Arthur Vidich and Virginia Wicks Vidich - An Intellectual and Personal Collaboration

Virginia Vidich and Arthur Vidich, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico

The classic study "Small Town in Mass Society" was not written in America even though its subject was a small upstate town just 18 miles south of Ithaca, New York.  Art Vidich worked and re-worked the manuscript for this book while working at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras. In order to complete the work with his colleague Joseph Bensman they met periodically to review each chapter and engaged in long distance letter writing when the cost of travel by airplane proved too expensive for their meager budgets.  The New School for Social Research archives contain the extensive correspondence between Bensman and Vidich during the 1950s when they were finalizing their book. Virginia Wicks Vidich, Art's wife, was not given sufficient credit for her research role in the Springdale study.  Yet she was one of the key individuals who conducted the basic research for Cornell University that ultimately was used by Arthur and Joseph Bensman.  Cornell University's director for the Springdale study retained six interviewers to complete the in depth interviews of men and women of Candor, New York with Arthur and Virginia responsible for the overall administration of the interviews.  Virginia and Arthur are seen in front of their Rio Piedras faculty apartment in a faculty compound known as La Finca.