{"id":127160,"date":"2019-09-20T09:55:47","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T13:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=127160"},"modified":"2019-09-20T13:22:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T17:22:17","slug":"her-100th-birthday-approaching-dorothy-foster-kern-recalls-bates-in-the-late-30s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/09\/20\/her-100th-birthday-approaching-dorothy-foster-kern-recalls-bates-in-the-late-30s\/","title":{"rendered":"Her 100th birthday approaching, Dorothy Foster Kern \u201942 recalls her Bates years"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Dorothy Foster Kern \u201942 arrived at Bates for her freshman orientation, everyone was talking about the Great New England Hurricane, which had swept through just days before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how we got acquainted,\u201d she says. \u201c\u2018Where were you when the hurricane came?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We met Kern shortly before her 100th birthday, on Sept. 23, at the same Auburn home whence she walked to Bates 81 years ago. Kern remembers her time at Bates fondly. \u201cI loved it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s been the key to a lot of things.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dorothy<\/a>

Dorothy Foster Kern \u201942, photographed in her Auburn home in early September, celebrates her 100th birthday on Sept. 23. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

A graduate of Edward Little High School, Kern was inspired to attend Bates in part by a relative, Thomas Angell, who taught languages at Bates from 1873 to 1902. Annual tuition in 1938 was $250.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dorothy<\/a>

Dorothy Foster Kern \u201942, pictured in the 1942\u00a0Mirror yearbook (Muskie Archives & Special Collections)<\/p><\/div>\n

Kern lived at home with her family in Auburn. Each day she\u2019d walk the three miles to campus or, rarely, pay five cents to take the brand-new city bus line. She sometimes took books from the library to study for classes, but \u201cwe had a fairly good books here for that,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kern threw herself into campus life. She wrote for <\/span>The Bates Student <\/span><\/i>all four years. Her other activities included the Pan-Hellenic Club and the dance club, of which she was a founding member. \u201cWe all dressed in black,\u201d she recalls, in contrast to the more colorful women\u2019s style of skirts and blouses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kern was also in Lambda Alpha, the club for the \u201ctown girls,\u201d which had space in Hathorn Hall for off-campus women to use as a home base. For sports, she became a goaltender for an intramural field hockey club.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kern majored in English and took courses in German and French. \u201cI never took a religion course,\u201d she says with some regret. \u201cI wish I had.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A lifelong churchgoer, Kern enjoyed the required daily chapel services at Bates. But she liked them for more than one reason. \u201cYou sat alphabetically,\u201d she says. \u201cI sat near most of the football team. That was very thrilling.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kern says she mostly hung out with her high school friends, but she did make Bates friends, including Mary Bartlett \u201942, whose father, Paul, was a professor of business economics. She recalls once sharing a dance with William Worthy \u201942, who went on to become a prominent journalist and civil rights activist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to her campus activities, Kern wrote for newspapers in Lewiston and Portland \u2014 at least until a dean, concerned for her grades, told her to stop writing for the Portland papers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Pictured<\/a>

Pictured third row, second from right in the 1942 Mirror, Dorothy Foster Kern \u201942 remembers the striking all-black outfits the Modern Dance Company wore. (Muskie Archives & Special Collections)<\/p><\/div>\n

It was at the papers she met her future husband, John Kern Jr., who one day invited her ice fishing. \u201cWe got acquainted, and we fell in love,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On a December day during her senior year, Japan attacked the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor. With a journalist\u2019s mindset, Kern covered the local angle of America\u2019s entry into World War II, interviewing professors who had served in World War I and looking into <\/span>The Bates Student<\/span><\/i> archives to see what students were talking about 25, 50, and 75 years before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was \u201cone of the ways to get a perspective on your life as a college student during the troubled \u201940s,\u201d she wrote.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kern recalls, shortly after graduation, going to a procession on Lisbon Street in Lewiston to see off the latest group of men joining the military. \u201cIt was this long line of men all with hats and suits,\u201d she says. \u201cThey looked so nice.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dorothy<\/a>

Dorothy Foster Kern \u201942, pictured first row, center, was the goaltender on the Bates field hockey team. (Muskie Archives & Special Collections)<\/p><\/div>\n

Kern\u2019s husband, John, was among them, bound for Europe. She wouldn\u2019t see him for four years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kern worked in newspapers<\/span> through the 1940s and \u201950s, primarily writing for society pages, she says. By the late \u201950s, she was working on the side at Edward Little High School. The school soon asked her to become the librarian, so she took classes at Colby to get certified and worked in the Edward Little library for the next 20 years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a wonderful field in education,\u201d she says. \u201c\u2018I\u2019ve got just the book for you,\u2019 or, \u2018You\u2019d like this.\u2019 You got to know the kids.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dorothy<\/a>

Dorothy Foster Kern \u201942 flips through a 1939 Mirror<\/em> at her Auburn home. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

She particularly enjoyed watching young romances blossom. \u201cThey started in the stacks,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s where they met, and then they\u2019d get passes on some pretext. They\u2019d come in, and they\u2019d look in the books, and then talk in the stacks. I let them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

John Kern, who died in 1993, worked nights at Lewiston newspapers for 54 years. Dorothy says he would get their five children out the door in the morning, go back to sleep, wake up for his shift, and get back home at 2:30 a.m.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would get up to have a late second supper with him, and he\u2019d always scold me,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once, John was pulled over on one of these late-night drives home. \u201cHe was going almost 25 miles an hour,\u201d Kern says. \u201cEvidently, that was too fast. We were so angry.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dorothy<\/a>

Dorothy Foster Kern \u201942 remembers Bates fondly; she can still sing the lyrics to “The Bates Smoker,” a traditional song. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Still living in the home where she grew up, Kern spends her days reading, keeping up with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (\u201cso many!\u201d) with the help of a wall calendar, taking care of her flowers, and attending High Street Congregational Church in Auburn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She still remembers the words to \u201c<\/span>The Bates Smoker<\/span><\/a>,\u201d a traditional campus song. \u201cOft times at night I light my pipe \/ and watch the glowing grates \u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kern would walk three miles to campus each day, but she still found time for field hockey, modern dance, and a prodigious newspaper career \u2014 at least until the dean made her stop. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":127165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[11992],"class_list":["post-127160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-dorothy-foster-kern"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127160"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127262,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127160\/revisions\/127262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}