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Gertrude Evelyn (Trudie) Dole was born at home in Proctorsville, Vermont, a daughter of modest hill farmers. Thus she inherited a lifestyle that became extinct during the course of the 20th century. In an oral history taken on behalf of the Society of Woman Geographers, Dole depicts an idyllic but strict childhood in what she called "the loveliest spot on earth" (Shepherd 1993-94). All her life Trudie cultivated and cherished the thrift and independence she learned as a girl, repairing furniture veneer with brown electrician's tape and healing cuts with aloe grown on her New York City windowsill.
Dole exhibited a variety of talents. Her creativity found expression in dress, cooking, and, most of all, in her writing, her films, and her photographs. Her intellectual promise became apparent when she graduated in 1932 as valedictorian of Peterborough High School and in 1937 she obtained her A.B. in French and Biology from Middlebury College. Although she developed many interests, anthropology was Dole's metier. Her life's work encompasses four major topics: Kuikuru ethnography, Amahuaca ethnography, kinship theory, and oral history. Miscellaneous lines of inquiry ranged from archaeology to Karaja figurines to alternative medicine.
Dole was a published writer before she obtained her doctorate, and she continued to write prodigiously. In addition to her master's thesis and Ph.D. dissertation, her works include several dozen articles dating from 1939 to 2001; the oft-cited collection, Essays in the Science of Culture, edited as a tribute to Leslie White (Dole and Carneiro 1960); and numerous reviews, comments, letters, and obituaries, as well as some two dozen unpublished interviews. Most are on anthropological subjects.
As a newlywed, in 1941 Dole followed her first husband, Leonard Stevens, to the University of Iowa, where she learned cartography. From there she went to the University of North Carolina to study comparative Indo-European languages. Her 1949 North Carolina master's thesis, The Application of Content Analysis Techniques to Anthropological Field Notes, explored themes in anthropological recording, using part of John Gillin's 1945-57 "Modern Culture of the South Project" as a case study. The essence of her thesis was published as an article in 1950. Trudie then earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, with the important cultural evolutionist Leslie White as her mentor.
Dole's marriage to...