George Owen Bird, the son of Richard L and Carrie Ballentine Bird, was born in 1915. He grew up on Bird Farm, and went to Penn State, graduating with a degree in Architecture in 1939. He nearly failed to graduate, and his dropping grades might have been due to ill fortune at home. His mother broke her leg in the fall of 1937, and Bird Farm, which had been in the family for five generations, was slowly failing. The Birds tried to turn it into a dairy, but that did not work. During his first semester at Penn State, George had evidently agonized about whether or not he should return to the farm. His cousin Geraldine ("Jerry"), who favored a direct approach, wrote him a frank letter: "I don't think your sudden interest in the farm is genuine. Sounds to me as if you've been talking to or rather listening to Grandma or Aunt Helen. . . . Talk to yourself and see just how much you really know and honestly enjoy about farm work" (1936 October 18).

George stayed in college. Meanwhile, the situation at home became so dire that Richard and Carrie made out a bill of sale to Aunt Harriet for all the household goods; if she "owned" them, the bank could not seize them. In the lone letter from Richard to George, he stated the situation matter of factly, and told of his plans to work for a man who had 60 acres of wheat "to cut and thrash and a big haying to do and four silos to fill at $2.00 a day. not too bad until something else turns up." If hiring himself out was a crushing blow to the farmer, he held it in, simply telling his son, "keep up good courage. I am" (1938 May 17). In June 1938 Richard and Carrie, along with Aunt Harriet, sold the farm and moved into a house in Sayre, a larger town up near the New York border. Relatives helped out as best they could, especially Carrie's sister, Bernie, her husband Robert Longwell and daughter Jerry; Aunt Nell and Uncle G. Everett Ballentine, and their children Harriet Jane and "Jr."

In addition to giving George practical and psychological advice throughout the years, cousin Jerry supported him financially. Eight years his senior, she received her Ph.D. in psychology from Cornell in 1937. After she landed a job at the Vineland Training School in New Jersey, where she had previously worked as a research assistant, she sent George money every month for the rest of his college career. In a rather curious twist, she married the father of a mutual friend of theirs in 1938. Edgar Arnold Doll, an expert on mental deficiency, was the director of research at Vineland from 1925-1949, and Jerry had probably met him and his son Eugene during her earlier stint at the school. Edgar's first wife had died in 1937, and he was eighteen years older than Jerry.

Edgar's son Eugene Edgar Doll was an exceptionally sensitive young man. He graduated from Cornell in 1936, and would go on to become a noted historian and anthropologist, but his letters to George document a transitional phase in his life, fraught with uncertainty and sadness. His mother died in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and he suffered bouts of depression while working toward his masters at the University of Chicago, which he received in 1940. Gene's passionate enthusiasm for the arts buoyed him up, and he regaled George with tales of trips to cultural institutions, his beloved dancing lessons, and opinions about music, books, art, and architecture. He supplied George with a steady stream of poems and recommended reads, and waxed euphoric about nature and the exquisite pleasure of sharing epiphantic experiences with his close friends: "Isn't the sharing of moods and thoughts the supreme joy in friendship? I was almost as thrilled over the beauty you described as you who saw it" (1937 March 8).

Gene and George occasionally had differing opinions about poetry and religion. One "ruffled leave-taking" after a tiff inspired Gene to write a long letter putting forth his religious credo, which George had called a sham. "I believe the point on which we differ is this: that I believe the most important message of religion is for this life here and now. And I believe that if one keeps the faith in this life the future will take care of itself. . . . Really living religion thoroughly here and now is an exceedingly difficult matter. It means living every moment of one's life as a meaningful prayer. My energy is so taken up with this full-time job -- for my spirit is a recalcitrant one -- that I have no time left over to think about any future life" (1940 May 17). No matter how personal, their arguments seemed to strengthen their friendship, and the disagreements were rare compared to the frequent expressions of spiritual accord.

The other noteworthy letters are from Clyde and Doris Plessinger. In 1936, Clyde worked as facilitating personnel for the army men in the Civilian Conservation Corps, at CCC S-147 in Emporium, Pennsylvania. Thoroughly annoyed with the fighting men of America, he told George, "the fellows are about as darn lazy and slow as they can possibly be and still move. I think, if they had to die, it would take them a week to do it" (1936 June 21). Clyde next worked briefly as an accountant in the State Treasury, waiting for a position in the Forestry Department, but the government kept closing down more camps. In 1838 Clyde and Doris relocated to CCC S-116, at S. B. Elliott State Park in Clearfield County, where they helped plant 345,650 trees that spring. "This camp . . . really produces," said Clyde, adding that it was "well liked by the District Forester, and after all that is the thing that counts. The District Forester is the man who starts the ball to rolling, if he does not want a certain camp, then Harrisburg acts according to his recommendation. That is a fact." Doris apparently did not work at the camp; she was "alone throughout the day" in their cabin in the park, which Clyde described in detail (1938 May 24).

George's cousin Harriet Jane, who went to Bucknell University in the fall of 1940, wrote newsy letters to him, and like many of his correspondents, demanded to know what he had read and what movies he had seen lately. A number of other friends and family members are represented by one or two letters in the collection. There are four letters from Elsie Murray, the Director of the Tioga Point Museum in Athens, whom George started to "go with." He was appointed the "Honorary Curator of Architecture" for the museum in 1939, and embarked on a project that involved measuring and drawing up the historical buildings in the area. This job as draftsman was interrupted by World War II; George entered the service in July of 1941, and served as a Technical Sergeant (specifically, a non-typing clerk, according to his Separation Qualification Record) at Ellington Field, Texas. He was honorably discharged in December 1945, and with that, we come to the end of the Bird Papers.

References:

Directory of American Scholars. (Eugene Edgar Doll appears in editions 6-8). (N. Y., 1982).

Who's Who of American Women (Geraldine Doll appears in editions 1-4). (Wilmette, IL, 1965).

Zusne, Leonard. Biographical Dictionary of Psychology. (Westport, Conn., 1984).

Subject index:

Ballentine family

Bird family

Bucknell University--Students

1940 June 17

1940 September 26

1940 November 10

Civilian Conservation Corps (U. S.)--Pennsylvania

1936 June 21

1938 May 22

1939 February 21

Cornell University. Dept. of Psychology--Students

Doll, Edgar Arnold, 1889-1968

Doll family

Farmers--Pennsylvania--Bradford County

Pennsylvania State College. School of Engineering. Dept. of Architecture--Students

Psychologists

Tioga Point Museum (Athens, Penn.)

1939 April 29

1939 June 11

1939 October 28

University of Chicago--Students

Vineland (N.J.) Training School

World War, 1939-1945

1942 March 29

ephemera folder

Primary correspondents:

Ballentine, Harriet Jane
Bird, Carrie Ballentine
Bird, George Owen
Bird, Richard L.
Doll, Eugene Edgar, b.1915
Doll, Geraldine Longwell (Jerry), b. 1907
Plessinger, Clyde B. & Doris

Secondary correspondents:

Ballentine, Nell (Mrs. G. Everett Ballentine)
Bingham, George
Bradford County Historical Society
Dimock, Paul
Ferris, Ralph
Fred, Uncle
Harriet, Aunt
Longwell, Bernie Ballentine
MacConnell, James H. Jr.
Maurice, Marian & Margaret
Murray, Elsie
Pennsylvania State College
Strong, Jennie A.

Provenance:

Acquired, 1991.

M-2711
cat. 3/98 rko

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