-Contributed by Lizette Royer Barton
In the spring of 1938, Harry and Leta Stetter Hollingworth were set to receive honorary degrees from their alma mater – The University of Nebraska. The Hollingworths packed a motion picture camera and embarked on a road trip from Montrose, New York to Lincoln, Nebraska – the place they had first met 35 years earlier.
They visited the school house where Harry first worked as a school teacher and they spent time with his maternal aunts Ella and Mattie. They visited the cemetery where his mother was buried and they bought plots for themselves. They received their ‘Doctor of Law’ degrees side by side during the University of Nebraska commencement ceremonies and later traveled to Leta’s hometown and attended a picnic with her relatives.
As Harry recalled the event and their return to New York in his memoirs he wrote, “a new turn had come in our lives and…we might well be following through another era in our joint development.” However that was not to be the case. Tragically, Leta Stetter Hollingworth died the following year.
The eight minute film presented here documents the final trip of Harry and Leta Stetter Hollingworth. The film is silent. The commentary I am reading comes from volume 2 of Harry Hollingworth’s memoir, “Years at Columbia.”
The Center for the History of Psychology is currently collaborating with The University of Akron press on the publication of Harry Hollingworth’s two volume memoir. Please look for Roots in the Great Plains: The Applied Psychology of Harry Hollingworth (Vol. I) and From Coca-Cola to Chewing Gum: The Applied Psychology of Harry Hollingworth (Vol. II) after the first of the year.
[…] case you missed it yesterday, the Center for the History of Psychology (CHP) has posted on their blog a 8 minute clip of a home movie by psychologists Harry and Leta Stetter Hollingworth. The clip is […]