Who was Laura Kuykendall?
One of Southwestern’s most influential female leaders… whom we no longer actively remember.
Laura Kuykendall was a central female figure on the Southwestern campus from the early to mid-1900s. She was a champion for youth culture and an advocate for expanding the common notions of what a female’s education entailed. Kuykendall is not a hero by any means, nor do I attempt to make her out to be, but she served as a key individual in enacting how Southwestern shaped, taught, and managed its female students. This is a history that still affects us today, yet Kuykendall has been largely forgotten in the collective student body’s collective memory.
First attending Southwestern as a student in the 1903-1904 academic year, Kuykendall graduated with a degree in Elocution. Prior to this, she also received a Bachelor of Arts in Oratory and Gymnasium from Kidd-Key College, the North Texas Female College. After receiving her multiple degrees, Kuykendall taught at various institutions before returning to Southwestern in 1914 as a faculty member.
Kuykendall initially started as an Instructor of Expression and Director of Girls’ Gymnasium, then soon thereafter became Director of the Expression Department. After four years of success in these positions, Kuykendall was named Dean of Women in 1918 while still retaining all of her instructor roles. Not satisfied with just this, Kuykendall went on to pursue her Master's in Sociology and Economics at Southwestern while still fulfilling the role of Dean of Women, which she received in 1926.
Clearly, having received multiple degrees and filled multiple educational positions, Kuykendall’s utmost responsibility was educating herself and the women of Southwestern. Spreading her knowledge and educational approach to others, she served as President of the Texas Deans of Women, as well as a member of the General Council for the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. Her Master’s Thesis, entitled The Dean of Women and Her Problems as Found on a Small University Campus (1926), worked to establish a baseline for other Deans of Women to follow, including the inequities between this position and male faculty and deans, how to successfully connect with women in the position, and even how a “woman’s building” should be built for optimal use. She was committed to expanding education and what an education entailed, not only for as many young women as possible but also for future female educators to be successful in their work and continue this expansion.
As for Kuykendall’s presence on Southwestern’s campus, she became highly regarded within both the student and faculty populations. As one Megaphone article in April of 1926 put it, “she is an institution herself”. Laura, or “Miss Kirk,” (as she was known by the students) never married or had children, so she was viewed as both a guardian figure and a trusting friend to many of her students. Kuykendall’s approach to working with students led her to be dear to them. Rather than acting as an authoritarian, she “loved youth with its vibrancy, loveliness, color, and drama; she lovingly devoted her life to youth, and youth loved her deeply for it”
Of course, Kuykendall still molded her pupils (and there were still rules and lots of order in the Ladies Annex), but even with this Kuykendall also worked to create intrinsic motivation and passion within her students by connecting with their youthfulness. Separate from her approach to being Dean, Kuykendall herself was dramatic, free-flowing, and eccentric by nature. As an instructor of expression, she regularly performed her whimsical spirit through her curated, flowing outfits, which are mentioned frequently throughout multiple editions of The Megaphone from the period, and (some of which) can be seen in the imagery below.
On special occasions, Kuykendall’s avant garde nature was reflected within the events she created and held, which also worked to bring the Southwestern community together. Kuykendall was instrumental in initiating, organizing, leading, and directing multiple annual celebrations for the SU campus that turned into short-lived traditions. These included the May Fete, the Dinner of the Golden Bowl, the Legend of the Bell pageant, and the Christmas Carol Service, all of which appear in separate entries within Placing Memory. Under Kuykendall’s direction, these celebrations all included grande pageantry, ornate costumes, elaborate choreographies, spectacular programming, and intricate invitations, seating arrangements, menus, & live music–all of which represent Kuykendall’s grande and dramatic demeanor, and her approach to community.
Apart from the Christmas Carol Service (now the Candlelight Service), these events largely stopped around 1950, about a generation after the death of Kuykendall on April 30th, 1935 at the age of 51. Her death impacted the entire Southwestern and Georgetown community, with a memorial service taking place instead of the May Fete celebration that year. A year after her passing, a portrait of the late Dean was unveiled in the Women’s Building to keep her memory alive, and five years after her death, the Women’s Building was renamed Laura Kuykendall (LK) Hall.
With the demolition of LK Hall after the fall semester of 1995, the last positive mention of LK Hall (as “legendary and beloved”) occurred in an October 1998 Megaphone article. Since then, Brown Cody Hall sits on the site of LK Hall and includes the old ornate steel columns from its front porch, but Laura Kuykendall has essentially been lost, forgotten, and erased in Southwestern’s collective memory. The plaque from the original LK Hall, which was once so important, floats around campus somewhere. The only things actively commemorating her today are the Laura Kukendall Garden in between Mabee Hall and Brown Cody (which is listed on some campus maps but not marked at the site), and the plaques on the first floor of the F. W. Olin Building for the Laura Kukendall Communication Studies Student of the Year Award.
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