Dorothy "Dottie" Trayer

Dorothy Trayer served as the College Registrar for a short stint, from late 1942 to early 1943. During that time, she sent correspondences for the Japanese-American student relocation program and studied piano under Frederic Cohen. She is noted to have held many performance with Cohen and performed on the BMC radio program regularly, while at the College. She was also noted as a secretary and listed as faculty wife in college bulletins.

Relationships

Husband: Raymond Trayer

Asheville Art Museum Collection

Writings about Raymond can be seen in digitized college bulletins on Asheville Art Museum's collection website: collection.ashevilleart.org. They can be found by searching these accession numbers:

2017.40.083 November 1942 bulletin,

"There will be a concert on Saturday, November 14, at 8:00 P.M. in the Dining Hall, consisting of an all-Schubert program. The first number, Four Polonaises for piano, four hands, will be played by Patsy Lynch and Barbara Pollet. Dorothy Trayer and Heinrich Jalowetz will then play the Divertissement a l’Hongroise for piano, four hands, and this will be followed by a March in E Flat Minor for piano, four hands, played by Dorothy Trayer and Frederic Cohen. Next, Trudi Straus and Heinrich Jalowetz will play Introduction and Variations on an original theme (“Duerre Blaetter”, Lied from the cycle “Die Schoene Muellerin”) for violin and piano. And the last number, March in B Minor for piano, four hands, will be played by Dorothy Trayer and Frederic Cohen."

2017.40.346 January 1943 bulletin,

"Dorothy Trayer was appointed registrar to take the place of Elizabeth Parker, now working at the new Moore General Hospital."

2017.40.092 February 1943 bulletin,

"Dorothy Trayer and Frederic Cohen will play several original fourhand piano compositions by Schubert."

2017.40.022 April 1943 bulletin,

"Dorothy Trayer left Black Mountain College on April 24 for Concord, New Hampshire, to take up her new duties as laboratory technician at the diagnostic laboratory of the State Board of Health. During her stay here she was College Registrar and a piano student under Frederic Cohen." and later in April 2017.40.101a-c "On the following Friday afternoon Dorothy Trayer and Frederic Cohen will give the Black Mountain College radio program."

2017.40.105a-c May 1943 bulletin,

"Dorothy Trayer writes, in part, from the New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord: “This is not the warm, sunny South; this is windy, wintry New Hampshire. Not democracy-loving, community-spirited BMC, but the political, casto-systemed State Mental Hospital… I’ve not yet become accustomed to the something eerie that permeates the whole place, to the dark subterranean tunnels that connect the ten or twelve different buildings, to dumb staring faces or shrill laughs seemingly coming from nowhere, to having almost everyone- from your waitress in the dining hall to the man who washes your test tubes- described as a ‘patient’ or ‘ex-patient’, to looking up suddenly from my microscope and finding someone staring in the door and then quickly scampering away, to being greeted with a coy “peek-a-boo’ by a grey-haired old lady. Nor, on the other hand, am I yet used to having my room cleaned daily and beds fixed, and to living with my husband. “Really, though, we like the setup. Our quarters are very comfortable, and though Ray works many more hours than I and is not allowed to eat in the same dining room, we have a good bit of time together. Fortunately, the “gap” between the technical stuff and the attendants exists only on duty. Ray’s work is in a men’s ward, with noy only mental but every other disease imaginable. The laboratory, in which I work, does all the State Board and Healthwork as well as the hospital work. For a short while I am doing hematology and will then work into the bacteriology department to replace the present bacteriologist who will be drafted any moment. “My philosophy of the fewer keys one carries the less worries, has been completely blown to the wind: my lab coat packet now bulges with various and sundry keys. One locks every door behind him and cannot even use the elevators without the proper key. “The question mark around our present ‘humane society’ now looms larger as we wonder about the elaborate efforts made to prolong the agony and suffering of these pitiful specimens of human beings while the slaughter of the young and physically fit daily increases.”

2017.40.118a-e August 1943 bulletin,

"Dorothy Trayer writes from Concord, New Hampshire that Ray is being transferred to an agricultural experiment station at Storrs, Connecticut. She will join him in October but has to be train in her successor in the laboratory. Her work here has been bacteriology in the State Laboratory- trying to isolate typhoid and other infesting organisms meaning to public health. "