Florence Eloise Petzel

Florence Eloise Petzel died on August 16, 2017 in Anderson SC at the age of 106. Though she never married, she will be dearly missed by the families of her two nephews.
She was born on April 1st, 1911 in Crosbyton Texas, where her father, William Dietrich Petzel, managed land for the University of Chicago and near where her mother, Eloise Punchard, grew up. The family returned to Chicago when Florence was 2 years old, and she and her younger sister, Elizabeth Elsebe (Mauer), attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools through high school. Florence earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1931, and her masters with a thesis on textile history in 1934. She received her PhD in textile science from the Home Economics Department at the University of Minnesota in 1954.

Career
She taught at Judson College in Alabama from 1936 to 1938, at Ohio State University from 1938 to 1948, at the University of Alabama from 1950 to 1954, and as a Professor and Department Head at Oregon State University from 1954 to 1975 (with a few years at University of Texas and Texas Tech University in the middle). She wrote many professional articles, as well as one book on Textiles of Ancient Mesopotamia, Persia and Egypt (Better World Books, 1987). She was a member of Sigma Xi and other honors societies.
Florence was one of the last Victorian lady professors. She took academics very seriously, choosing to study at the University of Chicago when her mother wanted her to go to Texas State College for Women. She was frustrated working in Home Economics departments; she valued careful scientific research more than many of her colleagues. She enjoyed mentoring students from around the world. Her research interest were textile use and wear studies, and then, in retirement, textile history.

Family
Family was important to Florence; her mother lived with her from when she was widowed in 1947 until her death in 1968. The years Florence spent in Texas were to support her sister, who lost her husband in the early 1950s, and then her nephew, John W. Mauer, when his mother died and his older brother was overseas. She was an important person in John’s life, and he encouraged her to move to South Carolina after she retired. Family history was also important to Florence, and she dedicated much of her time after retirement to studying her family genealogy.

Interests
Florence was passionate about opera, classical music, museums, art, and ballet throughout her life. She wrote in a memoir that she attended her first opera, by Wagner, when she was 9 years old. Florence was an avid traveler, with visits to the Middle East, England, Italy and Hawaii among others. In the same memoir of her early life, she recounts fondly the many trips by train and by car she took with her family as a girl. She often combined her passion for research, family, music and genealogy with her travels.

Florence was admired by family and friends for her classic style as well as her achievements. She made some of her own clothes and collected antiques. A cousin she visited several times in England wrote: “I admired her precision of speech, her self containment, her scholarship, her carriage.” That same cousin wrote of her experience as a teenager meeting Florence: “Being bookish in a family of sports-mad people, meeting Florence was a revelation.” Florence continued to be that person of intellect, reserve, and thoughtfulness all her life. She attributed her long life to eating a low fat diet and not having a husband and children.