Trailblazer...

A few years ago several Grinnell women collaborated to produce an exhibition to mark Women's History Month. Titled "Trailblazers: Notable Women of Grinnell," the display introduced visitors to twenty-two of Grinnell's illustrious women, including Cornelia Clarke (1884-1936), Fannie Buchanan (1875-1957), and Abby Williams Hill (1861-1943, about whom I've posted before). A summary of the exhibit appeared in the summer 2012 Newsletter of the Grinnell Historical Museum, and some of these women were the focus of a 2015 bucket course.

Laetitia Moon Conard (1871-1946) (undated photograph)
Grinnell Historical Museum

One of the women whose life the exhibition and bucket course documented was Laetitia Moon Conard (1871-1946), a scholar, teacher, mother, and political activist. Perhaps especially in a month that celebrates women's history, Conard's life reminds us that the development of Grinnell depended not only upon men like J. B. Grinnell, but also upon many remarkable women like Laetitia Moon Conard. Drawn into the orbit of Socialist Party politics, Conard appeared on the ballot in 1932 as candidate for governor, in 1934 as candidate for Congress, in 1936 as candidate for the U.S. Senate, and in 1940 as candidate for lieutenant-governor—apparently the first woman to stand for election in each case.

***

Elizabeth Laetitia Moon was born in 1871 on a farm just inside the eastern border of Pennsylvania. A child of observant Quakers, Elizabeth attended Quaker schools, graduating from Westtown Friends Boarding School in 1889, after which she attended Smith College, from which she received her bachelor's degree in 1894. Two years later she took an M.A. from Smith, then went to Paris where in 1896-97 she studied at the Sorbonne. Returning to the United States, she enrolled at the University of Chicago where in 1899 she received a Ph.D., having written a dissertation upon the religious practices of native Americans. In all this, she exceeded the accomplishments of most of her coevals.

The following year she married Henry Shoemaker Conard, a fellow Quaker who himself had attended and later taught at Westtown. A botanist, Conard studied at the University of Pennsylvania, but in 1906 the couple moved to Grinnell, Iowa where Henry took up a position on the college faculty. A daughter—Elizabeth—had been born to the Conards while they were still living in Pennsylvania. In Iowa a second daughter, Rebecca, was born in 1909, and in 1912 a third child, Alfred, joined the family, helping fill the Conard home at 1310 Elm.

Conard Home, 1310 Elm Street (undated photograph)
Grinnell Historical Museum

Henry Conard's career blossomed at Grinnell, and many have written about his accomplishments. How Elizabeth—or Laetitia, as she came to call herself—prospered in these early years is less well-known. In answer to the 1910 census-taker, Mrs. Conard described herself as a "tutor," although exactly what that meant is unclear. The 1920 census reports in the column reserved for work or occupation that Mrs. Conard had "none."

However, in 1925 Mrs. Conard went to New York City to study at Columbia University, and after her return began to teach at the college. Sometimes described as lecturer in economics, she actually helped found the discipline of sociology at Grinnell College, as Susan Ferguson and Katie Mears have written in a fine, so far unpublished study. For the fifteen years before her 1941 retirement, Conard received no salary, despite having introduced an entire sociology curriculum. At the occasion celebrating the half-dozen 1941 retirees, College President Samuel Stevens recognized in Conard "a brilliant and wise woman who has made the subject matter of sociology of vital significance." Remarks at a follow-up celebratory dinner were less enthusiastic and reflected gender stereotyping. Symbolic honors went to zoology Professor H. W. Norris "because of his scholarship and being a 'bright light' on the campus," while Dr. Edward Steiner earned his "because of his honor, dignity and courtesy." "Mrs. Conard," who also had a Ph.D. and no less reason to be called "Dr.," was said to deserve honors "because she had been a good wife, friend, and teacher."

Time has overcome some of the inattention that Conard endured in her lifetime. But what remains largely unattended in Grinnell—both college and town—is Conard's political activity, and it is to that aspect of Laetitia Conard's life that this post now turns.

