To the editor:

Nice write-up on Flora Rose in the Sept. 19 edition. I'm glad she's getting the recognition she deserves. For the record, I wanted to note that the remarkable team of Rose and Van Rensselaer should be credited with the creation of not one, but two of Cornell's academic units. To the best of our knowledge, it was a speech by Flora Rose in the early part of the last century that galvanized the American Hotel Association to support a college-level program in hotel administration. This program was to be located in the Department of Home Economics.

Controversial in the industry, this plan initially gained only grudging support from at least one of the leading hoteliers of the day, E.M. Statler.

Moreover, the program was meant to receive funding from the state of New York, but those funds were never forthcoming. To teach this program, Van Rensselaer and Rose retained Howard Meek, who (it turned out) was astonishingly effective at operating a program on a shoestring.

-- Glenn Withiam, director of publication services in School of Hotel Administration; executive editor Cornell Hospitality Quarterly