Typewriter Girls

(a work-in-progress)

Inspired by the generations of women in my family who have worked as secretaries or administrators in one capacity or another (including myself), I wanted to take a look at how the ambitions of four generations of secretaries was effected by their work and the possibilities that it held for their futures. My aunt, a St. Louis native, attended a rather famous secretarial school there, the Margaret Hickey School for Secretaries, and my grandmother, who passed away late last year at the age of 94, also attended one of the city's secretarial colleges. After some initial digging, I found out that Margaret Hickey had quite a legacy in St. Louis, and it seems that the graduates of her school have created quite a legacy of their own. In the coming months I'll be doing research and gathering materials for this piece, including speaking with and meeting a number of Hickey alumnae.

Read the St. Louis Post Dispatch article (22 April 2008) about the project by clicking here.

If you graduated from Ms. Hickey school and would like to share your story, or if you're in St. Louis and would like to join us for the reception at Hickey College on May 29, 2008, please email me at hickeyalumni AT gmail.com

More information will be posted here soon.

The image to the right is a portrait of Margaret Hickey from the Business and Professional Women's Foundation, of which she was President from 1944-46.