***

Right Reverend Paul Jones, Episcopal Bishop of Utah, 1916-1918

Dan Bammes, "Utah Episcopalians Remember Pacifist Bishop"

http://kuer.org/post/utah-episcopalians-remember-pacifist-bishop#stream/0 

Evidence of the first shoots of Conard's politics is barely discernible. For example, the Scarlet and Black reported in March, 1920 that, after attending a talk in Oskaloosa by Jane Addams, Grinnell College students organized to collect money for Armenians, Austrians, Germans, Poles and Serbians who had been affected by the war. The newspaper identified Mrs. Conard as one of the persons to whom students might entrust their donations, presumably because of her interest in the issue. Similarly, a February 1922 S&B article noted that the Conards had hosted a dinner in Quad dining hall in honor of Episcopal Bishop Paul Jones,"who represents [and helped found] the Fellowship of Reconciliation," an organization established on the eve of World War I to advocate for peaceful resolution of conflict. After dinner, the newspaper announced, the group discussed the work of the Fellowship, presumably with the goal of persuading attendees to support non-violent approaches to disputes. It is impossible to know how actively Conard took part in these events, but her later actions make it hard to think that she sat quietly as conversation flowed around her.

Frederick J. Libby (1874-1970), ca. 1942
The Quaker Testimony for Peace: Archival Resources at Swarthmore College
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/friends/Peace%20in%20Friends/PeaceTest%20_%20K_O.htm

Even as her political interests grew, Conard continued to accompany her husband on botanical excursions, which often involved camping out and bringing along groups of students. Increasingly, however, the record exposes her acting on her own priorities. An April, 1923 article in the Scarlet and Black, for instance, took note of a meeting at the college club where several speakers reported on meetings they had recently attended. "Mrs. Conard," the paper continued, "spoke on a meeting she had attended in which Mr. [Frederick J.] Libby, the pacifist, was the main speaker." Libby, a one-time Congregationalist minister who joined the Society of Friends in 1921, was founder and long-time executive secretary of the National Council for the Prevention of War, so it is not difficult to imagine what Conard had to say about his talk, perhaps a stimulus to Conard's own growing commitment to pacifism.

Robert LaFollette (1855-1925), undated photo
http://progressiveeraphotosexhibit.weebly.com/robert-m-la-follette.html

Soon Conard threw herself into supporting the 1924 presidential candidacy of Wisconsin Senator Robert "Fighting Bob" LaFollette (1855-1925). Nominee of  his own Progressive Party, LaFollette espoused a populist platform that favored government ownership of the railroads and electric utilities, support for labor unions, and outlawing child labor, among other things. He had opposed World War I, and sought to demand a referendum before any government could again involve the United States in war.  These views won Conard's support, as a September, 1924 article in the Scarlet and Black noted; "Mrs. Bradshaw and Mrs. Conard" were leading LaFollette boosters, the newspaper observed, and went on to report that "Mrs. H. S. Conard was acting chairman of [LaFollette's] county committee." In 1920s Grinnell, a Republican stronghold, LaFollette's positions must have seemed radical, and Conard later reported that many of her friends had been shocked that she could align herself with LaFollette. However, as later events proved, LaFollette was only the beginning of Conard's political radicalism.

In the 1924 election LaFollette won his home state of Wisconsin and a respectable portion of the national vote, but it was Calvin Coolidge who won the presidency. The race had exhausted LaFollette, however, and he died only a few months later, the promise of a new politics evaporating. As the 1928 presidential election neared, Conard turned to yet another third-party candidate, Norman Thomas (1884-1968), newly elevated to head the Socialist Party. An article in the November, 1928 Scarlet and Black quoted Conard on the unknown candidate. "Norman Thomas," Conard said,

is an absolute pacifist, partly because he knows people, partly because he is an exceptionally clear thinker, and partly because of his indomitable energy in going straight to the heart of every problem....Norman Thomas is for the underdog. He is internationally minded....

Despite Conard's enthusiastic support, Thomas, a little-known Presbyterian minister, made little dent in the 1928 electoral victory of Herbert Hoover. But, like LaFollette's loss in 1924, Thomas's 1928 failure did not drive Conard away; indeed, as the Depression grew increasingly deep and international politics grew more strained, Conard was more drawn to Socialist Party politics than ever.

