May Lansfield Keller
(1877-1964)
Dean, Westhampton College 1914-1946
May Lansfield Keller was born in Baltimore, Maryland, September 28, 1877, the daughter of Wilmer Landsfield Keller, a native of Maryland, and Jennie (Simonton) Keller, a native of Maine. She attended the Girls’ Latin School of Baltimore and then attended Goucher College, also in Baltimore. It is clear that from an early age Miss Keller, as she preferred to be known, was passionate about learning.
The educational opportunities she pursued in college became the foundation for her life experiences. She remained a dedicated alumna, involved with Goucher throughout her life. Majoring in German and English, she received her B.A. degree in 1898. While attending, she served as Class Historian and a member of the Board of College Annual. She was a member of the Basket Ball Team which is a bit surprising in that she stood only 4’10”. As a member of the German Club, the Y.W.C.A., the Mandolin Club, and the Pi Beta Phi Fraternity –young May Keller embraced the well-rounded lifestyle that she later expected of the women at Westhampton College. Because of her excellent scholarship she was one of the thirty alumnae elected to Phi Beta Kappa, when a charter was granted to Goucher in 1905. In later years, Goucher College appointed her to serve as a Trustee.
Miss Keller went on to work at the University of Chicago in 1900. She completed her graduate work at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg in Germany. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1904, summa cum laude. She was the first American woman to be awarded a doctorate in Germanic philology from that renowned institution. Her doctoral thesis, Anglo-Saxon Weapons, was published in Heidelberg, Germany, in the series Englische Studien.
After returning to the States, Keller became Head of the German Department at Wells College, in Aurora, New York. Two years later, she accepted the position of Associate Professor of English at Goucher College where she remained until 1914.
Dr. F. W. Boatwright sought a Baptist woman with a Ph.D. to lead the new Westhampton College. In 1914, she was invited to serve as the founding Dean and to also serve as Professor of English. In accepting this position, she became the first female college dean in Virginia. Dr. Boatwright reported to the Trustee’s that, “she has been president of the Southern Association of College Women, and is well and favorably known to the college women of the country.”
Dean Keller oversaw the establishment of exceptional standards of scholarship and the careful selection of faculty who would demand that students stretch mentally and physically to achieve their maximum potential. She established organizations, honor societies, and Westhampton traditions, “some of which continue in an unbroken chain to the present time.” The Daisy Chain, May Day, and Proclamation Night were a few of many Westhampton traditions created during Miss Keller’s tenure. She is credited with chartering both Mortar Board and Phi Beta Kappa at University of Richmond. And for the professors, she founded the local branch of Delta Kappa Gamma National Teacher’s Fraternity.
Maude Woodfin, who entered the college in 1914, recalls, “the first students to matriculate in Westhampton College were registered by the smiling young dean, full of a spirit of adventure in starting this new college for women.” Florence Boston Decker, a member of the class of 1917, remembers:
Dean Keller was determined that Westhampton should be a liberal arts college in the true sense of the words. Its entrance requirements, its curriculum, its standards must be of the highest. All over the South were scattered, so-called women’s colleges which were “finishing schools” and little more. To these Dean Keller gave hardly a passing nod, her college must stand as tall as the few great women’s colleges of the East and North . . . Westhampton would be dedicated to the liberal arts; there would be no nonsense, no domestic science!
According to her biographer, Pauline Turnbull, “since [Miss Keller] had already won academic equality for herself she was determined that the young women of the South should have college education of the highest standard, second to none.”
Dean Keller carefully selected the first faculty members for Westhampton College recruiting those who were the very best in their field. The faculty was involved in all aspects of Westhampton life, living in the residence halls with the students. In her book A Gem of a College, Claire Millhiser Rosenbaum tells about those early days:
During the first session the faculty held monthly meetings, formulated its own regulations and precedents, and enacted several important measures of legislation. One brought the entrance requirements of Westhampton College into complete conformity with those of all other standard institutions for women in the country. Another introduced a system of two major subjects in several different departments before obtaining her degree.
