Fertile Valley

In East Lansing, Mich, is a little community called Fertile Valley. It is so called not for its rich orchards or ripe vineyards (it hasn't any) but for its big crop of babies. (Latest count: 800, with 288 on the way.) Fertile Valley is Michigan State College's "vet village," a collection of apartments, trailers and prefabs that is as squat and ugly as dozens of other emergency campus camps from the state of Washington to Florida.

Last week, as Michigan State began its spring quarter, 150 more families had moved into the Valley to join the 2,000 young couples already there. Each new wife was promptly visited by a delegate from the "Spartan Wives," a sort of feminine union dedicated to proving that not all the education at East Lansing goes on in the classrooms. The Spartan Wives knew that sooner or later a new wife would get acquainted, usually at a community service building ("That's where the water, laundry and toilets are --where you meet all your friends"). But they saw no reason to wait.

Classes in Living. A pert redhead named Marian McGregor, shocked at the general loneliness she encountered, started the Spartan Wives last spring. She and some friends of hers invited other campus wives to get together for picnics and "homemaking" sessions. By fall the idea had spread so far that the wives had to hold a mass meeting in a college ballroom to elect officers. The college detailed a woman professor and the director of adult education extension to help.

With Fertile Valley's recreation hall as the main schoolhouse, the Spartan Wives now sponsor classes in everything from motherhood to swimming. A trained nurse teaches expectant mothers what to expect, talks them out of old wives' tales. After a wife has her baby, she graduates into classes on infant and child care, given by experts. In evening classes, expectant fathers can learn to bathe, powder and diaper rubber dolls.

There are Spartan classes in bridge, knitting, sewing (with the accent on how to make children's clothes from G.I. cast-offs), furniture repair, interior decorating and house-planning (against the happy day when the wives will leave the Valley). Also on the schedule: dramatics, a chorus, an orchestra, arts & crafts. This month the Spartan Wives, with the help of the League of Women Voters, will add a political study group to the list.

The Wives also conduct a weekly radio program on the college station (sample subject: "How to Live on $90 a Month"), run a library in the recreation hall, sponsor dances, publish the Spartan Wives' News. With their Spartan husbands, they operate a cooperative store that has cut food prices 8 to 10%, saves the wives a mile walk to the nearest grocer or butcher.

Says Adult Education Extension Director Don Phillips: "You'd be surprised how much they have taught us."

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