Delegates to the 1929 Conference on the Cause and Cure for War, Washington, DC
Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hec.35230/)

Traces of Conard's continuing activism appeared occasionally in newspapers. Articles in the 1929 S&B report that Conard had helped organize a peace committee within the college YWCA, and that the committee maintained a table in the college library that provided peace literature. That spring the college newspaper told of another meeting of the YWCA peace committee at Mrs. Conard's home, at which time she told of her experiences at the Third Conference on the Cause and Cure of War that she had attended in Washington, DC in January, 1928. Her talk seems to have galvanized student activism, for the newspaper told of plans being laid to send members of the peace committee "to make peace talks to Christian Endeavor groups" at churches in the area.

Sherwood Eddy (1871-1963) (undated photograph)

Summer 1930 Conard joined one of Sherwood Eddy's seminars that visited the capitals of several European countries, along the way meeting with experts and friends of Eddy's who briefed them on historical and political happenings (Eddy writes about these trips in chapter 7 of his Eighty Adventurous Years: An Autobiography [NY: Harper & Row, 1955]). As Rick Nutt has shown (The Whole Gospel for the Whole World: Sherwood Eddy and the American Protestant Mission [Macon, GA, 1997]), the so-called American Seminars began in 1921, and typically lasted two to three months, regularly visiting London, Germany, Geneva, Austria, Czechoslovakia and France. Beginning in 1926, the seminars also visited the USSR, and inevitably attracted a wide array of American intellectuals. So Conard was in distinguished company when she set out for Europe that summer.

Grinnell Herald, August 29, 1930, p. 1

Conard kept notebooks of her seminar impressions, but, unfortunately, the notebooks seem not to have survived. Happily, since she, like other seminar participants, published reports on their travels, we can identify some of the events that seminar participants enjoyed in Russia and what effect they had upon Conard, who offered her first reflections in a letter sent from Moscow August 12th and published in the Grinnell Herald August 29, 1930. Then living in a Moscow hotel close to the Kremlin, Conard announced that she was favorably impressed by the energy that revolution had brought to Russian daily life. Based upon visits to local institutions, movies provided by their Soviet hosts, and the blitz of propaganda, Conard judged the infant revolution to be making great strides in mechanizing agriculture, in improving education, and in giving women larger roles in all official bodies. Indeed, after visiting a Moscow People's Court, Conard noted that the judge was a woman, and that more than a third of all Soviet judges were women; moreover, the conductor on the trolley that took them to court was a woman, and it was a woman who controlled the track switches." Finally, Conard observed, "there are prominent Russian women officials" everywhere. By contrast, she continued, "The United States gives less to women in the way of public office than England, Germany or Russia," a circumstance her later life tried to correct.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was a member of Conard's same 1930 seminar, and he reported in Christian Century having discovered, like Conard, great enthusiasm for changes being effected in Russian society. Niebuhr described the group's visit to Bolshovo, a collective farm twenty miles outside Moscow that Eddy's group visited every year. Niebuhr also reported on the 1929 movie, "Turksib," that the group had viewed. Both these experiences doubtless contributed to Conard's conviction that the revolution's progress and fascination with machinery had generated immense enthusiasm.

Strastnoi (Passion) Monastery as represented in pre-revolutionary postcard (Wikimedia Commons)

While in Moscow the seminar also visited the "Anti-Religion Museum," by which Conard evidently meant the then-new museum in the former Strastnoi Monastery (razed in 1938). Crispin Paine, writing about atheist museums in the USSR, described the Central Anti-Religion Museum in the old monastery, founded in 1929, by quoting a 1933 French visitor: "...Displays [there] were based on the idea that all religions were similar superstitions, which they demonstrated by juxtaposing 'idols, fetishes, Christian images and objects of witchcraft.'"

Conard remarked upon the Museum when, after her return home, she addressed the college Cosmopolitan Club in December, 1930. Although she was confident that "religion will return," she observed to Grinnell students that the Anti-Religion Museum had persuaded her that "atheism is truly a religion endeavoring to cast out the superstitions which have delayed the human race for centuries" (Scarlet and Black December 10, 1930).

Tanager vol. 5, no. 2 (January, 1931):40-42
Special thanks to Chris Jones, Grinnell College Special Collections, for making this material available to me

In an essay published in Tanager, a college publication usually dominated by student writing, Conard developed her point. "Communism," she wrote,

partakes of the nature of a religion. The fervor inspired by its tenets results in a willingness to endure hardships equal to those of the sects.... We who were guided around the Anti-Religious Museum by an ardent atheist and who noticed her seriousness and deep emotion as she came to the corner which exhibited the activities of the young atheist society knew that this apostle believed sincerely that atheism is throwing down the idol thrones and eliminating the oppressive authority of capitalist religion...

