Garreta Busey

Garreta Helen Busey (March 1, 1893 – October 21, 1976), sometimes seen as Garetta Busey, was an American college professor, writer, and bank executive based in Urbana, Illinois.

Garreta Busey
A young white woman with dark hair loosely braided across the crown, wearing an open-collared white blouse.
Garreta Busey, from the 1915 yearbook of Wellesley College
Born
Garreta Helen Busey

March 1, 1893
Urbana, Illinois
DiedOctober 21, 1976
Urbana, Illinois
Occupation(s)Writer, professor, bank executive

Early life

Busey was born in Urbana, Illinois, the daughter of George W. Busey and Kate Baker Busey. Her father was a bank president.[1] She graduated from Urbana High School in 1911,[2] and from Wellesley College in 1915.[3] She earned a master's degree from the University of Illinois in 1922, with a thesis titled "The reaction of English men of letters of the nineteenth century to the philosophy of Auguste Comte".[4] She completed doctoral studies in English at Illinois in 1924, with a dissertation titled "The reflection of positivism in English literature to 1880; the positivism of Frederic Harrison".[5]

Career

Busey worked with Illinois suffragist Catherine Waugh McCulloch after college, and served in France and Switzerland with the American Red Cross after World War I.[6] She worked in the book review department of the New York Herald Tribune.[7] She was a close friend and correspondent of journalist Isabel Paterson, from their time together at the Herald Tribune.[8]

Busey returned to Urbana for graduate school, and stayed as an English professor at the University of Illinois, on the faculty from 1930 to 1961.[9] She wrote short stories and poems[10][11][12] for publication, and one novel, The Windbreak (1938), set in nineteenth-century Illinois.[13][14] She was vice president of the Commercial Bank of Champaign.[15] and an officer in the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution,[16] She was a mentor to journalist William Maxwell while he was at Illinois.[17]

Busey was a Baháʼí, like her mother before her.[18][19] She served as faculty advisor of the University of Illinois Bahá'í Club, lectured on Bahá'í topics,[20][21] and served on editorial staffs for Baháʼí publications from the 1930s through the 1960s.[9][22] In "A Fresh Stream of Wisdom" (World Order 1947), she wrote, "Survival in this, the most dangerous period of the world's history, requires not the suppression of the will of the individual but its development. Our loyalties must expand to embrace the world instead of its parts".[23]

Personal life

Busey died in Urbana in 1976, aged 83 years.[22] Busey's papers are in the collections of the Champaign County Historical Archives[24] and the University of Illinois.[25] She donated her family house in Urbana to become a Bahá’í Center; it burned down in 1987.[18]

References
  1. "Hold Rites for Prominent Champaign Banker". Journal Gazette. 1944-04-05. p. 10. Retrieved 2021-08-26 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. "Urbana Seniors Give Class Play". The Champaign Daily News. 1911-06-06. p. 1. Retrieved 2021-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. The Wellesley Legenda. Wellesley College Library. [Boston, etc.] Pub. by the Senior class of Wellesley College. 1915. p. 96 – via Newspapers.com.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. Busey, Garreta (1922). The reaction of English men of letters of the nineteenth century to the philosophy of Auguste Comte (Thesis). OCLC 731713367.
  5. Busey, Garreta (1926). The reflection of positivism in English literature to 1880; the positivism of Frederic Harrison. Urbana, Ill. OCLC 23632415.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. Busey, Garreta (1919-11-19). "Is Only Yank Left in Toul". The Urbana Daily Courier. p. 6. Retrieved 2021-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. Rubin, Joan Shelley (1992). The Making of Middlebrow Culture. Univ of North Carolina Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8078-4354-3.
  8. Cox, Stephen (2017-10-24). The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-32274-4.
  9. "Untitled brief item". Chicago Tribune. 1967-07-01. p. 49. Retrieved 2021-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. Busey, Garreta Helen (1988). Poems, 1913-1937. Illinois. OCLC 25616046.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  11. Busey, Garreta (May 1926). "Scars". The Bookman: 351.
  12. Busey, Garreta Helen (December 1924). "Sent with an Anonymous Bouquet". The Bookman. 60: 423 – via ProQuest.
  13. Busey, Garreta Helen (1938). The Windbreak. Funk & Wagnalls.
  14. Parmelee, Marjorie (1938-10-23). "Growing Up with Illinois". The Salt Lake Tribune. p. 44. Retrieved 2021-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. Advertisement, U and I (University of Illinois High School yearbook 1921): 97. via Internet Archive
  16. "Daughters of Revolution Elect Officers". The Champaign Daily Gazette. 1917-03-20. p. 10. Retrieved 2021-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. Burkhardt, Barbara A. (2005). William Maxwell: A Literary Life. University of Illinois Press. pp. 46–47. ISBN 978-0-252-03018-5.
  18. "History of the Bahá'í community of the Champaign-Urbana". The Bahá'ís of Champaign-Urbana. 2017-06-10. Retrieved 2021-08-27.
  19. "Bahai Study Group Hears Mrs. Busey Speak On Religion". The Daily Illini. November 9, 1927. p. 8. Retrieved August 26, 2021 – via Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections.
  20. "Author to Speak to Decatur Baha'is". The Decatur Daily Review. 1954-02-27. p. 3. Retrieved 2021-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. "Racine Baha'is Will Attend Michigan Meet". The Journal Times. 1937-06-24. p. 19. Retrieved 2021-08-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. Hutchens, Eleanor. "In Memoriam: Garreta Helen Busey" The Bahá'í World 17(1981): 422-423.
  23. Busey, Garreta (1947). "A Fresh Stream of Wisdom" (PDF). World Order. 12: 326–328.
  24. Busey Family papers, Champaign County HIstorical Archives.
  25. Busey-Yntema Collection, University of Illinois.
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