The Orphans of Davenport

by Marilyn Brookwood

  Asbell’s article handed Skeels an opportunity that many academics hope for: to have their academic research translated for public understanding. Quoting Skeels, the article said that while his study was small—it was based on only twenty-five children—it had wide-ranging importance because

  there are hundreds of thousands of babies born into deprivation. . . . If we can bring them the Head Start kind of experience early . . . and make sure it sticks, we’ll find that most of these children can become successful.9

  “The tide of history,” Skodak said of Skeels’s work, “had reversed.”10 From that point, whenever Marie Skodak spoke of Skeels, she told of psychology’s acceptance of Skeels’s discoveries as a success beyond all expectations. His work made the case, she said, for eliminating institutional care and improving opportunities for all disadvantaged children.

  The year 1966 became a milestone in Marie Skodak’s personal life as well when she married former Iowa station member and her longtime professional colleague Orlo Crissey. Her new husband, an originator of the field of industrial psychology, had helped identify those skills and personal characteristics that made for employee success in their work assignments. Eventually, he became a leader in several industrial psychology associations and led the American Psychological Association’s division in this new area. Skodak and Crissey’s family had been friends since they met at the Iowa station, and she and Crissey had later worked together at the Flint Child Guidance Clinic. It was Skodak’s first marriage. Crissey, who had been widowed, was the father of three adult children. Eventually, there would be nineteen grandchildren and great-grandchildren and even one great-great-grandchild. In 1969 Skodak Crissey retired from the Dearborn schools, and she and her husband traveled extensively.

  With the recognition of Skeels’s work, Skodak found that her friend’s mood shifted, and he recaptured some of the good feeling of his Iowa years. In 1967, the American Psychological Association selected Skeels as the first recipient of its G. Stanley Hall Award in Developmental Psychology. As president of Clark University, Hall had founded the American Psychological Association and became mentor to Lewis Terman. The irony of receiving an honor bearing Hall’s name could not have escaped Skeels’s notice.

  The APA’s selection of Urie Bronfenbrenner to present the award further confirmed Skeels’s recognition. In the 1950s, Bronfenbrenner’s ideas had accelerated psychology’s understanding of environment’s impact on early development. It was little surprise when his citation lauded not only Skeels’s discoveries, but his character. Bronfenbrenner contrasted Harold Skeels with those

  clever enough not to see things that would clash too sharply with the current scientific fashions. . . . But there are a few who, in place of being clever, are simply clear—. . . clear in stating the most defensible interpretation of the findings without fear or favor or the prevailing scientific climate. Harold M. Skeels is such a man. In an era when the constancy of the IQ was a sacred cow, he . . . had the vision . . . to exploit an experiment of nature—Skeels . . . demonstrated the power of the environment both to cripple and to foster the child’s intellectual development. For asserting such heresy, Skeels was mercilessly attacked by the psychological establishment . . . but he stood his ground.11

  Further recognition arrived the following year when, at its presidential banquet held at Boston’s Sheraton Hotel, the AAMD honored “the once ostracized” Skeels for “pioneering work” that demonstrated the effect of “love and attention” on children’s development.12

  What Skeels and Skodak viewed as their greatest distinction arrived in 1968, when the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, which honored the Kennedy son who died fighting in World War II, selected Skeels and Skodak as two recipients of the foundation’s International Award for Research in the Field of Mental Retardation. “Words fail me,” Skeels said upon acceptance, “and I feel very thankful and humble for the scientific opportunities which have fallen [to] my lot, and for this honor.”13 Unlike his previous awards, the Kennedy accolade came from a world beyond academic psychology, recognition that the Iowan’s revelations about development had reached the audience of those concerned with disabilities. Foundation director Eunice Kennedy Shriver told Skeels: “Your extraordinary work over many years has more than qualified you to join this small but distinguished group of Kennedy Laureates. We hope this award will be a further inspiration for you and for many others.”14

  Shriver’s dedication to the intellectually challenged emerged from her experience with her sister Rosemary Kennedy, who as a young child was diagnosed as retarded and in her 20s suffered a brain surgery error that confined her to an institution for the rest of her life. For Shriver, Skeels’s and others’ discoveries may have been bittersweet when they suggested that her sister’s outcome might have been avoided “if we had known then what we know today—that 75 to 85% of the retarded are capable of becoming useful citizens.”15 In a magazine article, she voiced relief: “We are just coming out of the dark ages in our handling of this serious national problem.”16

  On April 29, 1968, Skeels, Skodak, and Louis Branca, who would present the award, gathered in Chicago with foundation president Edward M. Kennedy, the Shrivers, Kennedy family members Robert and his wife Ethel, and the family’s grande dame, Rose Kennedy, along with Muriel Humphrey, the wife of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, for a dinner followed by a concert and awards program.17 With Gregory Peck as the master of ceremonies, the evening featured a concert by the Chicago Symphony conducted by maestro Seiji Ozawa, performances by Metropolitan Opera diva Grace Bumbry, and celebrated folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary. In presenting the award to Skeels and Skodak, Branca told the audience that they changed his life: “I sat in a corner, rocking, until these two took action. . . . I am here tonight because they gave me love, and understanding.”18 As the audience rose to give Branca a standing ovation, Edward M. Kennedy handed him a Steuben cut crystal award engraved with a seraph, a baby in its arms, which Branca presented to Skodak and Skeels. Each psychologist also received a financial award of $20,000 (today about $145,000).

