Evelyn Hooker, Ph. September 2, - November 18, Biographical Sketch adapted from the American Psychologist , , 47 , Evelyn Hooker was born September 2, , the sixth child of nine in her grandmother's house, next door to Buffalo Bill's home in North Platte, Nebraska. Had she been born a few months earlier, it would have been in a sod house in the Sand Hills where her parents lived out a poverty-ridden existence, the lot of farmers in that area.
Until she was 12, there was a succession of farms, some rented, and a section of land unbroken by plow in northeastern Colorado. Also, there was a succession of one-room schoolhouses, the only source of books. Through all these early years, there was a constant theme provided by her mother a true pioneer who had been brought to Nebraska in a covered wagon : "Get an education and they can never take it away from you. When Evelyn was ready for high school, her mother picked up the family and moved to Sterling, Colorado, the county seat with a large high school.
Situated out on the plains, Sterling High School was quite extraordinary for its place and time. Many of the teachers had master's degrees. In her senior year, Hooker entered an honors program, with a course in psychology.
She planned to attend a teacher's college, but the faculty pressured her to go to the University of Colorado. They succeeded in convincing her, and she entered the university with a tuition scholarship in the fall of Learning that the psychology department had a system of using seniors as assistants for quiz sections in the introductory class, she determined to become a psychology major.
In part, she saw this as a way out of the drudgery of housework, by which she earned her way through the university. Very quickly, however, what had been a means to an end became an end in itself. She enrolled in a course of comparative psychology with Karl Muenzinger. Hooker knew then why she had chosen psychology: Muenzinger had a very clear, analytical mind, and his brilliant lectures were an invitation to the student audience to participate in the scientific enterprise.
