Caroline Stookey Lutz
Professor of English 1917-1959
Originally from Illinois, Miss Caroline S. Lutz received her Bachelor of Arts from Goucher College and her Masters degree from Columbia University.
Miss Lutz began teaching at Westhampton College in 1917 as a professor of English and continued in that capacity until 1959, when she retired. Jean Gray Wright said of Miss Lutz: “She had more enthusiasm, more enthusiastic interest, in what she was teaching than anyone I have ever known. She was absolutely devoted to English literature, and she expected all her students to have a similar concentration on the English course they were taking at the time.”
In A Gem of a College, The History of Westhampton College, 1914–1989, author Claire Rosenbaum records that Miss Lutz “taught students self-discipline which she believed to be a pre-requisite to achievement.” She was a “veritable storehouse of knowledge” who “drove her automobile to the rhythm of whatever poem she was reciting to herself at the moment.”
During the spring semester of 1953, Miss Lutz traveled to Hawaii to study in the Graduate Department of Asiatic Studies in English at the University of Honolulu. While she was there, Miss Lutz (an early advocate of interdisciplinary studies) also took coursework on Asiatic Arts.
Miss Lutz, was very involved in campus life. She served as Chairman of the Faculty Chapel Committee of Westhampton College, was a frequent faculty sponsor of May Day festivities and performances, and was honored as an “old stand-by” for the 75th Anniversary of The Messenger literary magazine.
Miss Lutz obtained a collection of puppets from a former student, Jack Kerr, who “was in China working on a doctorate degree and became acquainted with a Chinese family that owned and operated the theater.” The puppets come from almost every country in Europe and Asia, in a variety of colors, shapes, and materials. In 1975, curator Ms. Beverly Bates cites the collection as “one of the finest collections in this country.” While Miss Lutz “collected the puppets,” she “probably didn’t make many of them herself,” according to the curator of the 1970 fine arts exhibition of the collection, Dorothy Midgett. However, many puppets were made at the University.
Faculty member Richard Scammon modeled puppets after Miss Keller and Dean Pinchbeck. Miss Keller’s puppet “is dressed in a long, blue evening dress with feathered sleeves” and Dean Pinchbeck’s is attired in “his academic robes and holds a pipe.” While Miss Lutz taught at Westhampton, it was popular to perform skits with the puppets and scripted performances were held frequently. As late as 1965, puppetry courses were offered at the University.
On January 8, 2006, Caroline Stookey Lutz was added to the University of Richmond Trustees' Honor Roll of Distinguished Faculty, Administrators and Staff. Fred Anderson of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, had this to say about Miss Lutz:
Caroline Stookey Lutz was one of those rare creative souls and great characters which are attracted to campuses like some great magnet. We are fortunate that the attraction was for Westhampton and the University of Richmond. Although she taught English for 35 years, it was her personality and her extraordinary interest in puppetry which made her memorable in the minds of alumnae.
Born in 1889 in Illinois, she came South to this new women’s college in 1917, shortly after receiving a master’s degree from Columbia University. She had completed her undergraduate work at Goucher, the same undergraduate college for Dean May Keller. As Miss Keller was building her faculty, she turned to a fellow English major, Caroline Lutz; and the two remained identified with Westhampton until their deaths in the 1960s.
Miss Lutz quickly became a favorite among the students and alumnae. One Westhampton graduate described the professor as “vibrant, alive and daringly different.” Mary Grace Scherer Taylor of the Class of ’42 pictured the professor as “small, a miniature splashed with vivid color and accents of unusual jewelry” and told of her usual appearance wearing hats and capes. She remembered an English class on a rainy day when the spontaneous assignment was to listen for “new sounds” as the rain fell on one of the slate roofs at Westhampton.
The student from the past summarized her teacher’s hallmark in one word: “Honesty.” “Heaven help the student who tried to get by, glibly quoting excerpts, book reviews, or popular digests,” said the former student. “If the inquiry was valid, the source must be authentic and the effort must be total involvement. The terse note on a term paper, ‘re-write and correlate,’ was a constant reminder that improvement requires self discipline and perfection is not attained without diligence.”
About 1930 Caroline Lutz became fascinated with the puppetry arts and founded the University Marionette Studio. Someone observed that “with characteristic adaptation and ingenuity she breathed life into wood and soul into clay” and added: “Students became artists who used their craft to entertain thousands.” She interpreted puppetry as a serious art form much like that found in the Orient. She and her students crafted some 300 puppets. Many of these have found their way to the large puppet museum in Atlanta but a few – namely Dean Keller and pipe-smoking Dean Pinchbeck – are still hanging around the campus.
Miss Lutz was a campus character. The campus police often complained about her driving; but she admitted only that her car moved to the rhythm of whatever poem she was reciting to herself at the time. It once was reported that the rhythm was usually iambic pentameter. She was the consummate teacher. I like the following tribute to her: “Caroline Lutz stretched her students by teaching each girl as an individual. As a master teacher, her sole aim was to help the student discover self. Tirelessly she sought that one talent, that unique ability. Once she uncovered it, she encouraged, nourished, provoked and challenged. And one day – the student was no longer afraid; she became aware that she, too, had something of value to give. Miss Lutz died in 1967 at age 78.