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Agnes Edwards was already known for her "gentle and persuasive guidance" when she stepped off the train to take over as dean of women at the Southwestern Louisiana Institute in 1928.
She stayed for nearly 30 years, announcing her retirement 50 years ago this week. She said her life and tenure at the school had been "a wonderful experience," but that it was time for her to go home to her native Florida and do some fishing in the Gulf."
Before coming to Lafayette she'd worked with disabled World War I veterans, teaching them, among other things, English, French, mathematics and agriculture. The soil studies she gave to the veterans "resulted in flower boxes billowing with blooms" at the Fitzsimmons General Hospital in Denver, where she worked with "her boys."
She'd also worked with blind veterans in another program, before returning to her native Florida to become dean of women at Florida State University for Women at Tallahassee.
She came to SLI from that job.
SLI (UL today) "was young and struggling" when she arrived, she said in a newspaper interview in 1957, "and the budget was austere."
"I was most impressed during my early days here by the spirit of friendliness and helpfulness that prevailed among the members of the small faculty," she said.
<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070415/NEWS01/704150369/1002" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
Jim Bradshaw
Acadiana Diary
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Some of the earliest members of the faculty and staff were still at the school, including the first president, Dr. Edwin L. Stephens, Gabrielle Hebrard (for whom Hebrard Boulevard is named), Edith Garland Dupre (Dupre Library), and A.W. Biddle (business manager for many years).
Mrs. Fannie Frere and Misses Rita Soulier and Louise Pavy were the housemothers when Dean Edwards arrived. Adrienne Mouton was nurse at the SLI Infirmary.
Dr. Stephen's secretary, Olive Gaudet, and Ruby Landry, who would become Dean Edwards' secretary, met her at the train the first day she arrived.
She relived a part of her early experience as dean of women on a World War II campus that became a training college for aviators and officers, and, after the war, saw its enrollment grow because of returning veterans.
Dean Edwards said that much had changed during the nearly three decades that she was Dean of Women. For one thing, the girls of 1957 were much more sophisticated that those of 1928, she said.
The girls of 1957 weren't nearly so naive as the young women who first came to the campus from homes in Lafayette or from the rural areas of south Louisiana, she said. She said an "acceleration" of "early social life" in high school was responsible for that and - reading between the lines - it appeared to be something that she did not entirely approve of.
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