the scholarships, so we’d bake cakes. We had a lot of bake sales on the campus. The cookies went so fast, and the cakes went so fast, that we could hardly get them on the campus before they were gone. And then we decided to give rummage sales, and they were very, very popular. So we were able to raise quite a bit of money, and we had to turn it over to the [University] Foundation, and the Foundation invested it for us, and it was a very, very good time for investments — they did a very good job. And before long, we were ready to give our first scholarships, which were $100 scholarships. And for years and years, now we have given four scholarships of $1,500 each.