War, Women and the Classroom

Member of First Class of Women Students

Reflects on Her Pioneering Concordia Experience

By: Martina Reese, Communications and Marketing Assistant

Illustration by Andi Whipkey, Graphic Designer

When Moses wrote, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10), he hadn’t met Elvira Preuss BA ’44. As she celebrated her 100th birthday on January 23 at the Lutheran Community Home in Seymour, IN, toil and trouble were the last thing on Elvira’s mind. Surrounded by well-wishers and family members, the vivacious centenarian with a sharp sense of humor looked back with gratitude on a long and fruitful life. From her earliest days in Seymour as a middle child in a family with deep, intergenerational ties to Immanuel Lutheran Church, Elvira went on to attend Concordia Teachers College (Concordia-Chicago’s name from 1913 to 1979), earn a teaching degree, and pursue a 41-year teaching call that took her to classrooms in New York, Illinois, Texas and Indiana.

In Her Father’s Footsteps

Elvira’s father, William Frederick Preuss, was a profound influence on her as a young girl, inspiring her to pursue teaching as a profession and pointing her toward Concordia Teachers College (CTC) as the destination of choice for earning the necessary credentials. A graduate of Concordia’s teacher training program himself, William served for many years as the principal at Seymour’s Immanuel Lutheran School as well as organist and choir director at Immanuel Lutheran Church.

After graduating from high school in 1940, Elvira traveled the 227 miles from Seymour to the campus in River Forest. Her arrival coincided with a significant milestone in the College’s history: Elvira was among the first group of women to attend CTC, which had been an all-male institution since its establishment in 1864 as Addison Teachers Seminary.

Depression-Era Economics Drive Changes for Lutheran Teachers

The decade leading up to Elvira’s admittance at CTC produced seismic changes for Lutheran schools and educators. Historically, the employment of women teachers in Lutheran schools had been slow to develop. Despite the traditional barriers, women teachers became more common in Lutheran schools during the Great Depression because they could be hired for much lower salaries than male teachers. However, because of limited training opportunities, female teachers often lacked the background and education to teach effectively.

In 1934, some concerned CTC faculty members wrote a letter to the Rev. Henry Grueber, chairman of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s committee on higher education, warning of the danger of believing that teaching in the lower grades did not require special training. At that time, adequate training for teaching in Synod schools could be given only in the Synod’s colleges, further complicating the issue. It took nearly four years of discussions with the faculty, but permission to provide coeducation was finally granted to Concordia Teachers College by the Synod in 1938.

Elvira Arrives on Campus

Elvira remembers feeling nervous while playing “Solfeggietto” for her required piano audition prior to admission. In that era, all teachers-in-training at CTC were required to take music courses and demonstrate keyboard proficiency, an indication of music’s important role in Lutheran classroom education and religious tradition.

As campus culture adjusted to the new presence of women students, Elvira suspected that many members of the all-male faculty assumed that most women were “just out catching a fella,” rather than seeking to become excellent teachers. The male students, on the other hand, welcomed the arrival of their female classmates. Because women comprised a small percentage of the CTC student population, Elvira recalls with a grin, “there was competition over the limited supply of girls.”

As college women became active in student organizations in 1939-40, they founded a club to lead the cheering at athletic games. Elvira remembers going to every one of the games. Her good friend Vangel “Vanjy” (Mathwick) Schlake BA ’44 was a cheerleader, and the two friends enjoyed penning some of the “yells” that roused team spirit among the Concordia spectators. One that they originated, “Hit them, smack them, we don’t like them!” still makes Elvira chuckle and remains a fond memory from her years at CTC.

The first women college students to arrive on campus lived under the watchful supervision of Miss Lulu Noess. A list of regulations for the residents of Girls’ Hall for the 1942-43 academic year, which Elvira has kept to this day, includes restrictions such as, “Beds must be made by 8:30 a.m. week-days and 12:30 p.m. on week-ends. They must be made neatly and uniformly with square corners.”

