Virginia Wetherbee
Edited with Introduction and Afterword by
Louise Wetherbee Phelps
Available on Amazon
The Rosetta Stone
Left motherless in the 1918 flu epidemic, Virginia Wetherbee was raised by her larger-than-life father, a physician whose huge personality, brilliant mind, and shifting enthusiasms dominated their household and the small hospital he ran. Writing after her father’s death in 1955, Virginia evokes and reflects on her memories to free herself from his shadow and come to terms with his mixed legacy. She follows the twists and turns of their “see-saw, tragicomic” relationship while exploring the role of other figures in shaping her intellectually and morally as she grew up, married, and raised three children during World War II and its aftermath.
Facing her past with raw honesty, wit, and courage, Virginia accepts her heritage in all its complexity and finds the key—the Rosetta Stone—to maturing into a remarkable woman and writer, who has learned that “In each generation, to those who understand, is handed on the duty of weaving that fragile, shining web of love.”
The Rosetta Stone is a memoir of incomparable beauty and reflection.
About the Author
Virginia Wetherbee (1917-2015) was a member of the Greatest Generation, an uncommon woman whose outwardly quiet domestic life, shaped by two World Wars and the Depression, concealed a rich private life of the mind. A highly cultured graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, she was a virtuoso reader and elegant, witty writer whose remarkable life of literacy was largely unknown to all but her close family. During her lifetime Virginia published a humorous piece on her family in the Ladies Home Journal (1951) and two essays in The American Scholar in the 1980s. Her lifespan writings, archived after her death, also included other essays, a collection of stories about her family (Mudpies, 1963), and this memoir, The Rosetta Stone.
About the Editor
Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Virginia Wetherbee’s daughter, is a longtime scholar and educator in the disciplinary study of writing. She contributed to the development of this field as a modern discipline through her scholarly writings and her pioneering work as a teacher, mentor, program developer, administrator, and consultant. In recognition of her career contributions and service to the profession, she received the 2022 Exemplar Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Since retiring in 2009 as an Emeritus Professor of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition at Syracuse University, she has continued to work in doctoral education at Old Dominion University, where she is a Scholar-in-Residence and Adjunct Professor. Her current scholarship focuses on literacy and aging, writing over the lifespan, and cross-generational relations. Publishing her mother’s memoir is one part of her multi-faceted and evolving remembrance project, where she is exploring the many interlacing threads of literacy that link the lives and writings of her mother and herself.
Collage
Collage of “Uncommon Women” of Mount Holyoke College, personalized to incorporate the face of Virginia Wetherbee (née Virginia Elizabeth LaRochelle), from a photo taken in 1937. Used with permission of the artist Janice Hayes-Cha: www.janicehayescha.com.
Publication: Fall 2024
