“Path of Secretarial Initiative”: The Labor of Three Secretaries in the Marc Nerlove Papers

H. Gregg Lewis to Daniel McFadden, circa 1970, box 2, folder Parks, Richard W., 1970-1971.

This letter between two economists was written by Betty Percell in shorthand in her stenographer’s notebook. It is a reminder that secretaries have their own areas of expertise.

H. Gregg Lewis retired from the University of Chicago in 1975 and then came to Duke, where he retired from in 1984. Daniel McFadden was at UC Berkeley during this time and would later win half of the 2000 Nobel Prize in economics. Both of their papers can now be found at Duke, although McFadden’s are closed for processing after only being acquired earlier this year.

Betty Percell to Marc Nerlove, 20 July 1971, box 76, folder (University of Chicago) Correspondence, 1968-1979.

Like every working woman, Percell had to balance her personal and professional desires and obligations, especially as a mother of four. In this letter, she mentions receiving a scholarship from Illinois State University that would allow her to complete a degree. Percell did return to university and changed her major to music education. She taught at the high school level in Chicago then at the elementary school level in Rockford and earned a graduate degree at Northwestern University in-between. Years later, fellow secretary Gloria Feigenbaum established a Scholarship for Women Returning to College at the University of Arizona to support women like Percell who had had to interrupt their studies.