Effie Graham
The last place one would expect to find romance is in arithmetic and yet--Miss Effie
Graham, the head of the Department of Mathematics in the Topeka High School, has found
it there and better still, in her lecture "Living Arithmetic'' she has shown others the way to
find it there. Miss Graham is one of the most talented women of the state. Ex-Gov. Hoch
has called her "one of the most gifted women in the state noted for its brilliant women. Her
heart and life are as pure as her mind is bright.''
She was born and reared in Ohio, the daughter of a family of Ohio pioneers, a
descendant of a Revolutionary soldier and also, of a warrior of 1812. As a student of the Ohio
Northern University and later as a post-graduate worker at the University of California,
Chicago University, and Harvard Summer School, she has as she says, "graduated
sometimes and has a degree but never `finished' her education.''
Desiring to get the school out into the world as well as the world back to the school,
she has spoken and written on "Moving Into The King Row,'' "Other Peoples' Children,''
"Spirit of the Younger Generation,'' "Vine Versus Oak,'' and "The Larger Service.''
"Pictures Eight Hundred Children Selected,''
"Speaking of Automobiles,'' "The Unusual Thing,'' "The High Cost of Learning,'' and
"Wanted--A Funeral of Algebraic Phraseology;'' also, some verse, "The Twentieth
Regiment Knight'' and "Back to God's Country'' are magazine work that never came back.
School Science & Mathematics, a magazine to which she contributes and of which she is an
associate editor, gives hers as the only woman's name on its staff of fifty editors.
Her book, "The Passin' On Party,'' raises
the author to the rank of a classic. To quote a critic: it is "a little like `Mrs. Wiggs of the
Cabbage Patch,' a little like `Uncle Tom's Cabin,' but not just like either of them. She
reaches right down into human breasts and grips the heart strings.''
It is the busy people who find time to do
things and the mother-heart of Miss Graham finds expression in her household in West
Lawn, a suburb of Topeka. Among the members of her family are a niece and nephew
whose High School and College education she directs.
Source: "Kansas Women in
Literature", Nettie Garmer Barker, S. I. Messeraull & Son,
Kansas City, Kansas, 1915
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