Morrow for Neilson

Mrs. Elizabeth Reeve Cutter Morrow, widow of onetime Ambassador to Mexico and U. S. Senator Dwight Whitney Morrow, is small, dainty and a poet. Nevertheless, during the World War she organized the first U. S. women's (relief) unit to go to France. When her late husband ran for the Senate from New Jersey she stumped the State for him. When her grandson, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., was kidnapped and murdered, she was a tower of strength to her family's morale, later stood guard over Grandson Jon Morrow Lindbergh. Last week, at 66, dainty-sturdy Mrs. Morrow was chosen for another man-sized job: acting president of Smith College.

The college trustees, looking for "a young man" to succeed Dr. William Allan Neilson, who retires August 31, asked Mrs. Morrow to run the college ad interim. First woman to head Smith (although it was started in 1875 with money contributed by rich Spinster Sophia Smith), Mrs. Morrow was no illogical choice for the job. She is a Smith alumna ('96), mother of three Smith alumnae (Elisabeth '25; Anne '27; Constance '35), has been a Smith trustee since 1926, helped raise the college's endowment from $2,000,000 to $6,000,000 (to which her husband, Morgan Partner Dwight Morrow, contributed $200,000).

More than that, Cleveland-born Elizabeth Morrow is a well-educated woman. She studied at the Sorbonne and in Florence after graduation from Smith and has teaching experience. She taught in U. S. private schools for several years before she married in 1903. Modest and amazingly catholic in her interests, Mrs. Morrow, while raising four children, wrote poetry (Quatrains for My Daughter, Beast, Bird and Fish), and a child's book (The Painted Pig). She supervised the building of the beautiful Morrow house and gardens at Cuernavaca near Mexico City, helped Daughter Elisabeth run a school in Englewood, N. J., headed Englewood's City Planning Commission for four years, took part in many a community and charity enterprise, for her achievements got three honorary college degrees.

Characteristic was her response when, campaigning for her husband in New Jersey, she was asked to describe their early married life. Said she: "You would like me to say that I cooked every meal for my husband for three years. That would be good campaign material, wouldn't it? But I didn't. . . . We always had a maid."

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