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Key words: Legislation, Curriculum, Nutrition, Home Economics Education, Land Grant College.
INTRODUCTION
Among Educators during the 20th century, Leah Eudora Dunford Widtsoe was in key positions that influenced healthy lifestyle family education in Utah, the United States, and Europe. She was a pioneer instructor in Home Economics and the education of women. She had incredible influence on women as she held "meetings ... in which the problems of the home and household were discussed." Widtsoe authored several books about nutrition, wellness, and optimal health practices. She was also instrumental in bringing the USDA extension program to the nation.
This research traces the origins of Widtsoe's educational ideas and the influence of those ideas on the development of educational practices and policies.
BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD
Born February 28, 1874, Leah Eudora Dunford was the daughter of Susa Amelia Young and Alma B. Dunford (Hollis, 1965). Leah's mother was known as the favorite daughter of colonizer Brigham Young (The Observer, 1897).
In an age and culture that scoffed at divorce, Leah experienced the legal separation of her parents when she was just 4 years old. Even more unusual was the fact that Leah's custody was given to her father until her midteens. Looking back as an adult, Leah called her "home life a nightmare" (Personal communication from Leah D. Widtsoe in Honolulu to Anna and Marcel Widtsoe, July 10, 1916. Found at the Utah State Historical Society, Mss B-92, box 8, fd 8). Leah's lessthan-ideal childhood germinated the desire to be a crusader for proper home upbringing for the future generation. She wanted to spare other children the kind of childhood she had without a trained mother's influence.
EDUCATION
Leah studied domestic science, (federal Heights Ward History, 1963), exhibiting a mind labeled as "naturally scientific," and "well-developed home impulses" (L. D. Widtsoe, 1916). She later enrolled in the University of Utah with the idea that her coursework there would eventually qualify her to go east "Death takes Widow," 1965. In 1895, Leah was accepted as a student at the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, New York, "at the time the largest and most efficient school of home economics in the country" (Koplin, 1966).
When Leah returned from the Pratt Institute, she was appointed as head of the...