Undergraduate essays and papers, 1953-1955

This Addendum includes roughly one hundred fifty letters written between 1934 and 1982 to Ira Gruber’s mother (Mary Louise Dempsey Gruber, 1909-1983). Ira Gruber and his wife, Patricia Sanderford Gruber (1929- ) wrote two-thirds of these letters to his “Mom.” Their children—Anna, Talarah, and Conrad Gruber—wrote most of the remainder, all except a few letters from his mother’s brothers Roger, James, and Donald Dempsey to their sister, “Lou.” Some of Ira’s and his wife’s letters are addressed to both his mother and his younger sister, “Mary Lou” (Mary Louise Gruber Pollack, 1949- ).. His mother left only three drafts of replies: one to her son and two to the head of her daughter’s school.

Ira’s letters to his mother were written while he was a student at Duke University, an officer in the U. S. Navy, a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture, and a member of the history departments at Duke, the College of William and Mary, Occidental College, and Rice University. Taken together, Ira’s letters complement his Academic Career Papers at Rice—providing glimpses of his reading, the academic advice he gave to his sister and children, and, especially, the research and writing he did between 1965 and 1980 when he published his first book and more than a dozen articles and lectures.