November 2001
Raincoats, sports, classes, friendships -- alumni remember
In the 1960s, Kitty Hoffman, dean of women at FSU, shocked the
university.
Arriving to help decorate for a homecoming celebration, Hoffman made her appearance in - gasp - slacks.
Stunned students all asked, "Dean, where's your raincoat?"
Until then, females wearing anything but a dress had to camouflage their apparel, most of them by donning raincoats.
The vignette is included with other historical tidbits in a book of stories scheduled to be published this year.
The book, "FSU Voices, An Informal History of 150 Years," is a collection of alumni accounts edited by Maxine Stern.
Dress code was very much on the minds of administrators almost 60 years before Hoffman's appearance, Stern said.
In the early 1900s, when the Florida Female College was created, the men at FSU's precursor moved to Gainesville, taking with them fraternities and football.
Basketball continued at FFC, at least until 1907, when the administration proclaimed that "because of the lack of dignity" in the athletic wear, only men who were faculty or family members of the players would be allowed to attend the games, Stern said. That rule left the team with no opponents.
To provide the necessary opponents, the women eventually formed the Stars and Crescents, which later grew into the Odds and Evens, intercampus teams whose rivalry became a popular tradition.
The book also has excerpts from letters written by Nellie Godfrey King, who graduated from FFC in 1906.
Writing to "My dear Charlie," a man she would later marry, King lamented the lack of algebra in the college's curriculum, and sighed "Oh my!" over the level of English she was being taught.
There were bright spots, however.
Stern said King wrote Charlie about picking violets, a "privilege" at the time, and told of "roses everywhere."
Jo Anne Butler, who received a master's from Florida State in 1959 and later joined the faculty, came to Tallahassee in the fall of 1956 from points north.
When she arrived in the Panhandle, she was quickly admonished by Mary Simp-son Yarborough, owner of the home where she boarded, to "Get out of those clothes. Only a fool Yankee would wear a wool suit in Tallahassee in September." She switched to bermuda shorts.
En route to class, Butler's first lessons were in the female dress code.
"Hey, she's not wearing a raincoat," Butler wrote of one of the first remarks she heard. "This loud comment came from one of a group of noisy male fun-loving types on the porch of a fraternity house.
'Where's your raincoat?' came another voice ."
Then there was the story posted by John G. Hurd (Greg), who received his BS in 1976 and now lives in Texas.
Hurd wrote that he was in Saudi Arabia when a "terrorist bomb exploded outside the Office of Program Management for the Saudi National Guard, a U.S. Army program at the time."
The explosion killed nine people. Hurd had many friends in the building, including FSU fans and graduates.
A severely injured FSU fan received a telegram from Bobby Bowden the next day. Other cards from FSU soon followed.
"Talk about lifting spirits to see the reaction [on their] faces," Hurd wrote. "It was one of the most heartfelt moments that I can ever remember.
"I guess that feeling is what makes FSU mean so much to me, and like the memories of friends gone by, it will live on..."
Visit the Sesquicentennial at (http://www.fsu.edu/%7Efsu150/).
For more information about the book, call 850.644.1000 or e-mail
Stern at mstern@mailer.fsu.edu.
-Michelle Hayes
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