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Dorothea (Dodie) DeMuth was born in Chicago Illinois, on January 25,
1900. She grew up on the outskirts of Cleveland Ohio, where her father
was a bank executive. She graduated from Lake Erie College, and worked
for awhile in her father's bank. In 1924 she married Albert Upp, who
ran a small laundry business. After only a few years of marriage, he
contracted scarlet fever from some contaminated laundry, and died.
Dodie was left a young widow.
She loved the outdoors, and took a job working for the Cleveland Girl
Scouts. She was very active with this organization during the 1920's
and 1930's. In 1930 she attended a ten-day summer camp in
Ogleby Park, near Wheeling West Virginia. Young women from many
different Girl Scout groups were there to learn about nature study.
It was during this outing with the Scouts, that she met
Stanley Mulaik.
He was at the camp, gaining experience as a naturalist. Later that
year, after being recommended by his former college professor, Stan
obtained summer work as a naturalist at Camp Burton, which was run by
the Cleveland Girl Scout organization. He and Dodie continued their
friendship there, and they corresponded extensively during
the following year while Stan was studying for his masters degree
at Cornell University in New York.
They were married in the summer of 1931, although Dodie's
father was not too pleased with the match. He thought that Stanley
-- coming from an immigrant family of little means, without a
permanent job, and with the economic depression deepening --
seemed to have few prospects. But Dodie saw more potential. They were
to remain together, happily married, for the next 63 years.
After they were married, Dodie continued her work with the Girl Scouts
at Camp Burton. Stan had a summer job working as Director of Nature
Study at Camp Ossippee, New Hampshire, but still no permanent job.
At the end of the summer, they heard that the junior high school in
Edinburg Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley (where Dodie's sister and
her husband lived) needed teachers for the coming year. They drove
to Texas in Dodie's Model A coupe, in hopes that Stan would be hired.
Until he got full time employment, Stan gave slide lectures about
nature in the Rio Grande Valley. He got the teaching job, and the
family lived in Texas until 1939.
In the summers, during these years, both Stan and Dodie worked as
counsellors at various camps. Sometimes they were at the same camp,
but at other times they worked at camps in different states. Dodie's
specialty was craftwork such as spatter painting and boondoggling.
When their son Allen was born in 1935, he also went along. He took
his first steps at Camp Ossippee.
Another way Stan and Dodie earned extra cash was by collecting
biological specimens for the American Museum of Natural History.
On their travels between their scout camp jobs, they collected snakes,
lizards, turtles, spiders, mites and scorpions -- being paid a
few cents for each specimen. Allen also contributed to the collecting
effort. He became very adept at turning over rocks and logs, catching
scorpions, centipedes and millipedes with tweezers.
On one of their trips, when Allen was about six years old, they were
driving through Nevada on a chilly day early in the spring. They
stopped to collect along the road, as they commonly did whenever and
wherever they could. Allen found some newly dug post holes for a
fence along the road. Looking into one, he found a tiny pocket mouse.
In the next hole was another. The third hole had a kangaroo rat.
Dodie then drove the car along in second gear, while Stan and Allen
walked for a mile and a half looking into every post hole. The final
results: 33 dead mice and rats, almost 50 live pocket mice,
and 2 live kangaroo rats. They had all fallen into the holes and
couldn't jump back out. The cold had made them lethargic. Dodie put
the live ones into a big cake box. In a short time, in the car, they
all warmed up and were jumping like popcorn in the box. They were
very gentle and tame, and Allen was allowed to keep a few as pets.
But most of them (both the living and the dead ones) were donated to
the zoology department at the university.
In September 1939, the Mulaik family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah.
Stan had been granted a research fellowship and a teaching position
in the Biology Department at the University of Utah. Dodie enrolled
in the same department to begin work on her master's degree.
In 1941, World War II began. The Army was badly in need of doctors,
and many regular members of the faculty had gone off to war.
Dodie's advisors had been impressed with her student work, so she was
asked to help teach a Comparative Anatomy course to young pre-medical
students in an accellerated program sponsored by the Army, to train
doctors for military service. During that period of time, you could
open up the Mulaik's refrigerator at home, and find laboratory specimens
(perhaps an embalmed dogfish or cat in the freezer) available for
when her students would drop in to review their anatomy assignments.
After she completed her masters degree, Dodie taught Introductory
Genetics for awhile at the University of Utah. She then took a
position teaching biology at Westminster College.
She was at the age when some people are starting to slow down and
think about retirement, when she and Stan founded the Utah Nature
Study Society. She took on the job of newsletter editor for the
organization, and held this position for the next twenty years.
In this function, she possibly had more influence over more people
than in any other of her many positions. The newsletter was
sent out to hundreds of members every month, and contained articles
of interest which she had gleaned from many sources. Teachers used
the information as classroom material to stimulate their students.
Her influence is still being felt in schools and in families, like
ripples in a pond, as these early students have matured and are now
transmitting their love and respect for nature to later generations.
Dodie and Stan remained active and independent until they were over
ninety years old. In 1992 they sold their home near the University
of Utah, and moved to Georgia to live with their son Allen.
Dodie died on June 9, 1996, in Decatur, Georgia.
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From information |
Adapted for The INTERNET by Sandra Bray |
