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Hazel Louis Bowman collection, bulk 1930-1948

 

Summary

Creator:
Hazel Louis Bowman, 1917-2009
Eichenberg, Florence R.
Extent:
11 boxes 6 full boxes, 1 artifact box, 1 oversize box, 1 record album box, and 2 photograph boxes.
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

[Title of Item], [Date of Item], [Box and Folder number], Hazel Louis Bowman collection, Special Collections & Archives, Florida State University Libraries, Tallahassee, Florida. https://purl.lib.fsu.edu/fa/02-10-1950

Background

Scope and content:

This collection relates to Hazel Louis Bowman who worked for the Signal Corps and lived in India with the American Red Cross for two years. Bowman's collection contains six full boxes, one oversize box, a phono records box, and two photograph boxes. Four of the boxes include letters written to and from Hazel to her parents, family, neighbors, and friends. The collection also contains an oral history transcript, newsletters and bulletins, American Red Cross publications, her diary, a book written by Bowman, photograph albums, and ephemera.

Biographical / historical:

Hazel Louis Bowman was born on February 18, 1917 in Plant City, Florida. In 1933, she graduated from Brewster High School and attended Florida State College for Women (now FSU) where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in 1937. In college she was the editor of The Florida Flambeau. After her graduation, Bowman became one of the first three women admitted to the University of Florida Law School. She earned a Master of Arts from the University of Florida and did post-graduate work at the University of Maryland. Hazel taught school and worked as a welfare worker until WWII when she became a recreation worker. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Hazel Bowman joined the Signal Corps where she worked in code-breaking in Virginia for a year. From 1943 to 1945, Hazel Bowman served as an assistant procurement officer with the American Red Cross, in the China, Burma, India theater. She was stationed in Dibrugarh, Assam, India. In India, Bowman also operated several social clubs India to entertain homesick American troops. After the war, Hazel worked as a laboratory technician, a freelance writer, editor, and indexer. She also worked as registrar, director of student personnel, and professor at various universities and colleges, including the University of Tampa, Townsend State, and the University of Maryland. After moving to Florida, she retired from The Vanguard School, Lake Wales. Hazel Bowman passed away in Mulberry, Florida on October 12, 2009. Instead of a burial, Hazel donated her body to the University of Florida Health Science Center.

Eunice Claire Sloat (nee Bowman) was born on January 12, 1921, in Brewster, FL, to Joseph M. and Annie T. Bowman and died on November 1, 2015. Eunice was Hazel Bowman's sister. She graduated from Brewster High School before attending Florida State College for Women where she studied medical laboratory and x-ray technology and eventually worked at Bartow Memorial Hospital. Eunice first enlisted in the US Navy WAVES in 1942 and attended basic training at Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater, OK. After boot camp, Eunice was sent to Washington, D.C., for work as a teletype operator and supervisor of communications at the Bureau of Personnel until the end of the war. She married Alton D. Sloat, an enlisted man, on March 17, 1945. After the war, Eunice had two daughters and a son (Jacqueline Marie Sloat, Sara Anna Johnson, and Alton D. Sloat, Jr.) and eventually settled in Tallahassee, FL.

Custodial history:

Transferred from the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience to FSU Libraries Special Collections & Archives in July 2022.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

This collection is open to all researchers.

Boxes 1-7, 9-11 can be accessed at the Claude Pepper Library. Box 8 is in an offsite storage location. The Red Cross Suitcase can be accessed in the SCA Research Center in Strozier Library.

Please contact lib-specialcollections@fsu.edu with requests for access or for more information.

Terms of access:

All requests for permission to quote, publish, broadcast or otherwise reproduce from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Associate Dean for Special Collections & Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Florida State University Libraries as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.

Preferred citation:

[Title of Item], [Date of Item], [Box and Folder number], Hazel Louis Bowman collection, Special Collections & Archives, Florida State University Libraries, Tallahassee, Florida. https://purl.lib.fsu.edu/fa/02-10-1950

Location of this collection:
116 Honors Way
Tallahassee
FL
32306-2047
USA