Elizabeth Richardson, M-D '40
1918-1945

By Gordon Brown

She was "the Milwaukee-Downer woman" personified: intelligent, capable, creative, good-humored, and ready for almost anything; one of her friends spoke of her "wonderfully quick and humorous way of seeing a situation."

She was a member in extremely good standing of what Tom Brokaw has chronicled as "the greatest generation," the people who grew to maturity buffeted by some of the most massive forces active in the 20th century: depression and war.

She was Elizabeth Richardson, a 1940 graduate of Milwaukee-Downer College, who -- like so many of her contemporaries -- went to college and then went to war and never came home. Excerpts from her college diary and her letters to her family from England and France paint a self-portrait that is both insightful and inspiring.

19 September 1939
This is our senior year, the last year of our youth, and therefore it should be the best. Ann and I are rooming together, a grand room except that [it] is over Miss Heimbach, who probably will eventually object to the noise, but that is yet to come. This is a queer sort of year to end one's college career with. By this time, Germany (and Russia) have taken Poland, and England and France are fighting for their very existence. This afternoon, at Beck's, Chris and I had a mutual sort of discussion about the whole ghastly business with conclusions about the same: war is ineffective, a waste of manpower and what civilization we have, and -- once more -- the U.S. will be suckers if they enter it.

Liz Richardson, from Mishawaka, Indiana, entered Milwaukee-Downer College in 1936, to major in English and art. Active in crew and field hockey, she also wrote for the quarterly Kodak; was business manager for Cumtux, the yearbook; and was involved in hall government -- the archetypal Downer student, engaged in the life of the mind and in life itself, all the time aware of events far beyond the campus that would come much closer, much too soon.

9 November 1939
The Germans are reportedly invading the Netherlands tonight, while we wonder if it will be cold enough to put on an extra blanket.

Deft at turning a phrase or wielding an artist's brush, she devoted time, energy, and spirit to both visual and literary endeavors, turning out countless short stories and poems, some of which were published in 1950 in Undergraduate Verse, a Milwaukee-Downer publication.

In the 1939 Wisconsin Salon of Art, she won the Joseph E. Davies Prize for the best work by a college student, an occasion she described to her diary with a mixture of pride and skepticism.

21 November 1939
Today has been most remarkable. A special delivery letter announced to me this morning that I had won a cash prize for the entry for the Wisconsin Salon. How this happened, God and the judges alone know. It wasn't a remarkable watercolor at all, but something happened, and it was extremely thrilling. Miss Briggs, oozing a smirk and publicity for the college, announced the remarkable event in chapel. Miss Philbrick plans to take us up to Madison for the reception, although I have no desire to go and have all sorts of awful visions of long-haired artists with dirty fingernails. . . . It would be much more wonderful to me to get a prize for short story writing or a cartoon, so this event seems to have a rather ironic twist to it, for I never set myself up to be the true-blue artist. Maybe it's a mistake.

In her freshman year, Liz had created Beulah, a cartoon coed who adorned announcements of campus activities. Beulah wore a cardigan, skirt, and saddle shoes and had a boyfriend, George -- altogether the very model of the modern Downer student. Through Beulah, Richardson satirized campus life -- and both students and professors -- with wit, understanding, and equal measures of perception and affection.

25 January 1940
The seventh exam period since 1936-37 has begun -- with conference day yesterday, which was devoted to Spanish alone. By 10:00 I was thoroughly covered with verbs and feeling completely jittery and unsure. Then came the dawn -- darn cold, too, and eggs for breakfast -- and then that horrible last-minute cramming by somebody's radiator. Finally, with my head feeling like an empty goldfish bowl, I sailed into the exam room with blue book in one hand and clock in the other. Two hours later emerges the freed woman -- minus so much cumbersome knowledge.

After graduation from Milwaukee-Downer, Liz -- again like many of her contemporaries -- started a civilian career that was just beginning to show signs of success when abruptly interrupted by war and duty. After initial jobs for the Boston Store and Gimbals in Milwaukee, she had found her way into the advertising department at Schuster's Department Store.