Conard went on to say that she thought the greatest failure of the Christian religion lay in its neglect of the welfare of the masses, a charge easily laid at the feet of Russian Orthodoxy. Key to this failure, she thought, was the association of religion with war, a point highlighted in displays at the Anti-Religion Museum, where seminar participants saw photographs "of priests blessing columns of soldiers starting to the front" as well as other exhibits that linked the church to war. No doubt these displays appealed strongly to the pacifism with which Conard had grown up.

Grinnell's Russia traveler also felt sympathy for the Soviet effort to wipe out class distinctions. More than once Conard told audiences about the "one class" she had found in Russia, and how deeply impressed she was with official efforts to measure everything, and thereby bring science to bear upon social and economic development (perhaps a reflection of her own growing commitment to sociological methods as illustrated in her later study of the effects of the Depression on family life). At the same time, Conard was bluntly critical of Soviet efforts to limit access to information, warning of the power this course invested in government.

***

These and other themes drawn from her European sojourn continued to resonate with Conard in the early 1930s as she grew closer to becoming a candidate for statewide office in Iowa. She continued to address various groups, like the League of Women Voters, before whom at a 1931 luncheon in Iowa City Conard talked about "women in industry." Presumably in this period she gave increasing thought to how she might contribute more to Depression-era America, because at the July, 1932 convention of the Iowa Socialist party, Conard was named candidate for Governor, her photograph appearing atop a cluster of photographs of the party's nominees.

Des Moines Register July 25, 1932, p. 2

The Des Moines Register reported on the conference, outlining the party program  and barely commending the nominee:

The Socialist party of Iowa has nominated for governor a woman of character and intelligence, teacher of sociology at Grinnell College, Mrs. Laetitia M. Conard. It has adopted a platform that includes a few shots at the capitalistic system, naturally, but that is largely made up of such planks as one demanding a graduated income and inheritance tax, another insisting that the tariff be made effective on agricultural products, another declaring for the shorter work week, another recommending an international economics conference for tariff reduction, and so on...

The newspaper went on to cast doubt on the party's prospects and its proposed solutions to America's problems:

The Socialist party organization in Iowa is very skimpy indeed...[and] we are a long way from the view that national ownership and management of industries, involving necessarily control by government bureaus and a great subordinating of the individual to the dictation of the government, is the cure for our economic troubles, as serious as those are.

Other responses to Conard's nomination were even less supportive. A month after the Socialist Party convention the Algona Upper Des Moines newspaper openly wondered whether "the candidacy of Mrs. L. M. Conard, wife of a professor in Grinnell College, for governor on the socialist ticket in Iowa will be a profitable ad for that college." Conard herself, however, was undaunted, and embarked upon a series of speeches intended to spread the word about socialist solutions to the country's problems.

Daily Iowan September 18, 1932

The Daily Iowan reported on her September, 1932 talk at the Johnson County Courthouse, where Conard emphasized that "Socialism places human welfare above property rights. The old parties," she continued, "claim that the nation belongs to financiers, but we say it belongs to the workers with brain and muscle, and those who are looking for work...," an echo, perhaps, of her visit to the USSR two years earlier. Moreover, as she often did, Conard asserted that there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats, since both parties were beholden to and supporters of capital, and their policies, even in the best of times, left "countless numbers of unsupported old people, needy families, and unemployed." Socialism, by contrast, Conard argued, was a "philosophy of brotherhood..., the only political theory that expresses the principles of the Christian faith."

Cedar Rapids Gazette October 10, 1932, p. 16

The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported in its October 10th issue on Conard's talk before the Grinnell College Liberal Club, pointing out that Conard took issue with the claim that the United States depended upon a two-party system. "Political parties," Mrs. Conard said, "are formed because of some vital issue, and neither the republicans nor democrats are taking opposite sides on any such issue. If we had a true two-party system," she continued, "it would be socialism against capitalism." This comment must have rankled many in conservative Grinnell, but Conard did not shrink from confronting established powers, also condemning what she called "narrow-minded churches and colleges which condemned a person for being a socialist."

