{"id":40802274027,"date":"2023-06-05T10:07:17","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T14:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/?p=40802274027"},"modified":"2023-06-08T10:40:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T14:40:34","slug":"prof-blair-commemorates-a-trailblazing-woman-of-asbury-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/prof-blair-commemorates-a-trailblazing-woman-of-asbury-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Blair Commemorates a \u201cTrailblazing Woman of Asbury Park\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Associate Professor of English Stanley Blair recently visited the Stephen Crane House to contribute to the Asbury Park Historical Society\u2019s Women\u2019s History Month tribute to writer Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978), designated by the Asbury Park Museum as a \u201cTrailblazing Woman of Asbury Park.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Crane House Writer-in-Residence Tom Chesek said the \u201centire afternoon [was] spent exploring the life, literary legacy, and legendary localism of the oft-overlooked fiction writer, poet, and memoirist.\u201d The program consisted of three parts, of which Blair contributed two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first considered Widdemer\u2019s memoirs about her early years in Asbury Park, where she was raised starting in about 1894 and where she maintained family connections until at least 1915. Yet her 1964 memoir \u201cGolden Friends I Had\u201d provides only scattered details on her early years. However, when Blair visited the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University, he found a typescript memoir dating decades earlier, to 1933, including photographs. The typescript memoir provides a different narrative perspective on and much greater detail about Widdemer\u2019s Asbury years. Blair also discussed Widdemer\u2019s fictionalization of local communities in her 1920 book \u201cThe Boardwalk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blair\u2019s second contribution to the program was an introduction to and commentary to brief excerpts from \u201cThe Dream Lady<\/a>,\u201d a 1918 silent film adaptation of Widdemer\u2019s 1915 novel \u201cWhy Not?\u201d by director Elsie Jane Wilson. For a brief period in the late 1910s, Wilson was one of several female directors hired by Universal to produce feature films intended for female audiences. Though Wilson\u2019s film deletes the novel\u2019s indirect references to local geography, it preserves much of the novel\u2019s plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program concluded with actress Sandra “Sam” Lavallee McLaughlin performing poems from Widdemer\u2019s 1918 award-winning book of poems \u201cThe Old Road to Paradise,\u201d interspersed with prose passages from her 1964 memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several Monmouth University students attended and asked questions, positively impressing Asbury Park Museum Treasurer Susan Rosenberg, professor emerita at Brookdale Community College. The students were especially engaged by Widdemer\u2019s fictionalizing of Asbury Park and adjacent communities of more than a century ago. Junior health studies major Kendal O\u2019Neill remarked, \u201cIt was really interesting the way she makes these fictional towns all based on real ones around this area.\u201d Junior business student Alana Aufiere agreed: \u201cI was able to learn about Widdemer\u2019s early life in Asbury which I found so interesting because it is about our local history. It was fascinating to see how she used places near here with similar names to describe her surroundings growing up.\u2026I hope more people take advantage and learn more about our local literature history!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Junior English\/Creative Writing major Nicole Conti, an admirer of Widdemer\u2019s writing, was \u201cvery glad\u201d that \u201cone of my favorite novels\u201d was included. Conti was struck by an apparent irony of the author\u2019s career and reputation: \u201cThe part of Margaret Widdemer I learned (that I am intrigued most by) is her obscurity within a field of gold\u2026.She clearly had the likability, the talent, and the wits to befriend the stars at the time, but it made me ponder why she did not reach their status. She won awards, associated with literature royalty, [and] had famous friends but barely any \u2018fame.\u2019\u201d Conti was grateful for the presentation \u201cthat generated deeper thinking and some newly learned facts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chesek said that \u201cwe can speak for many in attendance, when we say that more than a few newly minted Widdemer fans were present and accounted for!\u201d He added that Blair\u2019s contributions to the program were \u201ca delightful start to what we hope will be a long-running collaboration between the Historical Society\/Crane House and the English Department at Monmouth.\u201d Professor Rosenberg agreed: \u201cI loved his scholarly presentation; I kept learning so much,\u201d she said. \u201cAn Asbury Park native, myself, I am grateful that he has raised the awareness and insight into Margaret Widdemer’s deserving prominence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Asbury Park Historical Society\u2019s Stephen Crane House<\/a>, 508 Fourth Avenue, is open to the public on Sunday afternoons, noon to 2:00, during the off-season, and the Asbury Park Museum<\/a> is sponsoring a free pop-up exhibition in the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel\u2019s lobby, 1401 Ocean Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Associate Professor of English Stanley Blair recently visited the Stephen Crane House to contribute to the Asbury Park Historical Society\u2019s Women\u2019s History Month tribute to writer Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978), designated by the Asbury Park Museum as a \u201cTrailblazing Woman of Asbury Park.\u201d Crane House Writer-in-Residence Tom Chesek said the \u201centire afternoon [was] spent exploring the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2302,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[414,444],"tags":[],"person":[861],"audience":[],"school":[110,26],"program":[],"class_list":["post-40802274027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-life","category-monmouth-now","person-sblair","school-english","school-school-of-humanities-and-social-sciences"],"squareimage":{"id":40802274276,"rendered":"\"Antique","original":{"url":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2023\/06\/Jessie_Tarbox_Beals_-_Margaret_Widdemer_poet_c1915-25_gelatin_silver_photo_-_MeisterDrucke-1066744.jpg","width":671,"height":670}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802274027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2302"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802274027"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802274027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802274331,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802274027\/revisions\/40802274331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802274027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802274027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802274027"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=40802274027"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=40802274027"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=40802274027"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=40802274027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}