  The following day, Branca, along with Shriver, Skeels, and Skodak, flew to New York for an interview with Barbara Walters on NBC’s Today Show. After he returned home, Branca received a letter from Skodak telling him that her friends and colleagues spoke admiringly about “that wonderful young man” whom they had watched on TV. Branca had so impressed the Kennedy family that they offered him a position working for them, which he declined, explaining that he wanted to complete graduate school. In a 2012 interview, Branca expressed concern that amidst the many powerful Kennedy figures, it would have been difficult for him to establish his own path. He added, too, that once people know that a person previously had low intelligence, they might not be able to perceive them as intellectually capable. “It takes grit,” he said, “to ignore what other people say about you.”19

  Branca never regretted his decision and established a successful career as an associate in the Dean of Students Office at the University of Minnesota, the university at which Florence Goodenough once conducted her research. From time to time he made presentations to Minnesota’s faculty about Skeels’s and Skodak’s discoveries and about his own history. After one such talk, a member of the university’s psychology department who knew of Goodenough’s 1930s attacks on the Iowa group assured him, “We don’t think that way anymore.”20

  With Skeels’s health limiting his travel, during the next years Skodak became the spokesperson for Iowa’s discoveries. In February 1967, at a New York City presentation before the American Educational Research Association, she defined the five environmental factors that had enabled thirteen cognitively challenged Davenport orphans, as well as several hundred Davenport adoptees, to thrive, but alerted her audience that her findings, essential for normal early development, applied to children “without clear organic pathology.”21 During the 1960s, studies about methods to support development in children who had such pathology were rare. Today, it is well esta
blished that the conditions Skodak defined for the nurture of young children are essential to the healthy development of every child.

  Skodak argued, first, that “early delays in mental development . . . can be altered by establishing a close affectional tie with a mothering individual.” Next, she told of the significance of “a high level of cognitive stimulation,” specifically, “exposure to an excess of language.” Skodak also noted that the best outcomes for adopted Davenport children developed “in an atmosphere of encouragement and approval.” These interventions, she said, are effective when the emotional and intellectual environments remain stable and are accompanied by consistent nurturing and stimulation that persists over time. Finally, Skodak emphasized that while very early stimulation is highly important, an exact time frame had not yet been defined.

  Concluding her talk, Skodak linked the Iowa discoveries to present thinking: “Thirty years ago, [the Iowa work] provoked studies to disprove such fantastic [IQ] changes. Today . . . it is hoped [they] will provoke studies that describe those elements of experience which are significant for optimum intellectual growth and its maintenance into productive adulthood.”22

  In September 1968, Skodak journeyed to Montpellier, in the south of France, for the first World Congress of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Affiliated with the World Health Organization, IASSIDD is the only international association that promotes research and policy about health, family life, behavior, and mental health related to intellectual disability. Addressing researchers who may have known little about the Iowa studies, Skodak emphasized that “the influence of environment . . . covers the range from profound mental defect, to intellectual giftedness. [These] factors are within the control of man . . . and inferences can be drawn for remediation and prevention.”23

  But after her return, Skodak was alarmed by a phone call with Skeels in which she found his thinking quite disconnected. Because several of those close to her, including her mother, were ill—during 1969 she lost twelve relations and friends—she and Skeels did not speak as frequently as had been their custom. However, in one phone call, thinking that a trip might buoy Skeels’s mood, she encouraged him to travel abroad. On March 14, 1970, in a routine letter discussing candidates for professional awards, he responded: “That sort of trip leaves me cold,” he explained, because “friends and colleagues travelling outside of the United States . . . have returned to their home base in a rough box.” Skeels then added a jokey postscript: “P.S. Of course, since you and your husband are so much younger than Jerry and myself—you can travel around the world—if you insist.”24 His mention of “Jerry,” which suggests a male companion with whom he could not travel as freely as Skodak and her husband, underscores his trust in her friendship and assumes her knowledge of that relationship.

  This was Skeels’s last letter to his research partner and lifelong friend. He passed away while he slept, on Saturday, March 28, 1970, of a massive heart attack and stroke. “He went as he wished,” Skodak wrote to Skeels’s cousin, “quickly, painlessly, without bothering anyone.”25 Only weeks earlier Harold Skeels had mailed the Kennedy award to Louis Branca. Branca died on August 30, 2015, and the award remains with Branca’s widow, the novelist Cass Dalglish.

