 Ida Lou Anderson
Fall 2005
Edward R. Murrow was looking for a future when he came to
Washington State College-- sophistication, an education, and a way
out of a hardscrabble life. He found it all in Ida Lou Anderson
'24.
That frail, tiny woman, just eight years his senior, was an
admired speech instructor who carried both a cane and a magnificent
voice. Beneath that, she was Murrow's guide, his critic, his moral
compass.
According to one Murrow biographer, he called her his "other
woman." She called him her "masterpiece."
Together they built a fine, unusual, and durable relationship
that guided Murrow to success and buoyed Anderson through her
physical tribulations.
Like Murrow, Ida Lou Anderson was born in the South and then
moved to the Northwest as a child. At the age of eight, on a return
trip to Tennessee, she fell ill with infantile paralysis, a disease
that today is known as polio. Her legs curled up and her spine
developed a pronounced double curvature, badly twisting her torso.
Her family feared for her life.
Her sister, Bessie Rose Plaskett, described Anderson's childhood
years as torturous, with casts, braces, crutches, and massage, all
to tempt young Ida Lou's weakened muscles back to health.
As a teen, her will sparked into flame. She declared she'd had
enough of doctors and demanded release from an awful regimen of
treatments. Despite years of missed education, she cruised through
Colfax High School in three years and then enrolled at Washington
State College.
While her life in Colfax had been filled with love and
encouragement, Anderson didn't find such warmth in Pullman.
Instead, many of her classmates mocked her or avoided her,
frightened by her appearance. A friend, Mrs. Roy La Follette, wrote
her memories of Anderson, recalling the young woman's heartache and
thoughts of quitting school.
But then speech professor N.E. Reed spotted talent in the
fragile girl, and cast her in a campus play. In the pleasure of
being on stage Anderson forgot her physical ailments. She could
make her audience forget as well, recalled classmates and students.
Thanks to Reed, Anderson became a regular of the theater, playing
character roles and eventually becoming known throughout campus as
a skilled orator. She won statewide awards for public speaking and
took many more spots in local productions.
After she graduated in 1924, the speech department invited her
to stay on as an instructor. She made a stern and demanding, but
engaging, teacher, rounding out her education by taking time off to
travel the world and to further her studies.
Former student Randall Johnson '38 remembers Anderson perched at
the front of class in a chair with a tablet arm. She is reciting
some great passage, maybe her favorite, Marcus Aurelius, he says. A
magnetic voice emanates from her small body. "It was surprisingly
powerful, and so well articulated," says Johnson. "I can recall
her, where there's a thousand other people I've forgotten."
She was tough. "I can still remember how she would take some of
those 250-pound football players and sober them up the first day,"
says Johnson. "We were there to work and to improve ourselves and
to accomplish something and not waste time. For a young college
kid, those were things I needed to hear."
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