Edith Garland Dupré was 'Miss Southwestern'
If Edwin Lewis Stephens was the man who built SLII into what would become UL, Edith Garland Dupré was the woman who made it work.
She was born June 1, 1881, in Opelousas, the daughter of attorney Laurent Dupré and Marie Celeste Garland Dupré.
When Edith was 5 years old, she went to live at Garland plantation in Opelousas, the home of her mother's parents, Henry L. Garland and Julia Laurence Bullard. She stayed with them until she became a young woman. Because of her devotion to them she changed her middle name from Agnes to Garland.
She graduated as high school valedictorian in Opelousas in 1896, then with honors from Newcomb College in New Orleans in 1900. She joined SLII's first faculty in 1901 and stayed for four decades, retiring in January 1944.
During that time she taught French and English, was head of the English department, was acting registrar, and chaired countless committees.
According to biographer Robert Cline, she "was in the front rank of those whose efforts brought full college status to the institute, and led ... to its recognition as a university. ... It was generally understood ... that if an important job needed to be done, the best assurance of success... was the leadership of Edith Dupré. Twice she was offered a deanship, but in each case she declined ... in order that she might continue to devote herself to teaching."
She was also put in charge of the library and told to select its first 500 books and six periodicals. (Today there are more than a million volumes in the library named for her.)
One of her students, Gladys Viator, remembered her in a 1984 tribute: "Miss Dupré, with starched shirt and royal blue skirt and sensible oxfords, would walk into her domain - her classroom - happily smiling as she surveyed her charges in every section. ... At the end of the period, the chalkboard was filled with her scrawly handwriting, opened dictionaries and other reference books were strewn about the room. There was no doubt that a great deal of instruction had taken place."
During World War I, she did canteen work in Rome and, in 1919, was granted a private audience with Pope Benedict XV. In 1921, she helped form the forerunner of the Newman Club on the Lafayette campus.
After the war, she helped organize the first Public Forum of Lafayette, a branch of American Association of University Women, and the Women's Defense League of Lafayette. She was president of the Lafayette Women's Club and a long-time member of the League of Women Voters. Most especially she was the leader in the effort to bring a first-rate library to the community.
She was given the Lafayette Civic Cup in 1942 and recognized again in 1956 with an Edith Garland Dupré Day in Lafayette.
She died in 1970 at the age of 89.
By: Jim Bradshaw
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