Florence Gray Beall, PhD, Professor Emerita of English, taught at Kent State from 1933 to 1957. Born on June 4, 1894, in Newark, Ohio, she grew up on her family’s 65-acre farm.
She entered The Ohio State University in 1918, graduating in three years with honors and an AB [Applied Baccalaureate] in English and languages. After teaching English, languages and a little physical education and geometry at York High School in York, Ohio, she earned a master’s degree at Columbia University in 1925.
A year later, she joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where she made a special study of teaching and teacher's training, especially in the field of English, and earned doctorates in both English and education in 1932. She taught there and at Ashland College until coming to Kent State.
Beall joined the English faculty as an assistant professor at what was then Kent State College in 1933. She was involved with student life and social activities and served on many committees. She was an advisor of Cardinal Key, the national honor society for women that Blanche Verder, Dean Emerita of Women, introduced in 1934. She was a faculty advisor to first-year liberal arts students and was also on the publications committee, which provided staffing recommendations for The Kent Stater and the Chestnut Burr to the president for review.
Several articles in The Kent Stater from that period describe Beall as unconventional and popular among the students. One piece, from May 17, 1934, describes an upcoming baseball game between faculty members and the “Phys-Ed Lassies.” For the faculty team, Beall was labeled as “manager and waterboy who used to play with the East Side Wonders Parcheesi team” and she was given the nickname “Fighting Flossie”—although in the article she claimed she had never caught a baseball in her life and made no predictions as to the outcome of the game.
According to her personnel file, her pet dislike was playing bridge, she didn’t like to buy new hats and she didn’t own an automobile—preferring to give the money she would spend on one to educate her two nieces and two nephews, whom she practically raised herself. She liked a quiet life, enjoyed a good movie once in a while, but on the whole was content with a good book.
In an article in the March 1, 1934 Kent Stater, when asked what books she would take to a desert island, Beall, an authority on Shakespeare, said she would occupy her time with Bosworth-Toller’s Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, the New English Dictionary, Selections from English Literature, 850-1675, and Selections from English Literature, 1675-1930. In explaining her choice, she said, “With these four books I can study that most interesting phenomenon, the development of a language, and its use as the instrument of man’s thought; and as I gain a better knowledge of language, I can the more wisely read those works of literature which are true expressions of the genius of the English-speaking people.”
Popular with students and her colleagues, especially those in the English department, she was described as “a demanding teacher but popular because she helped her students enjoy their literature courses.” Colleagues said she could make the works of Shakespeare “come alive,” that she was “very fair in the classroom and knowledgeable” and that “there was a fine line of respect that no one dared cross.”
“She was a demanding teacher but popular because she helped her students enjoy their literature courses.”
Beall left Kent State in 1957 to conclude her teaching career in the extension division of The Ohio State University and retired to the family farm in Newark, Ohio. She was granted emerita status by the Board of Trustees in 1967.
She lived alone, spending most of her time writing letters and reading, until she developed a heart ailment in June 1986. She was treated at Licking Memorial Hospital in Newark and moved to a nursing home a day before her death on Aug. 5, 1986. She was 92 years old.
Beall Hall, located on the east side of the Kent Campus, was dedicated to Florence Gray Beall in 1966 and was originally a women-only residence hall. It was part of a dual dedication along with McDowell Hall. A 1966 Kent Stater article noted that these two residence halls, known as the Twin Towers, cost $4.8 million and would expand on-campus housing by an additional 800 students, bringing it to a total of 7,000. Beall Hall now serves as a residence hall for students of all class rankings, with eight coed floors.
Sources
- The Kent Stater, 16 March 1933
- The Kent Stater, 31 August 1933
- The Kent Stater, 1 February 1934
- The Kent Stater, 1 March 1934
- The Kent Stater, 17 May 1934
- Advocate and American Tribune, Newark, Ohio, Oct. 1, 1966
- Kent State University Summer News, 6 July 1967
- Record Courier, Obituaries, 14 August 1986, "Dr. Florence Beall dead at 92, was English prof for 24 years."