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### Notable Alumni

### Also in this Section:

                          - Census Supervisors and Employees
                          - U.S. Marshals
                          - Barbara Ann Bailar
                          - James F. Holmes
                          - Alexander Graham Bell
                          - W.E.B. Du Bois
                          - Shirley A. Chisholm
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                          - Wilbur L. Ross, Jr.
                          - James Corbett
                          - Herman Hollerith
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                          - John Wesley Langley
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                          - Halbert L. Dunn
                          - Davis Rich Dewey
                          - Leslie Kish
                          - Joseph Adna Hill
                          - Lafayette Parker "Pick" Temple
                          - Murray Feshbach
                          - Thelma L. Strabel
                          - Howard Sutherland
                          - John Shaw Billings
                          - W. Edwards Deming
                          - Henry Gannett
                          - Morris H. Hansen
                          - Roger Herriot
                          - Shirley Kallek
                          - Bernard Malamud
                          - Julius Shiskin
                          - Conrad Taeuber

## Thelma L. Strabel

Thelma L. Strabel was an American novelist who specialized in tales of the American South and sea adventures. She is best known for her novel *Reap the Wild Wind*, which was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and became a successful film.

Strabel was born in Crown Point, Indiana on December 19, 1900. Prior to college, she worked as a census enumerator for the U.S. Census Bureau.  She graduated from the University of Illinois and later became a fashion reporter in Paris and an advertising copywriter for the Abraham & Straus department store.  As a writer, she published several novels, including *Smart Woman* (1933), *Streamline Marriage* (1937), *For Richer - Or For Poorer?* (1938), and *You Can't Escape Forever* (1938).  Producer and director, Cecil B. DeMille purchased the movie rights to her best known novel, *Reap the Wild Wind* (1940), which he made into a 1942 movie starring Paulette Goddard and John Wayne.  In the same year, her short story, *The Forest Rangers*, was filmed starring Fred MacMurray, Paulette Goddard, and Susan Hayward.  In 1946, one of Strabel's magazine stories was adapted for film, titled *Undercurrent*.

Strabel continued to write novels and short stories until her death in 1959, including *Storm to the South* (1944) and *Caribee* (1957).

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