Edith E. (Foth) Puff ’38 majored in English and minored in history and journalism at the University of Wichita.
Forty years after her graduation, she wrote about her college days: “As a transfer from Oberlin College, who grew up in Rochester, New York, I had to start from scratch at Wichita, with Earle Davis as inspiration in English and Leo Allman in charge of my journalism minor. Writing for The Sunflower became the social center of my life, under Kathleen Hite and Max Milbourn, and covering a beat introduced me quickly to the whole university through interviews with Thurlow Lieurance, Dean Neff and so many others. My job as geology lab assistant for Mr. Jewett started my lifelong rock-collecting hobby. The great history professors in my other minor, Drs. Rydjord and Onsgaard and Hugo Wall in Constitutional Law awakened my mind. But George Wilner’s classes and his superb productions focused me toward speech and theater.”
After graduation, she did graduate work at the University of Michigan before earning a master’s degree in speech and radio at the State University of Iowa. She also completed graduate work at New York University and Ohio State before writing for a Kansas City radio station. During WWII she spent three years in Kansas City working on radios for B-25s. She then taught English at Miami University until 1953, when she retired to raise three children.
Edith Puff died Sept. 30 in Oxford, Ohio.
