IOWA WOMEN'S ARCHIVES
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA LIBRARIES
IOWA CITY, IOWA
JOAN BLUNDALL (1945- )
PAPERS, 1986-1998
3 linear inches
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ACQUISITION: |
The papers (donor no. 825) were donated by
Joan Blundall in 2001. |
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ACCESS: |
The papers are open
for research. |
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COPYRIGHT: |
Copyright held by the donor has been transferred to The University of Iowa. |
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AUDIOVISUAL: |
Two videocassettes shelved in videocassette collection: V229 and V230 |
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PROCESSED BY: |
Heather Stecklein, 2002. [BlundallJoan.doc] |
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Biography
Joan Whitwer Blundall was born in
1945 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended Temple University and
graduated in 1966. She married the same year and moved to Providence, Rhode Island,
where she worked at a social welfare agency and entered the University of Rhode
Island master’s degree program in child development/family relations. Her son
Jonathan was born in 1970, and she completed her degree in 1976. In the late
1970s, Blundall divorced her husband and moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa to work for
the Iowa State University Extension Service. In 1984 as the farm crisis
emerged, Blundall began work at the Northwest Iowa Mental Health Center (later
renamed Seasons Center). She designed an outreach program that provided farmers
in dire straits with twenty-eight professionals to contact. Furthermore, she
trained nearly 400 community volunteers to visit the homes of distressed
families and developed a number of support groups where farm families could
meet to discuss their worries. Once the farm crisis stabilized, Blundall
re-immersed herself in education. She completed her master’s degree in Health
Care Administration at the University of Osteopathic Medicine in Des Moines in
1999. In the late 1990s, she served on
committees including the Iowa Department of Health’s Rural Health and Primary
Care Advisory Committee and the Iowa Department of Justice’s Consumer Advocate
Panel.
Related Collections
“Voices from the land” oral history project
Scope and
Content Note
The Joan Blundall papers date from 1986 to
1998 and measure three linear inches. They consist
primarily of newspaper and journal articals concerning the farm crisis in Iowa
in the 1980s and Blundall’s work with emotionally and economically distressed
farmers. The papers include
articles about Blundall’s work, articles published by Blundall in journals and
newspapers, and professional papers Blundall presented at conferences for
professional organizations such as The National Institute of Social Work and
Human Services in Rural Areas and the National Association of Social Workers.
Two videotapes from NBC and CBS news programs in the mid-1980s depict Blundall
working with farmers who were suffering severe emotional trauma as they faced
the loss of their farms and other economic crises.