Marjorie Rice Daltry Rosenbaum papers

Marjorie Suzanne Rice Daltry Rosenbaum was born on May 10, 1921 in Hartford, CT to Louis Haskell Rice and Guilelma Murray Rice, and was the older sister of Charles Murray Rice. She was a resident of Connecticut her entire life, and lived in West Hartford until relocating to Middletown in the 1950s. She attended school within the West Hartford public school system until her graduation from Hall High School. In 1943, she graduated with a BA from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA, with a major in English and a minor in music.

After graduating from college, she returned to West Hartford and took up a teaching position at Sedgwick Junior High School. She remained there until 1957 as the chairman of the English department and as an instructor of both choral music and social studies. While at Sedgwick, she also completed a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) in music, theatre, and art in 1955 at Wesleyan University. In doing so, Marjorie became one of the original graduates of Wesleyan's Graduate Liberal Studies Program (GLSP). During her life, Marjorie also completed additional graduate work at Harvard University, the University of Connecticut, and Central Connecticut State College.

Between 1957 and 1973, Marjorie continued to teach in the West Hartford, Haddam, and Middletown public schools until she retired in June 1973 after 30 years of service. She also performed in and directed a number of concerts and musicals in both a professional and recreational capacity. A number of these productions were in Wesleyan's student run '92 Theatre or for the Theatre Department including The Tempest, a Cole Porter concert, and a number of cabarets. She also made the Broadway cast of Kiss Me Kate, which came to Broadway in 1948.

In 1956, she married Joseph S. Daltry, founder, chairman, and first instructor of the Music Deparment at Wesleyan University and director of the MALS program. The two remained together until Joseph S. Daltry's death in 1967 at age 68.

She did not just dedicate her life to teaching within an establsihed system, but sought to create a new and better educational experience for students within the public school system. To this end, she founded C.A.U.S.E. (Community And University Services for Education) in 1967. C.A.U.S.E. was set up as a cooperative program meant to facilitate projects between Wesleyan University and the Middletown community and public and private schools in the area. She felt that a university, any university, owed something to the community it was in. By 1980, C.A.U.S.E. had either been involved in or supported over 45 distinct programs to support the schools in the Middletown area. These projects ranged from breakfast programs, to enrichment summer school, to art and dance programs, and adult education. She remained C.A.U.S.E.'s principal strength throughout her life. She later became chief administrator of Wesleyan's Educational Studies Program from 1973-1985.

She remarried Wesleyan Professor Emeritus of Science and Mathematics Robert A. Rosenbaum and remained with him until her death on October 20, 2013 in Delta, Colorado. Marjorie was a woman who always gave back and always sought to make the experience of others as beneficial and exciting as possible. As her obituary in the Hartford Courant wrote, "She was a woman of cultured substance, demonstrative presence, and memorable performance."