Throughout her years as Dean, Miss Keller also served as a professor teaching advanced courses in English. For one course, Development of English Drama, Keller required the reading of 100 plays – “[t]hough not required for the degree, it was taken by nearly every student because of its popularity.” Another class, Anglo Saxon, “probably had no commercial value in later life but every student who mastered it was inordinately proud of having done so.”
Early on Miss Keller hired Fanny Graves Crenshaw to head up an athletic program. “The work I’m going to give these girls,” Keller explained, “they can’t do unless they get some exercise!” Miss Crenshaw, a Bryn Mawr graduate, had been a member of her college’s varsity hockey team. She also won six world track records during her career at Bryn Mawr, played basketball, and was a swimmer.
Miss Keller wished to impress a love of the arts upon the students. While she was Dean, she never stopped fighting for better performance space and more arts funding. When the colleges hosted a Shakespeare festival on campus, Miss Keller appeared as Juliet opposite Dean Pinchbeck’s Romeo.
Her service as Dean saw Westhampton through a variety of challenges. Early on, in 1918, the colleges were displaced so the campus buildings could be used as hospitals for wounded soldiers returning from abroad into Norfolk. That same year, the Great Influenza epidemic closed the colleges. In the annual report, Miss Keller wrote, “[n]ever has Westhampton College spirit been better than when tested to the utmost as it has been this year.”
In 1923, Dean Keller and the Westhampton College Alumnae Association “informed Boatwright about requirements for unconditional approval of Westhampton College by the American Association of University Women.” She had learned that they were guaranteed recognition by AAUW should they make adjustments to the salaries for women faculty. To gain recognition, it would be necessary to eliminate the “disparity between salaries paid by the university to men and women professors who held the same degrees.” She and the alumnae were granted their request and Westhampton became fully accredited by AAUW.
Prior to 1925, Miss Keller, the Boatwright family, and other faculty lived among students in Westhampton’s own North Court. It was only then that she moved out of the dormitory and into what we still call, The Deanery. Local architect Merrill Lee, who had worked for Ralph Adam’s Cram in Boston, designed a “charming English Cottage” to be her home. Charles F. Gillette designed the gardens where Miss Keller spent much of her personal time. Under the tutelage of Mrs. William A. Harris, Dean Keller became an “expert gardener.”
Before serving as Dean, Keller had served as President of the Southern Association of Collegiate Alumnae for four years (1910-1914). She continued her work in educational organizations on a national level after her appointment. She herself was a member of the American Association of University Women and served as director of the South Atlantic section – “through her energetic leadership and that of a few other women educators, this organization was instrumental in raising the standards and classifying all southern colleges.”
Dedicated to scholarship and academia, Keller was a member of the Modern Language Association of America, the American Philological Association, the Virginia Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Modern Humanities Research Association. Locally, she held membership in the Richmond Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, Richmond Art Museum, the Valentine Museum, the Richmond Alumnae Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
Just as she was dedicated to the growth of Westhampton, she was dedicated to the growth of the city of Richmond. She was a founding member of the River Road Baptist Church – which she attended the remainder of her life. She served as a board member to the Collegiate School for Girls. She was also very involved with Altrusa, the first woman’s classified service organization, and with the Richmond Cancer Society. At age 77, “the American Cancer Society nominated her as the volunteer of the year, the only nominee in the retired age bracket. This nomination was made because after having worked in the organization since the 30’s, and having been at one time city commander, she was then superintendent of volunteers and giving eight hours a week to the society.”
One of her undergraduate activities, Pi Beta Phi, became a life-long dedication. “In 1897, Pi Beta Phi, the national woman’s fraternity, was established at the Woman’s College and she became the first chapter president.” The fraternity named her President Emerita in 1918 when she retired as Grant President. She remained dedicated to the fraternity throughout her life – attended the national convention nearly every year of her adult life.
