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Short
biography of
Kathryn Hulme married Leonard D. Geldert in New York City on August 25, 1925. The couple were divorced in 1928; there were no children. Hulme died in Lihue, Kauai, on August 25, 1981.
Copyright
© 1986 by the Yale University Library. |
Kathryn
Cavarly Hulme was born in San Francisco on July 6, 1900, the daughter
of Edwin Page and Julia Cavarly Hulme. After her graduation from high
school in 1918, Hulme attended the University of California at Berkeley
for three years. In 1922 she moved to New York City, where she studied
journalism, wrote freelance articles, and worked as publicity director
for the Ask Mr. Foster Travel Service. Hulme spent much time in Europe
during the 1930's, and her early books reflect her interest in travel.
Her first critical success, however, was her 1938 memoir We Lived
As Children
Hulme
worked as an electric arc welder at the Kaiser ship yards during World
War II. After the war, she spent six years in Germany as deputy director
of United Nations Relief and Refugee Association field teams. The
Wild Place, which won the 1952 Atlantic non-fiction prize, describes
conditions at the refugee camp of Wildflecken. While there,
Hulme met and befriended Marie-Louise Habets, a Belgian nurse and
former nun. Her experiences were the basis for Hulme's best-seller,
The Nun's Story (1956), which was both a critical and a popular success.
Hulme followed this with Annie's Captain (1961), a fictionalized account
of her grandparents' lives. Her final works were both non-fiction.
Undiscovered Country (1966) is a memoir centered on her years as a
pupil of Gurdjieff. Look a Lion in the Eye (1973) describes Hulme's
1971 safari in East Africa. 
From
1960 until her death, Hulme resided on the island of Kauai with Marie-Louise
Habets. She hoped to write a novel with a Hawaiian background, but
never accomplished this goal, perhaps because of increasing ill-health
in her late years
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Kathryn Hulmes UNRRA - Career Before joing the UNRRA, Ms. Hulme travelled extensively thru-out Europe, and spent several years living in Paris.
In March, Ms. Hulme was promoted to Post of Director of the Aschaffenburg Camps, replacing two male directors who had been moved to other areas.The Aschaffenburg camps were "static camps" populated mainly by Ukrainians, Estonians, and (Bel) or White-Russians, all unrepatriables whose homelands were now in Stalin's communist pocket. In the fall of 1948, she was transferred to Wurzburg to take over a new consolidated area that stretched all the way to the Russian Zone in the East and to the Tyrol in the South with some 65,000 DP's living in seventy-three scattered installations. She was promoted to The Chief of Care & Maintenance which included in its duties the setting up of Vocational-Training schools to prepare the DP's for jobs that might make them acceptable for emigration to the States under a Displaced Person Act which the eightieth congress finally passed on June 25, 1948.
After
returning to the states, she settled in Arizona where she wrote "The
Wild Place" which won the Atlantic Nonfictional Prize Award in 1953.
She is the author of several other books: |
She
was appointed an assistant director of the UNRRA, and arrived in August
1945 with her team to Wildflecken. Early in 1947 the UNRRA reduced
its staff of 25,000 in preparation for the closeout of the organization.
The IRO was to take over the unfinished DP business. 
By
the end of 1949 the IRO promoted Ms. Hulme once again to The Chief
of the U.S. Desk, responsible for overall supervision of operations
of the U.S. emigration program in the entire U.S. Zone. She stayed
in this position till the last eligible DP in the zone had been covered
by a case number for the states - in the spring of 1951. |
Pictures
of Ms Hulme during her time in Wildflecken
from her personal Picture-Album |
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| Source:
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, all rights reserved. |
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© by Heinz Leitsch |
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