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Phyllis Brown Studio
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President's Office Photographs, 1923-1998 (P 092)
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- Charlotte Louise Meller was an Assistant Physician at Student Health Services from 1942 to 1943, and then again from 1954 to 1961. She was born in Fargo, North Dakota. She received her Bachelor of Science in Medicine in 1935, her Bachelor of Medicine in 1937, and her Master of Arts in 1938 from the University of Minnesota, studying neuropsychiatry. Before coming to OSC, she was a resident in neuropsychiatry at several hospitals, and a psychiatrist at a federal reformatory for women in Texas. She published a report on “The Case of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis with Psychosis” in the Minnesota Medicine in 1940, and “Treatment of Ten Cases of Paralysis Agitones with Vitamina B6” in the same journal. She was a member of Alpha Epsilon Iota, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Association of University Professors, and the Oregon Academy of Science. After a year as Assistant Physician at OSC, she left for a position in the Hawaiian Islands where she married a contractor and builder named C.E. Biddle. She maintained the name “Meller” as her professional name. They had a son, Charles Edward Junior, and a daughter, Charlotte Leilani. They moved back to Corvallis in 1954, where Dr. Meller began to work with SHS again. She reached the rank of full professor in 1958, and was the only full-time psychiatrist on staff at SHS for some time. In January of 1961, a colleague at the Testing Center named Dr. Charles Kremer began to criticize Dr. Meller’s service. He lobbied to have her employed 2/3rds of the time at the Testing Center, and 1/3rd of the time at SHS. He argued that it was unnecessary to maintain a psychiatrist full time. He also felt that she gave substandard care to her patients and ordered unnecessary laboratory work and X-ray tests, which he felt was an unnecessary strain on their technicians, and occupied resources which might be needed by other doctors. At the same time, Dr. Kremer was involved in a legal dispute with Dr. Meller’s husband, Mr. Biddle, who was suing him “for payment for the building of his house.” Dr. Meller felt that Dr. Kremer’s proposed position change was a way of indirectly dissolving her tenure to put her in a terminable position. As the tension between them grew, Dr. Kremer began to ask that she instead be fired as soon as possible, even sooner than the standard one year’s warning. She initiated legal proceedings to have her case heard by the Board. In the end, it was decided that she would resign at the end of the 1961-62 school year. Per their agreement, Dr. Kremer was obliged not to reply to letters concerning her, and he asked that she refrain from making derogatory comments about him and the Health Service. She began at a salary of $3,000 for 10 months in 1942, and resigned in 1961 at $10,158.
