"In 1946 he married Marian Quissell, who grew up on a farm four miles from his.
He received his bachelor’s degree in 1948 from South Dakota State University, in Brookings, where his wife worked as a secretary. She had dropped out of Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., after her freshman year to go to work to help pay for her husband’s education."
- What a nice story of love, sacrifice and reward given they appeared to have stayed together till the end.
Unless you personally know either of the people involved, I don't think you are in a position to make a judgement as to whether it was "love, sacrifice and reward" or "prevailing cultural pressures at the time that were always regretted later"
How does that make a difference? We're supposed to discount his wife's sacrifice because of potential social pressures?
If you really wanted to be a cold hearted bastard about it you could have done a cost benefit analysis on the potential earnings of a theoretical physicist vs a secretary in the early 1950's before you discounted it from being a financial decision, but then you couldn't have made an opportunistic political statement due to a man's death.
Well, the thrust of it was that the man's career is important, and the woman's isn't. So assuming they had no children at the time, it was entirely consistent with that for her to quit college and take a job with no career path in order to fund his education. (If they had children, of course, the ethic would have been that she should stay home to care for them... indeed, she would likely have had no alternative.)
I think frossie has a good point, actually. We can hope that it was as jusben1369 suggests, but we can't really know that. Maybe being married to Gene gave Marian all she wanted in life, and maybe it didn't.
He received his bachelor’s degree in 1948 from South Dakota State University, in Brookings, where his wife worked as a secretary. She had dropped out of Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., after her freshman year to go to work to help pay for her husband’s education."
- What a nice story of love, sacrifice and reward given they appeared to have stayed together till the end.