Lillian Ethel Williams 1909

Lillian Ethel Williams 1909
student Bay Path Institute Springfield
teacher 1910-1913 Chatham NJ
teacher 1913-?? New Britain CT
died 1919 in Passaic NJ

This card has intrigued me for some time: when Lillian said she planned to "extinguish" herself in basketball, was she saying she was really a bad player and thought she'd expire on the court, or was she a bad speller and meant "distinguish" rather than "extinguish"? Her biographical sketch didn't tell me, so I looked her up in the 1909 Llamarada (the senior yearbook). Lillian Williams was the secretary of the Athletic Association, and left guard on the 1909 team. Underneath her photo in the yearbook, it said:

"Lillian especially requested the board not to grind her on her love for Newton and potatoes, so we refrain. Deprived of these two fruitful sources, we search eagerly for others, and seize upon her "cuteness" and basketball reputation."

So I think it is a reasonable guess that Lillian expected to "distinguish" herself in basketball. But she died only ten years after graduation ... was it on a basketball court, I wonder ...

Source
All information from One Hundred Year Biographical Directory of Mount Holyoke College 1837-1937, Bulletin Series 30, no. 5; published and compiled by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts