That Indomitable Pat Allen Morgan

by Heather Michon

This is how an editor's life sometimes goes: Pat Morgan was trying to put the finishing touches on the revised manuscript of Those Indomitable Vermont Women for a tight deadline at the printer; she also was scheduled for knee surgery.

Morgan left for the hospital at 5 a.m. on the morning of her surgery, but she was still working on the manuscript at 2 a.m. A friend and neighbor had to put on the final touches and email it to the printer, and it all came out right in the end. She can describe the experience in a single word: "Whew!"

Those Indomitable Vermont Women began as a Bicentennial project by the Vermont chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) to highlight the achievements and accomplishments of both Vermont natives and Vermonters-by-choice from Colonial times to the present.

Each profile is just a page or two long, but sums up the achievements of women from a variety of backgrounds. Readers can learn about figures as diverse as 19th Century educator Emma Willard, champion skier and Olympic gold medallist Andrea Mead Lawrence, and scientist (and pioneer maple syrup researcher) Mariafranca Morselli.

The first edition, published in 1980, quickly sold out. "It was clear that other names needed to be added. We had quite a list," Morgan recalled in an e-mail interview from her home in South Burlington.

Morgan said that Jean Smith, the long-time AAUW member who organized the original project, "valiantly tried to get the book together, but she was frail and had to give it up. With lots of help, I took it on, not really knowing how to be an editor and in a few months we had ten new names and writers."

Many of the women involved in the project could easily be entries in the book themselves, including Morgan.

She was born and raised in the Appalachian mountain town of Pikeville, Kentucky, the youngest of four children. Her parents divorced when she was young and her mother worked hard to support them throughout the Great Depression. "Our mother wanted us to get through high school," she said. Her older sister went on to college, and her brothers went off to fight in the Second World War.

In the summer of 1942, Morgan left Pikeville for Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, which had an active work-study program for students who might not otherwise be able to afford college. Her mother had remarried in 1938, but sadly her stepfather suffered a stroke just two hours after the wedding. Morgan spent most of her high school years helping take care of him. "I was a teenager and I think I felt I must get away," she recalled.

Morgan fell in love with college life that first summer, but quickly ran into a problem: a case of diphtheria when she was two years old had left her profoundly hard-of-hearing. "In my hometown everyone knew I was deaf and the principal always put me in classes with teachers with louder voices and lots of patience!"

With the help of Berea officials, she was put in contact with the New York League for the Hard of Hearing, who found a hearing aid that worked for her. "My mother borrowed the money to buy it and I was allowed to go back to college. It changed my life." Morgan returned to Kentucky and earned a B.A. in home economics and went on to the Boston University School of Theology for an M.A. in religious education in 1947.

Morgan first came to Vermont in the summer of 1946 to work for the Vermont Church Council, serving Congregational churches in North Cambridge, Fairfax and Fletcher. Although she calls that experience "the beginning of my love affair with Vermont," it was many years before she returned to the Green Mountains.

In 1948, Morgan traveled to Africa to work as a teacher at the Mt. Selinda Congregational mission in Southern Rhodesia, near the border with Mozambique, teaching sewing, cooking, gardening, English language, and childcare.

In 1951, she married a Rhodesian forester named John Allen, and for the next 13 years they lived in several forest outposts around the country, sometimes 30 miles from the nearest town and miles away from their nearest neighbors. Two pregnancies ended in stillbirths, but the couple welcomed a daughter, Charlotte, in 1954 and a son, Noel, in 1958.

"When we lived close enough to another mission or government school, I taught English or whatever subject they needed taught. That's the British way of doing things: if you have a B.A. you should be able to teach any subject!" Morgan said. "They learned pretty soon that math was not my strong point."

By the mid-1960s, Rhodesia was on the brink of declaring independence from the British, and the Allens were faced with a difficult decision. "We both supported the desire for Africans to become first class citizens of the country," she said, "but abhorred the violence that would go with it." They left for America in December 1965, just weeks after the announcement of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence; the country would later emerge as the modern Republic of Zimbabwe. "It was not an easy thing to do to leave a county we all loved and where three of the four of us had been born."

They started their new life in Summerville, South Carolina, about 25 miles from Charleston. Her husband worked in a pulp and paper company while Morgan taught English at what is now Charleston Southern University. In 1971, she received a Masters in English from the University of South Carolina.

During her time in Summerville, Morgan also began writing a weekly column for the local paper called "Getting it Down Pat." "I loved doing that since it kept me alert for things to write about. I have put them all in a notebook and find that they are like a journal of where I was mentally and politically at the time," she said.

A decade after leaving Africa, Morgan and her husband divorced and she moved to Burlington with her son to serve as the director of Converse House on Church Street, a position she held for 18 years.

As a member of the local branch of the AAUW, she first became involved with the book penning the chapters on Lenore Whitman McNeer, a fellow Berea alumna with a long career in social services and women's rights, and Eleanor Luse, a noted expert in voice disorders at the University of Vermont.

"I have loved working on this little book," Morgan said. "There are many other deserving women who are artists, teachers, writers, legislators, musicians, skiers...We've just introduced a few." Her role as editor has been challenging, but worthwhile. "For me, that's the fun of doing this sort of thing. It broadens my horizons so I can meet people I otherwise wouldn't."

Heather K Michon is a Vermont women currently living in Central Virginia. She can be reached at: heather.michon@gmail.com.