  It fell to Marie Skodak to inform those who knew Skeels of his death. In a letter to the Kennedy Foundation, she related that Skeels had seen his work as a means to

  alleviate the consequences of social and familial disadvantage. The rejection and the acrimonious attacks on both his integrity and the concepts of the studies wounded him in a way from which he never fully recovered. He was fortunate to live long enough to see his theories vindicated and carried forward.26

  And to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Skodak expressed what Shriver’s interest meant to “a lonely man who had seen his life work denigrated for years.” She reminded Shriver of Skeels’s dinner with her family, and wrote: “He saw [that dinner] as sign of the turning point in social awareness of the significance of his earlier work. He was ever grateful for your interest and zeal on behalf of the handicapped and underprivileged.”27

  For information about Skeels’s death, one of his cousins had been in touch with Skodak. In a detailed response, she described Skeels’s medical condition and also that Skeels’s life seemed

  solitary and lonely . . . with little commitment of himself to the relationships which bring both joy and sorrow. . . . Perhaps I have written in more detail than you wanted, but Harold has always been a rather special person to me, and if you loved him you might want to know.28

  Skeels’s death left unanswered the question of how to interpret his near total silence about his work and his life, from his Iowa departure in 1946 to the period before his 1966 follow-up study. Skeels’s reticence is made starker by Skodak’s comments that during their Iowa days her friend had been “congenial and social,”29 “the master tactician”30 who had confidently worked with academics, institutional administrators, and political appointees to enable Iowa’s research. While based in London with the Army Air Force, Skeels spoke so freely about the babies and children for whom he arranged adoptions that his war buddies bestowed on him the nickname Storky.

  But the abrupt turndown Skeels received after the war from the Bivin Foundation when he had applied for funds for additional research may have signaled that his profession continued to view him as a failed researcher. To avoid further humiliation, he may have distanced himself from interactions with colleagues and, as Skodak and Simon Auster observed, remained private about his past work and his friendships.

  In another interpretation of Skeels’s retreat, one Skodak implied, he may have been fearful of being revealed as a homosexual. Grant Wood’s biographer, Tripp Evans, points out that archival or concrete evidence from Skeels’s time that would provide confirmation of sexual orientation rarely exists because, on exposure, gay men and women faced toxic stigmatization, as the attacks on Wood at Skeels’s own university clearly showed.31

  In their onslaught against the Iowa group, Terman and his followers were equal-opportunity aggressors, and all of the Iowans received rough treatment. While Stoddard, Wellman, and Skodak answered those attacks, Skeels, whom commentators acknowledge received the harshest treatment, withdrew from the stage. Skodak’s discreet comments, previously detailed, indicate that she suspected his situation and understood his self-imposed silence. Skeels’s casual reference to “Jerry” in his last letter suggests she may have been privy to a personal life he shared with no one else. Further, in retirement, Skeels had chosen to live in Balboa, a California coastal town about 8 miles north of Laguna Beach. From the 1930s to about 2000, Laguna, along with Provincetown in Massachusetts, the Florida Keys, New York City’s Christopher Street, and other enclaves, was a gathering place friendly to homosexuals. In 1982, Laguna elected America’s first openly gay mayor.32

  Moreover, Skeels’s post-Iowa career coincided with a wider cultural context, revealed in the American Psychiatric Association’s 1952 decision to label homosexuality a mental illness.33 From that perspective, no one who was gay was safe. In 1954, Alan Turing, the closeted British war hero who helped defeat Nazi Germany when he cracked its secret Enigma codes, was caught in a homosexual act and offered chemical castration in lieu of prison, but soon took his own life.

  Although by the early 1960s two of Skeels’s attackers, Lewis Terman and Florence Goodenough, had died, fear of being revealed may have caused Skeels to refrain from discussing his work with Auster and, as Gladwin implied, with others. This may also explain Skeels’s initial reluctance to move ahead when Havighurst suggested a follow-up study. To call attention to himself by aggressively challenging his profession’s orthodoxy or by engaging in research related to studies that had previously brought disgrace might have put both him and the work at risk. Thus, Skeels’s eventual commitment to a follow-up may represent more than his hope for answers about his subjects or a drive to discover new knowledge. It may hav
e gone unrecognized as a remarkable act of courage.

  In 1972, with Skeels and Wellman deceased and Stoddard retired as chancellor of New York University, Marie Skodak remained the only Iowa group member still active in psychology. As the keeper of that flame, she was not surprised when a letter arrived from French experimental psychologist Michel Schiff. Schiff had begun to study the influence of environment on the intelligence of adopted children, although with a different research design from the Iowans’: using France’s detailed records about its schoolchildren, Schiff would compare intelligence test scores in pairs of siblings in which one child had been adopted by a high-status family and another continued to live with their low-status birth parents.

  In his review of the adoption literature, Schiff wrote that he “could not find any postwar adoption studies in the US besides those of the Iowa School” and wondered if that could be correct.34 Schiff also explained that the work of other specialists in human behavior and genetics—two of the field’s leaders, Sir Cyril Burt and Arthur Jensen—did not stand up to analysis, but that she and Skeels had “been right, or at least . . . reversed the burden of proof.”35 In 1976, Burt’s studies purporting to show that 53 pairs of identical twins separated at birth and raised apart had identical intelligence, studies eugenicists regularly cited as hard evidence in support of their beliefs, were revealed as entirely fraudulent.36 In 1985, Stephen Jay Gould would label Burt’s studies “perhaps the most spectacular case of . . . scientific fraud in our century.”37