Georgia "Juddie" Rhoades Portrait

Georgia Margaret "Juddie" Rhoades (1912-2003) was born in St. Ignace, Michigan to John Rhoades and Emma Richardson Rhoades. She attended Davenport-McLachlan Institute (now Davenport University), a business college in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her career as an editor included stints working for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Fine Arts at the Smithsonian, and various federal government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and the U.S. Embassy in Chile. After retirement, she moved back to St. Ignace, where she became active in a number of civic organizations and wrote a book on the history of Moran Township. The bulk of the collection consists of diaries, photographs, and letters Rhoades created during a bicycling trip across Europe in the summer of 1939 as well as notes and memoirs written later reflecting on her experiences in Europe just prior to the outbreak of the war. There are also a few pieces of correspondence from her time at the U.S. Embassy in Chile in the early 1940s and notes from an earlier trip to Europe in 1936.