{"id":6228,"date":"2014-02-09T16:53:13","date_gmt":"2014-02-09T21:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getitright.pmss.net\/?page_id=6228"},"modified":"2021-01-14T15:03:45","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T20:03:45","slug":"alice-cobb","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/?page_id=6228","title":{"rendered":"ALICE COBB Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pine Mountain Settlement School
\nSeries 05: ADMINISTRATION – BOARD OF TRUSTEES
\nSeries 09: STAFF\/PERSONNEL
\nSeries 22: FRIENDS & VISITORS<\/h5>\n

ALICE COBB<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Secretary, Publicity 1932-1937
\nTeacher 1942-1952
\nMember, Board of Trustees 1983-?
\nFund-raiser, Visitor, Consultant 1936-1995<\/h5>\n

\"Alice

Alice Cobb, PMSS Worker. [X_100_workers_2578_mod.jpg]<\/p><\/div>For many years Alice Cobb was an important member of the Pine Mountain Settlement School staff. She came to work at\u00a0the School in the\u00a0late 1930s and continued to come as a visitor, sometimes fundraiser, and consultant to the campus until her death in 1995. Pine Mountain, no doubt, made important contributions to the interests and talents of Alice\u00a0Cobb, as well. The influences of Pine Mountain can be seen and felt throughout her life’s work.<\/p>\n

She was an accomplished writer and a prolific writer. Not always published, her observations are extensive, amusing, intense and engaging reading. Her narrative reports and analysis of work at Pine Mountain was probably her most valuable contribution, though, for some readers\u00a0the reports are also problematic. She filtered through her own perspective and often this perspective was not in line with current opinion or could be read as overly critical. But, critique she did, and\u00a0today her keen observations are\u00a0refreshing and candid and possibly some of the most honest observations we have of life at Pine Mountain Settlement School and related surrounding communities in the late 1930s and 1940s. She was well-known in the Pine Mountain community and her blunt style was a remarkably good fit with the direct and honest observations of many valley families. Sometimes she was much like one of the community members she once described as “having a tongue tied in the middle and wagging at both ends”, but it was not her tongue that wagged, but her pen that could be just as loquacious.\u00a0 Insecure, opinionated, but indomitable in spirit, her observations were driven by an ever-questioning mind that was more sharply analytical than most women of her time would have ventured. She worked with folklorist Richard Chase and for a time with Myles Horton at Highlander Folk School. During the decades of her life she was a model of independence and<\/em> a palpable force for good.<\/p>\n

Several directors relied on her keen eye and ear and her ability to do comparative social analysis in a variety of settings. She provided not only the Pine Mountain administration but many others her perceptive opinions and sharp critiques of the local rural community, but also her acerbic view of the narrow perspective of many urban dwellers and communities that were the source for much of the Schools fundraising efforts. And, of opinions regarding rural and urban, she had many.<\/p>\n

Alice Cobb was a woman of many talents and many interests. Her\u00a0association with children’s authors, particularly May Justus<\/strong>, and her friendship with\u00a0Sophia Blanche Lyon Fahs<\/strong>, Unitarian theologian\u00a0and graduate of Union Theological School, were of particular influence on her interests and later life. She was deeply steeped in the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr<\/a><\/strong>. She was a life-long friend of Mary Rogers<\/a>, wife of former\u00a0Director, Burton Rogers<\/a>, with whom she found many common interests. She had a continuing focus on\u00a0the education of children and in the power of the spiritual to lend moral strength to literature in the education process. This deep native spirituality\u00a0runs throughout most of her writing.<\/p>\n

Click on image for full view and enlargement.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t