Throughout the autumn Conard carried the message to audiences around the state. The Grinnell newspaper did not often report on these appearances, but a Grinnell Herald article in late October printed responses to a series of questions put to all the gubernatorial candidates by the editor. Conard's replies—usually more detailed and coherent than her fellow candidates'—were printed in full, and allowed her to develop some of the themes of the Socialist campaign.

For example, when asked about repeal of the 18th Amendment (that had instituted prohibition), Conard declined to endorse repeal, but went on cleverly to urge the repeal of unemployment. "By taking over the industries or by compelling those who run industry to cooperate in taking care of all employable people hunting jobs, the temptation to bootlegging will be much decreased," she argued. Conard went on to favor a state income tax, oppose a state sales tax, favor compulsory unemployment insurance in Iowa, and retain a minimum wage for teachers. She advocated state assistance to local relief funds, opposed mandatory military training in the state's high schools and universities, and encouraged local government to maintain ownership over utilities.

Lucas Country Results of 1932 Election (Chariton Herald-Patriot November 11, 1932)

Although many ideas that Conard espoused ultimately found their way into the political mainstream, she and her party suffered defeat in 1932. In Iowa as in much of the rest of the nation, Democrats prevailed. Even if Norman Thomas's vote total improved upon the 1928 election results, Roosevelt's triumph was nearly universal. Conard, one of several minor-party candidates, came in well behind the Democratic victor, Clyde Herring, and even trailed J. W. Long, independent candidate who came in third. Perhaps because of her poor showing, the Grinnell Herald did not bother to include Conard when reporting election results in Poweshiek County.

Grinnell Herald November 11, 1932

What Conard thought of her 1932 defeat we cannot know, but her subsequent activity indicates that she was not much slowed by the election disappointment. Already in January, 1933 the Scarlet and Black had Conard  decrying capitalism, which, she contended, "is only concerned with profits, while socialism strives toward service and the good welfare of the people." An interview published in the same paper two weeks later allowed Conard to explain the origins of her convictions. "Welfare work, the World War, and women's suffrage were the three things which continually drew my interest toward socialism and the socialist party," Conard asserted. "Mrs. Conard's attention was attracted to the socialist party," the newspaper continued, "because they so strongly advocated the necessity of an equal chance for each individual. Her interest was heightened during the World War, for the socialist party was the only organized political group that definitely opposed war...." As to suffrage, "Many other women came into socialist work at this time for it [the Socialist Party] was the one party that gave the most concentrated support to women's suffrage" (Scarlet and Black, January 18, 1933).

Late in February Conard spoke before the college's Sunday Evening Club, referencing her 1930 trip to Moscow. Russian youth, she contended, saw Americans as purposeless because of their "exaggerated regard for material values and the blind religious concepts of American young people...." In March she was discounting American newspapers, which "have not accepted the responsibilities of presenting political news so that the voter can determine what he is doing." Instead of newspapers Conard endorsed voters' leagues and open forums in all parts of the country which, in her opinion, better instructed the citizen in the affairs of his country.

***

In subsequent years, Conard continued her political activity alongside her on-going teaching duties at the college. Her views, so far as one can find them repeated in the press, did not change. A Des Moines Register article in early February, 1934, for instance, reported that Mrs. Conard had addressed a college class in church, asserting that capitalism is "out of place with the original teachings of Jesus." The next month she was in Estherville, addressing the annual convention of the Iowa League of Women Voters on "women in industry." Back on campus, Conard was telling initiates of Phi Beta Kappa that prerequisites of a scholarly attitude were "an inquisitive mind, insistence upon verification of information, and modesty," characteristics that would also no doubt serve public officials well.

Des Moines Register August 12, 1934, p. 19

The year 1934 saw Conard back on the Socialist ticket, this time as nominee for Iowa's Fifth Congressional District (which then included Grinnell and Poweshiek County). Records prove surprisingly quiet on Conard's part in this election; indeed, the Des Moines newspaper neglected even to mention her nomination when reporting on the Socialist convention, as a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register shows. Was Conard as energetic and articulate in the more restricted geography of the Fifth Congressional District as she had been when a candidate for governor? It's hard to say, as newspapers seem to have overlooked her campaign entirely, which may explain why the letter to the Des Moines Register, although signed by "Mrs. C. E. Dexter, secretary Grinnell Socialist local," emanated from the Conard home at 1310 Elm Street, Grinnell. Conard lost this race, too, as Lloyd Thurston, a Republican who had previously represented Iowa's Eighth district, claimed the victory.