In the same period during which CTC was opening its doors for the first time to Elvira and her cohort of female students, four-year degrees were increasingly adopted as a minimum standard for educators in both religious-affiliated and secular schools. The Synod approved a fourth, noncompulsory college year in 1939. By 1940, about half of CTC students were completing four-year degrees. Elvira’s aspirations kept pace with the times: after earning her three-year diploma, she attended an accelerated program on Saturdays and during the summer in order to fulfill the requirements of a bachelor’s degree in less than four years.

Meanwhile, a War

Attending between 1940 and 1944, Elvira and her fellow CTC students felt the reverberations of a global conflict. She remembers that many of the “boys” left the campus and went to war; some never returned. The female students, she says, coped with a shortage of nylon stockings by mending runs with a crochet hook. Nearly 100 students contributed to a 1944 blood drive, one of many held on campus by the newly formed Concordia Defense Organization in support of war efforts. Despite the anxieties and pressures of the wartime era, Elvira and her fellow students continued to prepare themselves for their future teaching careers.

A Career of Service to Lutheran Schools

Freshly graduated from CTC in 1944, Elvira’s first call was at St. John Lutheran School in Johnsburg, NY, where she stayed three years. On her arrival, she was the first female teacher the school had ever hired. From New York, Preuss moved to Chicago for a five-year stint at St. John Lutheran School. Now an experienced educator, Preuss was tasked with the responsibility of establishing a brandnew Lutheran school in Tyler, TX, housed within a former army barracks building. She spent two years there.

Subsequent posts took Miss Preuss, as she was called by her students, to Trinity Lutheran School in Elkhart, IN; Grace Lutheran School in Indianapolis; and Riley Elementary School in Seymour—her only non-Lutheran post. The last 11 years of her career saw her return to Immanuel Lutheran in Seymour.

The School-Family Connection Endures

While Elvira was the second member of her extended family to earn a Concordia degree, she was not the last. Members of succeeding generations of the PreussKieser-Sipes family have chosen what is now called Concordia University Chicago to pursue their education.

Elvira’s niece, Phyllis Droege Ellis, graduated with a BA in education in 1980, later working as a teacher and principal in Lutheran schools in Michigan and Minnesota.

Rev. Stephen W. Kieser, Elvira’s great nephew, earned his MA in school leadership from Concordia-Chicago in 2000. He moved on to Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne and attained an MA in theology in 2005. Stephen currently is called as headmaster and associate pastor of Faith Lutheran Church and School in Plano, TX. “Aunt Elvira was one of the teachers at Immanuel Seymour while I was a student there,” Steve says. “She was considered a strict teacher, but the love she has for Christ Jesus was always evident both inside and outside of the classroom.”

Jacob Sipes, Elvira’s great-great nephew, also a Seymour, IN, native, enrolled in Concordia-Chicago’s pre-seminary program and completed his BA in English in 2019. He is now in his fourth and final year at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. “While I was at CUC,” Jacob remembers, “one of the slogans was ‘Your world opens up from here.’ The things I learned at CUC both in the classroom and through extracurricular activities formed me into who I am today.”

Coeducation Transforms

Concordia Teachers College

In 1949, five years after Elvira Preuss and her pioneering fellow women classmates had moved into their post-collegiate lives, then-President Arthur Klinck reflected on the benefits of coeducation to Concordia Teachers College. He wrote that coeducation had “done much in the eleven years of its existence at Concordia to prepare not only our women for whom it was intended, but our men as well for their place in Christian congregations as teachers of the boys and girls, counselors of the youth of both sexes and coworkers with their colleagues of both sexes and with men and women of their constituencies.”

The College’s opening to female students preceded its later opening to female professors. Gloria Bonnin, the College’s first full-time female professor, began teaching biology in 1959.

Passing the Torch

By the time she retired, Elvira Preuss’ career as a schoolteacher spanned four decades, seven schools and hundreds of young lives touched through Lutheran education. Today, as the long-retired teacher reflects back on an eventful century, Concordia-Chicago’s highly regarded College of Education maintains its steadfast commitment to preparing teachers who will educate, guide and inspire future generations of students.

Footnote:

The historical content of this article is drawn from “Faithfully Onward, Ever Upward: 150 Years of Concordia University Chicago,” by Hannah Kohut, 2014, and “College with a Cause: A History of Concordia Teachers College,” by Alfred J. Freitag, 1964.