In May 1944, for reasons that required no explanation, then or now, she joined the Red Cross and was quickly sent abroad.

July 24, 1944
Dear Mother, Daddy, Butch, and Freckles,
By now, you know that I am safe and sound in Great Britain -- that the impossible has happened, and I won't be using those rubber boots in paddling through the jungles. Instead, I'm juggling shillings and half-crowns and crouching on the floor in an artistic attitude of prayer when I hear the wailing ups and downs of the siren. We were told at our port of embarkation that the buzz-bombs were "a bit of a nuisance," but my words for them are much fruitier and stronger.

So far, it looks as if I'm getting Clubmobile, which pleases me no end, although I won't be an able-bodied Recreation Worker as originally planned. I'm asking for it in preference to the lonely grass shack or equally lonely igloo.

August 9, 1944
This is our day off. I have never appreciated a whole empty day as much as I am right now. We have been working 12- and 14-hour days, and I almost weep when I hear the word doughnut. . . .

All joking aside, we mix a mean doughnut, and the coffee is certainly better than the GI variety. Our Clubmobile is a converted Greenline bus, fixed up with a lounge, sink, doughnut machine, and serving facilities. Also a British driver and us.

We start out about six in the morning, either make our doughnuts parked outside the local Red Cross Service Club or else we make them at camp with ten million GIs and an occasional colonel watching the operation. Then we turn on our recording machine and serve, all the time smiling like mad and dividing our time between doughnuts, the mess sergeant, the coffee, and a sea of faces.

As soon after D-Day as was deemed safe by Red Cross authorities, Clubmobile "girls" and their doughnut machines crossed the Channel to France. "Each Clubmobile group," a Red Cross history says, "traveled with the rear echelon of an army corps and got its assignments from the army for serving troops at rest from the front. The service continued through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany until V-E Day."

May 7, 1945
It's all over now, so says the BBC, and, therefore, this is a sort of paean of Victory and rejoicing. We've been awaiting this official declaration for at least four days, and if it weren't for the radio, we would not know the difference -- no whistles, no bells, no parade. It's a sober armistice, and, this time, we are fully aware of the responsibilities of the victor.

May 14, 1945
[I have] taken to the air in a big way and, after flying, other means of transportation seem dull indeed. My first ride was in a Piper Cub over LeHavre, the harbor and the sorry ruins. My second, yesterday, was to Reims, along the Seine and cross-country. This morning, by various and sundry means, I got a C-47 back to LeHavre, along with about 30 released prisoners. . . . The Piper Cub is to my liking, soaring low on the Seine, climbing over the neatly wooded hills and looking down on the toy villages and the scars of two wars.

On July 25, 1945, Liz, now a Clubmobile captain in charge of the entire operation at LeHavre, set off on an official visit to Red Cross headquarters in Paris. The Piper Cub in which she was a passenger encountered fog and crashed near Rouen.

Writing to the Richardson family, one of Liz' Red Cross colleagues described the military cemetery in which she was laid to rest, "along in a line with others who had given their all -- and surely for no better reason than did Liz -- no one ever did more for people in all ways than she did."

The Milwaukee-Downer alumnae publication, Hawthorne Leaves, included this eulogy in its October 1945 issue:

"Liz was supremely happy in her work. And to it, in the same way she worked on Freshman Rally and the memorable 'March Play' of Sophomore Sallies, or drew Beulah and George for Studio Club, or rowed with the crew, she gave all of her tremendous vitality, her zest, her enthusiasm. Alumnae who knew her, faculty who taught her, and undergraduates who have heard the legend of Liz share with her family a feeling of personal loss."

Susan Richards, director of the Seeley G. Mudd Library, contributed to this article, which is based on a library display created for the October 2000 Milwaukee-Downer Reunion Weekend, which would have been Liz Richardson's 60th-anniversary reunion.