Katherine Gibbs (September 1963 to June 1964)

From September 1963 to June 1964, Sandra attended Katharine Gibbs School in Boston.

Context: Katharine Gibbs School had been founded in 1910 by a granddaughter of Irish Catholic immigrants from Illinois, married to a Protestant watchmaker from Montana, who had moved to Providence, Rhode Island and had died in a boating accident. She and her sister bought a school for stenography that she and her sister were attending, changed its curriculum to focus on secretarial training. The school had expanded during World War I, when many men left jobs to fight in the War, and operated a branch near every major Ivy League university, expanding to Boston by 1917 and to New York by 1918. After her death, Katharine’s youngest son had served as President and expanded the school to other cities.

The Gibbs schools promoted a message of female empowerment, focusing on a type of education that was considered most valuable at the time for women who opted for a practical alternative to college. They communicated that excellent secretarial skills combined with such “finishing school” courses as dressing appropriately, serving tea, and other societal refinements created a path for women to a career in business or public service by enabling them first to become executive secretaries to executives in successful companies and corporations. To set themselves apart from other secretarial schools of the era, the Gibbs schools marketed themselves as selecting only women of a higher socio-economic status, making them appealing to young women from elite backgrounds. With the rise of feminism in the 1960’s, the schools declined and in 1968, they were sold to corporate buyers, who changed the curriculum to emphasize graphic design, computer technology, criminal justice and medical assistance.

When Sandra attended, the school maintained high standards of dress and decorum, cultivating an image of sophistication and efficiency. Its graduates, known as “Katie Gibbs girls,” were long considered the elite of the clerical field, renowned for their professionalism, poise, and polished appearance. Gibbs expected students to attend class as regularly and punctually, as if at a job. After six days of absences, a student was sent a warning letter; after 10, she was usually dismissed. The school’s dress code was intended to create a corporate atmosphere as well. Girls were expected to dress as though working “for a front-office executive in a conservative downtown Boston investment firm”. Girls wearing stockings that were too dark, or cosmetics that were too visible, were sent home.

Although the Providence school, which Gibbs had founded in 1911, was the oldest of the school’s 11 branches, the Boston branch, which Sandra attended, and which opened in 1917, was the only one that offered dormitories. Its annual enrollment averaged 1,200, with nearly half living in the dormitories and the rest commuting. Fewer than 100 men attended Gibbs in its 75-year-old history. Most of the students at the Boston branch were headed toward employment in investment, banking and advertising. Those looking for jobs in publishing or cosmetics industries were often placed in New York. One-third of the Boston school graduates were placed outside Boston.

A number of the school’s graduates did advance from secretarial positions to executive positions. Mary Claiborne Jarratt, for example, became Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, Joan M. Clark, U.S. Ambassador to Malta, as well as Director of Management Operations at the U.S. State Department, Director General of the Foreign Service, and Assistant Secretary of Consular Affairs, Katharine Towle became the first director of women marines and later dean of students at UC Berkeley, Pat Ryan became Managing Editor of People Magazine, and Ellen Merlo, senior vice president for corporate affairs at Phillip Morris USA. Joyce E. Munkacsi became a New Jersey Superior Court judge, Ruth A. Robinson, the Chief of the Army Medical Specialist Corps, Mary Louise Beneway Clifford, a CIA operative and prolific author, and Mary Slattery Stoltz , the author of more than 60 young adult novels, Agnes Missirian, author and chairman of Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.

Sandra found the typing she learned at Katharine Gibbs useful, but little else. She found shorthand and the conservative atmosphere a challenge and decided that becoming a secretary, executive or otherwise, was not a career path that called to her, even in a whisper.