President Parker posted a very interesting blog entry last Monday on Dr. Connie Guion. The next day I happened to find a small group of photos of Dr. Guion. Most of the photos were from her visit, late in life, to Sweet Briar at the dedication of the science building which bears her name. But two of the photos were much earlier.
The larger one is from sometime between 1910 – 1913, when Dr. Guion was teaching at Sweet Briar. The second photo has a date of 1918 on the back. That’s Connie hanging off the back of the ambulance! Click the image to see it larger.
The larger photo is from circa 1911. The smaller one is dated 1918.
Connie Guion was my great-great aunt. She died when I was 12, but I knew her well and she was definitely a powerful woman. She ran the family–even to the 4th generation down. My father, her great-nephew, brought my mother from South Carolina to New York to be “approved” by Aunt Con before the wedding, and brought me as an infant, to get some sort of seal of approval!
Aunt Con taught at both Vassar and Sweet Briar and deferred her medical school entry for 6 years after she finished college, because she strongly believed that women should go to college, and helped to pay for her 8 sisters to do so. When she was able to go to medical school, at Cornell, she finished first in her class. Thereafter her career was one of great distinction. When I moved to New York in 2000, there were still people here who remembered her with awe, thirty years after her death.
My cousin Elizabeth ( Bess ) Slattery of Troy NY was a good friend of Dr. Connie Guion. Cousin Bess graduated from Wellesley i believe in 1917, one of her roomates was one of the Guion sisters Dr. Guion also was good friends with my grandmother Marion Slattery Girard, also of Troy , NY. i grew up hearing about Connie Guion and my sister and I became RN’s. My Aunt Bess spoke highly of her and I know they socialized as friends. Dr Guion was a woman ahead of her time, i love hearing stories about her . She is not forgotten and never will be. She was a American Hero.
Hi Rebecca,
I’m researching a painting of Connie Guion for New York Presbyterian Hospital. The Hospital has a clay bust of Dr. Guion. We are trying to find out who created it. Would you know or be able to put me in touch with a family member who might know. I can send an image.
Thanks,
Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D.