Restrictions on Access
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
Preferred Citation
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Processing Information
UCLA Catalog Record ID
Biography
Scope and Content
Collection Description
Organization and Arrangement
Related Material
Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Title: Adaline Caroline Guenther papers
Creator:
Guenther, Adaline Caroline
Identifier/Call Number: LSC.1150
Physical Description:
5.0 Linear Feet
(10 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1942-1975
Abstract: The collection is composed of correspondence, photographs, typescripts, and memorabilia; it has a double focus, the American
Veterans Committee and Adaline Guenther herself.
Physical Location: Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Language of Material: Materials are in English.
Restrictions on Access
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
Property rights to the physical objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright,
are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright
and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Adaline Caroline Guenther papers (Collection Number 1150). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles
E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Gift of Adaline Guenther, 1973.
- Gift of Shirley Hine, 1976 and 1978.
Processing Information
Processed by UCLA Library Special Collections staff.
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interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides
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processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
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UCLA Catalog Record ID
Biography
Guenther was born in 1897; became chief administrator of the University Religious Conference at UCLA at its inception in 1927,
and later served as its executive director (1945-59); she was one of founders of Unicamp, the UCLA student-run summer camp
for underprivileged children; also a founder of Student Board, an interdenominational student discussion group, and of Project
India, an anti-communist group in the 1950s; edited letters of servicemen connected with the University Religious Conference
into a newsletter, and held together the correspondence which evolved into the American Veterans Committee; the Committee,
founded as a counterforce to the American Legion, was an organization of educated liberal veterans; died in 1975.
Scope and Content
Collection consists of correspondence, typescripts, photographs and memorabilia relating to the American Veterans Committee,
Guenther's work at the University Religious Conference, her friendship with John Ehrlichman and Gilbert Harrison, and her
personal affairs. Correspondents include: Tom Bradley, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, Otis Chandler, John Ehrlichman, Gilbert Harrison,
Merle Miller, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Wendell Willkie.
Collection Description
Adaline Guenther (1897-1975) was Executive Director of the University Religious Conference from 1945 until her retirement
in 1959 and had been its chief administrator since its inception in 1927. She was one of the founders of UniCamp (a student-run
summer camp for underpriveleged children, Studen board (an interdenominational discussion group of campus student leaders),
and Project india (a student-to-student approach to fighting Communism in India in the 1950s), and through these programs
significantly shapped UCLA's extracullicular life. She was a woman of great mental and spiritual vitality with a gift for
guiding others to examine their goals and shape their minds. This is apparent throughout the entire collection, from the long
letters from servicemen in W.W.II answering her questions about racial discrimination in the armed forces to the book reviews
she prepared at 77 for the members of her retirement community. The journal she kept in the year before her death records
her perceptions of the "victories and defeats of aging."
The first seven boxes are early American Veterans Committee documentation, mainly in the form of letters to Guenther from
approximately 150 servicemen formerly connected with the University Religious Conference at UCLA. She edited their letters
into a newsletter ("10845") and held together the correspondence which evolved into the AVC. It was conceived as a counterforce
to the American Legion, a veterans' organization of educated liberals who would shape the postwar world. The original letters
have a wide range of personality and subject matter_. There are highly articulate soldiers writing about their reaction to
the atom bomb, a Japanese-American and a conscientious objector writing from their respective internment camps, wives of soldiers
writing personal letters to Guenther, soldiers writing to Guenther out of loneliness and boredom. They talk about peace, democracy,
racial equality, religion, army life, UniCamp, revisions to revisions of the AVC official policy statements. Gil Harrison
wrote voluminously, involved in deciding every detail of AVC development. There are also letters from prominent people agreeing
or declining to be associated with AVC. Eleanor Roosevelt is the most significant of these.
Guenther's later correspondence includes letters from Mayor Tom Bradley, Bishop John Krumm, Rabbi Edgar Magnin and other leaders
in the fields of religion, education and civic life. John Ehrlichman was one of the students who passed through the URC; Guenther
was repelled by Watergate but attempted through correspondence with Judge John Sirica to have Ehrlichman's sentence lightened
because of her personal loyalty to Ehrlichman and his wife.
Adaline Guenther was the subject of an oral history at UCLA; she discusses the AVC at some length. Another oral history was
compiled from interviews with people who participated in Project India and contains some comments on Guenther.
The item count below includes clippings and small candid photographs; formal studio portraits are in Box 10. Many AVC people
are represented.
Organization and Arrangement
Arranged in the following series:
- American Veterans Committee, ca. 1942-45 (boxes 1-6)
- Guenther correspondence with Gilbert Harrison (box 7)
- Guenther's personal papers, ca. 1952-75 (boxes 7-8)
- Memorabilia (boxes 9-10).
Related Material
The gift of a mind [oral history transcript] / Adaline C. Guenther, interviewee. UCLA Oral History Department interview, 1974. Available at
UCLA Library Special Collections.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
University of California, Los Angeles. University Religious Conference -- Archives
American Veterans Committee.
Guenther, Adaline Caroline, 1897-1975 --Archives.
University of California, Los Angeles. University Religious Conference -- Administration