Foremost Fulbright

Carla Hasenritter ’56 forged the path for future scholars abroad

By Barbara Snyder Stambaugh

Though she hasn’t been to campus since her sister, Ellen, graduated in 1962, Carla Hasenritter plans to attend the Fulbright reunion on Sept 13.

The Liberté sailed from New York Harbor in the fall of 1956. The ship had borne witness to the world’s upheaval—once it had flown the Nazi flag and won awards for speed across the North Atlantic. Then it was seized by American troops en route to Bremen. Now, flying the French Tricolore, the ship carried passengers bound for France. One of them was Carla Hasenritter ’56.

Holding the handrail, her homeland fading in the distance, Hasenritter was 21 years old, newly graduated from college and fresh from the embrace of her uneasy parents. Overseas travel for unescorted young women was less common then. Her father had been excited for her at first, but as she boarded the ship, France seemed an unknown to him, like it might be a “den of iniquity”—and whatever France turned out to be, he knew it would be a world apart from their white-painted house on a quiet, tree-lined street in Havertown, Pa.

Though the ship had been refitted to meet the French fleet’s crisp-linen standards, it was a rough crossing. But Hasenritter wasn’t afraid, not of the sea, not of anything. She was Dickinson’s first-ever Fulbright-award winner, and far from cowering in the face of unknowns, she was raring to go.

“ I was absolutely elated,” she says. “I had written a single paragraph on my application, stating that I wanted to perfect my knowledge of ‘French language, literature and culture.’ I sent in the application, and I rather forgot about it until I got an envelope from the Institute for International Education.”

It took her a moment to comprehend what she was reading, but before drawing her next breath she was calling home to Havertown with extraordinary news. She had won a Fulbright; she was going to France.

Hasenritter arrived in Paris for orientation during late September then settled into Rennes, an historic city in the western province of Brittany. Named for a Celtic tribe, conquered by Julius Caesar and attacked by a succession of Germanic tribes and Saxon armies, Rennes finally became an autonomous region of France only to be occupied by the Germans and liberated by Allied forces. That’s a few thousand years in a nutshell.

What Hasenritter found in 1956 was architecture that spanned five centuries and a lifestyle that seemed vaguely old fashioned to her American sensibilities.

“ The French were still pretty deprived from the war,” she says, her voice turning gentle. “There were lingering effects, like the condition of the railroads.”

When Hasenritter speaks of things special to her, including time spent in France, her eyes warm and soften. But then, just as quickly, they gleam with the light of her next snappy sentence, exuberance barely contained.

“ If the radiators got up to lukewarm, that was warm,” she laughs. “I learned the joys of a hot-water bottle. The streets were mostly cobblestone and many of the sidewalks, particularly just outside the city’s center, were mud. I wore heels only once during the whole year—it was risking life and limb.”

Hasenritter lived with Bernard Leloup, a notaire, which is roughly the equivalent of a real-estate attorney, and his wife, Christiane, a nurse. They had a comfortable, three-bedroom apartment in the city and, like most residents of Rennes that she met during her stay, the Leloups rented out every bedroom they weren’t using.

“ I was in France to study,” Hasenritter says. “I went to classes and wandered around. I don’t know if they let you do that so amorphously anymore. The amount of money I was given was very generous. I always had plenty. Tuition at university was minimal, and I had dollars to live on plus a separate book allowance that I didn’t have to account for.” She leans forward at the mention of this, as though telling about a found treasure she had been allowed to keep. “So I bought a lot of books,” she says, nearing reverence. She’s a bibliophile; that’s clear.

In many ways, Hasenritter’s days in Rennes were insulated and comfortable, her pleasures simple yet abundant. “There was a small handful of Americans there,” she says. “The English-speaking people would gather at an apartment. We would baby-sit for the people who lived there. As payment, we would each get to take a hot bath.”

But the world outside Rennes wasn’t so simple. On Nov. 4, 1956, Soviet tanks crushed a revolutionary uprising in Budapest, Hungary. During the next few years there would be hundreds executed, thousands imprisoned and 200,000 would flee the country.

In France, that November, Hasenritter heard the news on the radio. As a result of the Hungarian Revolution, she felt pressure from U.S. government officials because they wanted to have evacuation plans in order—and she didn’t have her passport. The French had retained it when she applied for a state-identity card.

“ I went back to the [French government] office, and I spun a tale about how I needed my passport in order to get my stipend,” she says. “Fortunately, they returned it. With an incipient war, you don’t want to be without your passport. But I wasn’t scared. Maybe when you are young and innocent, you aren’t afraid.”

The evacuation never took place, but Hasenritter put her passport and fearless attitude to good use, traveling with a friend to Switzerland, Belgium, England, Holland and other parts of France. She returned to the states in the fall of 1957, earned a master’s in French at the University of Pennsylvania, and embarked on the teaching career she’d always wanted.

But her time in Rennes was the watershed. “I learned to live on my own there. I learned to appreciate the French. I learned real words—as a literature major I hadn’t learned the French words for things like ‘dustpan.’ Over there, I did. Ramasse-poussière. And I was able to use my experiences [later] in teaching. I could tell them about the separate shops for vegetables, meat, poultry, fish and bread. About the animals hanging outside the shops. How the streets looked.

“ And besides,” she adds, “it looked great on my resumé.”

Hasenritter returned to France in 1962 and again in 1983. “By the second trip, it had changed so much it was almost unbelievable,” she says. “It was less ancient and more modern. The French are very big on technology.”

For many years she kept in touch with the Leloups. “At one point they were preparing to send their own child to study abroad, in England. They were afraid it might be a den of inequity,” she laughs, illustrating how parents are parents the world over.
Retired for the last decade after teaching middle-school French for 31 years, she volunteers at the library and delights when a child says, “There’s the library lady.” She has built networks of friends from her days of teaching, in her church and from Dickinson, too. Improbably enough, she and five friends from the class of ’56 have accomplished the feat of maintaining a “round robin” letter, each person adding to it in turn and sending it to the next friend on the list, for just shy of 50 years.

“ When you’re not married,” Hasenritter says, “you have to make a network of somebody. You have to get in touch with people. During retirement, you must create your own activities. I reach out to give shape to my week. If someone calls, I’ll go. And I’ll go with enthusiasm.”

At home, Hasenritter lives quietly, peaceably. She reads quite a lot. Playful with language, she’s been known to quiz telemarketers until they wish they hadn’t called. Sometimes she sautés green beans in butter, like the French. Upstairs, there are two cats sound asleep. A large dictionary rests open on a stand in the living room. There’s an antique clock on the sideboard. On the coffee table, American Scholar and The Atlantic Monthly.

Hasenritter’s house is elegant and uncluttered—a lovely, welcoming home. The kitchen is handsomely remodeled. Fact is, she lives in the same white-painted house on the same quiet, tree-lined street in Havertown where she grew up. She inherited it from her parents. Turns out, they needn’t have worried. Their girl fared just fine.