Schrager, Victoria, 1919-1943

Victoria Schrager was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 2, 1919. Her parents were Dr. Victor L. Schrager and Jean Brawner Schrager. She had one brother, a twin, who served in the military during World War II. A member of the Class of 1940, she attended Smith College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa her junior year, and won the Sophia Smith Scholarship. Schrager was involved in the theater department as an actress and playwright. She wrote "How Like a God" in 1939 commemorating President Neilson's retirement that year. She was also her junior year's class president, and was the head of the student government her senior year. Schrager graduated from the college with the highest honors in English. During the years of 1941-1942 she worked as a research assistant at Harvard University helping to prepare the book Shakespeare and the Nature of Man by Theodore Spenser. After Smith she worked as the Student Refugee Secretary at the International Student Senate in New York City, then received her Masters at Radcliffe in 1942. She returned to Smith as an English professor for 1942-1943, and was also the editor of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly . Her untimely death on October 24, 1943, shocked Smith College, where she was a beloved professor and colleague.