Martha Rose Rhine
A woman who enjoyed a career in communication and education is aiming to assist young people following the same path. She is also honoring loved ones in the process.
A former editorial assistant for the American Chemical Society who concluded her career as a substitute teacher, Martha Rhine gifted SIU Carbondale $100,000 to establish the Rhine Latowsky Harrison Endowed Scholarship. The award will honor an education or mass communications major from a rural Illinois town, who demonstrates financial need. The scholarship account is being administered in Carbondale, but recipients can either be enrolled at the SIU Carbondale or SIU Edwardsville campus. Rhine says the scholarship is funded through an inheritance she received from her mother’s cousin and wife, who had no children. “Rural Illinois students reflect the backgrounds of my late cousins, Oscar and Nadean Harrison,” Rhine says. “Additionally, I wanted to help students who are pursuing similar career paths to my cousins.”
Nadean, her mother’s first cousin’s wife, received her teaching credentials from Southern IIlinois Normal University, while Oscar was a radio officer in the merchant marines from 1924 through World War II. He subsequently served the Illinois State Police and retired in 1968 as a chief radio operator in Springfield. “I’m not sure if Nadean taught or not – in those days, a married woman couldn’t get a teaching job,” Rhine says. “Oscar’s role encompasses mass communication. I wanted to make sure the scholarship criteria paid homage to both cousins.”
The criteria also represents Rhine’s career path. She holds a master’s in education from SIU Edwardsville. Therefore, she wanted students from that campus to be eligible for the scholarship too. Rhine received her bachelor’s in chemistry and physics from the University of Illinois. She proceeded to serve as an editorial assistant at the American Chemical Society, American Petroleum Institute in New York City, and as a librarian at Shell Agricultural Chemicals in Princeton, N.J. in 1967.
She discovered that male co-workers were getting promotions early in their careers, which wasn’t the case for her. So the Farmersville, Ill., resident began pursuing a master’s degree at Drexel University. When she returned home that summer, Rhine joined fellow family members in caring for her grandfather, who had been injured in a farming accident. “l took courses at SIUE that I could transfer to Drexel for the 1968 spring quarter. However, I never returned there,” she says. “The employment agencies told me that they couldn’t match my previous salary at Shell, so I figured if l had to take a pay cut, I may as well teach.”
While completing a graduate research project at SlUE, Rhine began teaching part-time in the St. Louis area. She was hired into her first full-time job at Roosevelt High School. A week before St. Louis teachers went on strike she resigned to continue searching for a position in information systems, meanwhile working at temporary agencies taking word processing assignments. The assignment at First National Bank in St. Louis led to a documentation analyst position where she wrote the user manuals for the accounting systems: general ledger, payroll, checking, savings, installment loans and fixed assets. She continued similar work at McDonnell Douglas Automation Company. Rhine moved to Southern Illinois where she joined the Olin Corporation in Carterville, managing and editing reports for proposals, feasibility studies, contracts, manufacturing and test procedures and other contract documentation. She was a substitute teacher in the area, and subsequently did the same around Farmersville before retiring.
While at Olin, she rejoined the Special Librarian Association (SLA) and organized the Solo Caucus, where in two years became too large to continue as a caucus and became a division. After her retirement from Olin, she continued her SLA activities becoming Chair of the Materials Research and Manufacturing Division.