Miss Keller’s life was clearly centered on women’s education and community service. Even though she often had a somewhat stern persona, the historical record leaves us with some interesting glimpses into her life outside of her work.
The “Dancing Dean” became a popular nickname for Miss Keller. She was dubbed the “Dancing Dean” by the Ministerial Union at Richmond College which didn’t approve of her custom of allowing dancing at Westhampton on the weekends. The nickname was given to her in a disapproving manner, but ultimately adopted by the students in admiration.
Many recall the long line of dogs that lived with Miss Keller. She always had two, “for she firmly believed that all God’s creatures should live two by two, otherwise loneliness would result.” All of her dogs had long lives; her final two lived to be “sixteen years of age, outliving Miss Keller by seven years.” It’s no wonder that the students “dated their college attendance by the current dynasty of those long-lived animals.”
It wasn’t just the dogs, the dancing, and the Deanery; there was also the car. She was known as the “Little Dean riding around in her machine” in the words of the song heard on the campus for many years. The machine was her Model T Ford “which together with the one belonging to the president were the first two cars on the campus.”
Though Miss Keller did not marry, letters survive from a romance she had with Robert Bogue, who died at the age of 34 by suicide. Biographer Pauline Turnbull says that “the daily letters written from 1909–1912 . . . are too beautiful to be lost for humanity – without them the whole person of May Lansfield Keller would not be revealed.” Thus, a few of her letters to her love Robert are published in Life and Letters, 1877-1964.
Miss Keller was the chief administrative officer of Westhampton College from 1914–1941. In 1946 Keller retired. The important role she played in the life of the University was well recognized. The Board of Trustees granted her salary payment for 1946–1947, a retirement income of $1,200 annually, and the degree of Doctor of Letters.
One of her retirement activities, dated back to her graduate study travel. In her lifetime, she took trips to Egypt, Southern Europe, Alaska, Canada, Central America and Mexico. She even took a Greek steamer around the Mediterranean to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the poet Vergil’s birth by docking at all the ports from the Aeneid.
At her retirement in 1946 the Gymnasium and Social Center Building of Westhampton College was named Keller Hall in honor of the Dean. The campaign to build an appropriate space for physical education and recreation for women began with Miss Keller’s annual reports to President Boatwright. In 1925, efforts continued with the newly founded Westhampton Alumnae Association. By the mid-1930s, after Westhampton began offering a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Education, efforts intensified and Westhampton alumnae collected $55,000 to help fund the project. It was completed in 1936. A plaque in the lobby, unveiled on the day the building was formally opened, recognizes the important role of three women in the development of the college: Dean May Keller; Dr. Susan M. Lough, professor of history; and Fanny G. Crenshaw, professor of physical education.
Dean Keller continued to live in her home, the Deanery, until she died while taking a nap on June 29, 1964. Graveside, Vernon B. Richardson said the following about the beloved Dean:
Only rarely does there appear on the human scene an authentic personality, one more fashioned and directed from within and from above than from around. Every now and again we are given one who is not of a pattern, whose fine and sharply sculptured image is not worn smooth by the world, or by the wind, or dark weather or passage of time. Dean May L. Keller was a rare one; a sterling, undistorted person whose impact upon life was firm without being harsh, lasting without being static, because it was the impact of a person . . . Such was her influence: She made you stand tall, and like it!
And it the Richmond NEWS LEADER on June 30, 1964:
She lived through a complete revolution in women’s education, women’s rights, women’s role in society. Lived through it? She fought in it. She was four feet, ten inches tall, but she was indomitable.
Though not survived by any biological children, generations of Westhampton Women honor her legacy.
- Adapted from biographies in Faces on the Wall, The History of University of Richmond, 1830 – 1971; A Gem of a College; Life and Letters, 1877-1964;The Collegian; and A Snapshot of the Iron Dean.