Violetta Maloney Halpert

Violetta Maloney Halpert (16 May 1919 – 30 May 2009), American folklorist, researcher, and U.S. Navy Veteran. Born Violetta (Letty) Goff Maloney, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, she was instrumental in the development of university folklore collections in Canada.

Military career In 1941, she became one of the first women to enlist in the U.S. Navy, eventually joining the newly-formed WAVES. As Ensign with the Office of Naval Procurement, one of her duties was to work as a recruitment officer, giving presentations at colleges about "the duties of women serving in the WAVES... information on requirements for enlistment, what abilities are most in demand in the WAVES, and where and how they are trained." She rose to the rank of Lieutenant and saw active duty as both a Supply Officer and in Recruitment until 1945, remaining in the Reserves until her honourable discharge in 1951. It was at Indiana, in 1940, that she met Herbert Halpert, one of Thompson's doctoral students, and they were married during the war. Their son, Nicholas Theodore Halpert, was born in Kentucky on 16 February 1949.

In the spring of 1942, she worked on editing the first issue of the Hoosier Folklore Bulletin. In the 1950s, she chronicled folkloric works in progress for the Journal of American Folklore and researched a variety of genres, including folk cures, skipping rhymes, songs and dances, and death beliefs. During the same time period, she worked as a Library Assistant at the university library. At MUNFLA, she compiled and organized student manuscripts for use of researchers and created finding tools. With her husband, she devised and refined a comprehensive classification of genres of folklore, which "not only contributed to the structure of folklore courses taught at Memorial, but also formed the basis for systems of accessioning and data retrieval in MUNFLA."

The 1985 volume of the journal Culture & Tradition was dedicated to Violetta Halpert in recognition of her contribution to Folklore.

After her husband's death, she donated her husband’s and her own huge personal collections, containing over 13,000 monographs and journal titles, to the archives at Memorial University. Shortly before her ninetieth birthday, she was informed by the Executive of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada that she was to be awarded the Marius Barbeau Medal for her lifelong contribution to Canadian Folklore and Ethnology, an award which she received in 2009.

Death Halpert died on 30 May 2009 in St. John’s at the age of 90. She was memorialized for "her sharp intellect, sense of humor, and indomitable will"

Prizes Three prizes are named in her honour:

Violetta “Letty” Halpert Paper Prize – given to the best student paper delivered at the annual conference of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada.

Select bibliography "The Hobo Song." Hoosier Folklore, Vol. 1(1942): 101–102. "Jumping Rope Rhymes from Burley, Idaho," Hoosier Folklore, Vol. 3 (1944): 24–25. "Indiana Wart Cures". Hoosier Folklore, Vol. 8, No. 2/3 (Jun. – Sep., 1949): 37–43. "Folk Cures from Indiana." Hoosier Folklore, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan. – Mar., 1950): 1–12. "Death Beliefs from Indiana." Midwest Folklore, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter, 1952): 205–219. "Collectors and Students of Folksong, U. S. A." Southern Folklore Quarterly, Vol. 17, (Jan 1, 1953): 167. "Flora L. McDowell, 'Folk Dances of Tennessee'" (Book Review) Midwest Folklore, Vol. 5, Iss. 4, (Winter 1955): 242. "Smoked Corpses." Western Folklore, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jan., 1959): 50. "Place name stories about West Kentucky towns." Kentucky Folklore Record, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1961):103. Neither Heaven Nor Hell. St. John's: Memorial University of Newfoundland Department of Folklore, 1979. "Death Warnings in Newfoundland Oral Traditions." Studies in Newfoundland Folklore: Community and Process, 1991. Folk Tales, Tall Tales, Trickster Tales, and Legends of the Supernatural from the Pinelands of New Jersey, written by Herbert Halpert, edited by J. D. A. Widdowson, Violetta M. Halpert and Carl Withers. Halpert, Violetta Maloney; Swift, Lucie; and Spence, Dorothy Clark, "Jackson Purchase - Place Names" (1961). County Histories of Kentucky. 343.