Des Moines Register August 10, 1936, p. 3

Then, in the summer of 1936, Conard emerged from the Socialist Party convention once again as a candidate, this time for a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate. The Des Moines Register reported on the convention, summarizing the main planks of the party platform: abolish military training at all Iowa educational institutions; empower citizenry by introducing the initiative, referendum and recall petitions; reduce taxes on land and homes occupied by owners; repeal the general sales tax and increase taxes on income, inheritance, gifts and luxuries; and exempt from taxes all homes and farms victimized by natural calamities.

As she had years earlier, Conard repeated her view that the dominant political parties represented little choice. "From the point of view of a socialist," she told an October, 1936 meeting of the Iowa League of Women Voters, "republican and democratic parties are as much alike as two peas in a pod...a capitalist pod." Conard declared that, were voters to elect them, socialists would solve the three great problems bequeathed to society by capitalism: inadequate food, clothing and housing for the masses; industrial autocracy; and the prevalence of war and militarism.

Iowa voters, however, were no more moved by these claims in 1936 than they had been four years earlier, and Conard lost badly to Clyde Herring, the Democrat who had beaten her for the governor's chair in 1932. No record of Conard's reaction to this loss survives, but she cannot have been too surprised by the outcome as she had expended a miserly sum in the campaign. The Des Moines Register, publishing expenditures declared by all the candidates, as required by law, noted that Conard had spent for her Senatorial campaign a total of $5.23, which is little enough, but her Socialist partner, James P. Russell, candidate for governor, reported no expenses whatsoever!

Des Moines Register November 13, 1936, p. 7

Despite—or perhaps even because of—her electoral losses, Conard continued to speak out, depending less upon her commitment to a political career than to policies she thought moral and just. And because she was now a veteran of several state-wide races, Conard remained an attractive candidate to the Socialist Party. Consequently, when Socialists gathered again in 1940 to name a ticket, Conard emerged as the party candidate for Lieutenant-Governor. But in this election, eight years into the Roosevelt administration, Socialists were no more successful than they had been in earlier efforts.

In any event, soon thereafter war once more pervaded American politics, openly challenging Conard's long commitment to pacifism and her opposition to war. A few weeks after the 1940 election Conard published a letter in the Des Moines Register, defending eight students of Union Theological Seminary who had been imprisoned for refusing to register for the draft. Borrowing her argument from another's defense of the students, Conard lauded the students' bravery and the fact that they responded to their consciences in defying the law. "I would add," Conard continued, "my belief that a valuable and not inconsiderable part of the early settlers of this country were made of such stuff as these men. Some of us are glad to be descended from them."

But as war took ever more control of America, Conard's voice grew harder to hear. Perhaps she tired of trying to attract the attention of a disinterested citizenry. Or perhaps she realized that for now only small, personal deeds might make a difference in a country consumed by war. As I have posted elsewhere, in 1942 she and her husband welcomed to Grinnell a handful of American Japanese students who thereby were spared the internment camps so unjustly visited upon American Japanese. Two of those students found their first home in Grinnell with the Conards on Elm Street.

Otherwise, Conard continued her scholarship, telling the Scarlet and Black at the time of her retirement that she hoped to complete her study of the "Kingdom movement," a subject that returned her to some of her early research on religion. All the same, Conard must have seethed at the ways in which wartime America prospered. Little was heard from her in these last years, and apparently her health gradually deteriorated. Her obituary, announcing her November, 1946 death, noted that Conard had spent the last twenty-three months of her life in hospital before meeting the end of a "blameless life, full of good works." The obituary mentions her candidacy for governor in 1932, but no other attempts at elective office. Instead, it mentions her advocacy of various local groups—Uncle Sam's Club; Goodfellows; First Friends Church; PTA; and League of Women Voters. In addition, the obituary observes, "she was deeply interested in every movement for pacifism and against war, and to the fullest extent of her ability contributed to some fifty organizations for human betterment," thereby bringing "her own distinct contribution to the community which was her home for so many years."

Conard's gravestone, Westfield Cemetery