Irma Dovey Papers
Scope and Contents
The collection is organized into two main sections. First, Box 1 contains material relating to Irma Dovey's personal and professional life. Included are several short autobiographical statements written by Irma Dovey. There is a nice selection of teaching contracts from her professional career. Likewise, genealogical material relating to the Dovey family and the March family is especially strong. And second, the remainder of the collection, Boxes 2-8, relates to Irma Dovey's writing. There is extensive editorial correspondence, many individual poems and short stories, and several collections of her writing. We have attempted to preserve Irma Dovey's arrangement of her work, even when that arrangement resulted in several files of poems and short stories instead of one integrated file. For the same reason, we have preserved the three scrapbooks in Box 8, even though the work in those scrapbooks is duplicated in other parts of the collection. Consequently, researchers seeking a particular poem or short story may need to check several portions of the collection.
Dates
- 1918-2003
Creator
- Dovey, Irma (Person)
Language of Materials
Materials entirely in English.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions. Materials are open for research.
General Use, Reproduction, and Copyright Policies
Many items housed in the Rod Library Special Collections & University Archives, including unpublished images and manuscripts, may be protected by copyright, publication rights, trademarks, or model release rights which the library does not own and for which the library cannot grant permission or licensing. Materials currently under copyright are usually still available for research and limited reproduction under Fair Use laws. However, it is the sole responsibility of the patron to determine whether or not their use of a given material falls within Fair Use guidelines and to obtain permission for said use from the rightful copyright owner.
Sensitive Materials Statement
Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy or similar laws, and the Iowa Open Records Law (see Iowa Code ยง 22.7). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of Northern Iowa assumes no responsibility.
Biographical / Historical
Irma Dovey was born March 9, 1908, in Franklin County, Iowa to James and Mary March Dovey. Irma Dovey had two siblings: Ford, who died at the age of 21, and Ethel, who died when she was only a few days old. Irma Dovey attended elementary and high school in Hansel, Iowa. Dovey earned her bachelor's degree from Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa), in Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 1930. In 1934, she received her master's degree from Colorado State Teachers College. Dovey started her teaching career in several small Iowa towns, including Oakland, Essex, Solon, and Ira. For a short time she taught in Kingsport, Tennessee. She later returned to Iowa and settled in Cedar Rapids. She taught in several Cedar Rapids elementary schools, including Tyler and Taylor Schools, during the next fifteen years before becoming a principal in the district. Dovey was a principal for twenty-two years, at Hayes, Hiawatha, and Jackson Schools, before she retired in 1973. She then taught several college courses for Coe and Kirkwood Colleges. Eventually she started a class for senior writers at the Witwer Center, which continued to meet even after she was unable to attend.
Dovey was primarily an educator, but she was also a widely-published writer and poet. She wrote hundreds of poems and short stories, as well as professional articles. She had over eight hundred poems published in many different venues. Much of her early work appeared in children's and educational magazines. She also submitted work to newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Cedar Rapids Gazette. She submitted much of her later work to publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Modern Maturity. Teaching and writing led Dovey to join many organizations over the course of her lifetime. She was a member of the Iowa Poetry Day Association, president of the Quota Club in 1957, and branch president of the National League of Pen Women from 1974 to 1976, as well as Iowa president of that group from 1976 to 1978. She was a member of Delta Kappa Gamma and a lifetime member of the National Education Association. Irma Dovey died October 19, 2003, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the age of 95.
Extent
3.34 Linear Feet (8 boxes)
Immediate Source of Acquisition
When Irma Dovey died in 2003, her close friend Mildred Middleton gathered Irma Dovey's papers from her room at Meth-Wick Manor in Cedar Rapids and took them to her home. Mildred Middleton contacted the Rod Library about the disposition of the papers. Gerald L. Peterson, University Archivist, visited Mildred Middleton's home in Cedar Rapids in November 2003 and brought the papers back to the Rod Library.
Processing Information
Papers processed by Public History Intern Emily Stohlmeyer, under the supervision of University Archivist Gerald L. Peterson; finding aid prepared by Gerald L. Peterson, January-April, 2004; modified: February 2, 2015 (GP). Last updated by Library Associate Dave Hoing, October 2017. Linear feet count updated on August 7, 2017.
- Title
- Irma Dovey Papers
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script