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Chattanooga Knows: What former resident gained notice in 1933 by proposing FDR appoint an all-woman Cabinet?

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections / Lorine Pruette, center, is pictured in the April 24, 1916, edition of The University Echo, the University of Chattanooga's student newspaper.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections / Lorine Pruette, center, is pictured in the April 24, 1916, edition of The University Echo, the University of Chattanooga's student newspaper. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections / Lorine Pruette, center, is pictured in the April 24, 1916, edition of The University Echo, the University of Chattanooga's student newspaper.

By Lew Gilliland 12 min read


Q. What former resident gained notice in 1933 by proposing FDR appoint an all-woman Cabinet?

A. The life of Lorine Pruette, it could be argued, was a testament to the power of libraries. She all but said so herself in a letter to the editor of The Chattanooga Times in 1974.

“While writing out a check for the Library Fund … I began to think how much the Chattanooga Library had meant to me,” she wrote. “I must have had one of the first cards in the children’s department of the Carnegie mansion there on Eighth Street and Georgia Avenue.

“In a short time, I was moved upstairs away from the ‘Bobbsey Twins,'” she continued. “There was a wire cage above the adult desk, and here I became acquainted with most of the great French writers. Although after high school here I went on to two colleges and two universities, that is where I was educated, right there at Eighth Street and Georgia Avenue.”