Administrative/Biographical History
Born in Dayton, Ohio on November 19, 1928, Leslie Candor grew up in Oakwood, part of the Dayton metropolitan area, attending Oakwood Public Schools. Upon graduation she was awarded membership in the National Honor Society and received the girl’s Bausch and Lomb science trophy.
She entered Oberlin College in 1946, where she encountered some discrimination in the math and physics departments, so she changed her major to English Literature. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1950 and married William (Bill) Kilmer Farquhar, an Oberlin graduate in 1943, the same year. Her husband’s job with the Crane Company entailed several relocations from their first home in Akron, Ohio. When Bill assumed a position as Vice President and General Manager at his father’s Gasflux Company in Elyria, the family was able to settle permanently in Oberlin, in 1963.
Leslie Candor Farquhar was a homemaker for Bill and their three children, Lorraine (b. 1952), Thomas (b. 1955), and Robert (b. 1959). Leslie became an active volunteer in the community as a member of the Allen Community Hospital Auxiliary, the League of Women Voters, Forum, and First Church in Oberlin. She initiated and coordinated the Oberlin College Foreign Student Host Family Program from 1965 to 1973, was a member of the President’s Commencement Committee in 1969, and volunteered in the college’s swim program for profoundly retarded children in 1972.
In 1971, over her husband’s objections, Farquhar took a full-time job writing commercials for radio station WOBL. She enjoyed the work but after a year she went to part-time in order to meet family responsibilities. She quit this job when family needs increased. From 1973 to 1975 she did advertising writing for the Consumer Review page of the Oberlin News-Tribune, which included taking one Polaroid photograph per week. After tiring of that the editor gave her other duties including reporting, but was still she was not satisfied. She then took a course in developing and printing black and white film at the Lorain County Community College, taught by an Elyria Chronicle photographer. After that she did photography for the Oberlin News-Tribune, and began working on her own photography, using a darkroom at home. In 1977 Farquhar began treatment for breast cancer, and resigned her position from the paper, but was invited to turn in free-lance work.
Farquhar was an enthusiastic golfer and an active member of the Oberlin Golf Club. There she met the editor of the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram Sunday Magazine, who invited Farquhar to write articles, starting with golf-related subjects. She also wrote a few articles for the Oberlin Alumni Magazine and turned in photographs for them to use. However, she was unhappy with the editing her pieces received, which she believed added unsubstantiated material and did not meet journalistic standards. With the passing of the editor at the Chronicle-Telegram in about 1983, Farquhar’s work for the paper ceased. The editor of the Oberlin News-Tribune, Dean Howard, then invited her to return. He purchased the Amherst Independent, and asked Farquhar to work there to bring up its readership. She did features, photographs, and ads for the Independent for about a year, then returned to the Oberlin News-Tribune full time. However, she had difficulties with the new editor there, and resigned in April of 1987. The editor was fired in May and Farquhar was invited to return, but she declined.
During these working years Farquhar’s chief volunteer work was with the Oberlin College Alumni Association. She was asked to fill in as acting class president from 1968 to 1970, then was elected for full five-year terms in 1975 and again in 1985. During those terms she was also elected to three-year terms on the Alumni Board in the 1970s, and to the Executive Board in the late 1980s. Her class (1950) enjoyed the behind-the-scenes class letters she wrote as part of her duties as class president.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Farquhar started work on a piece on the Soviet Union. Professor Heather Hogan, a specialist in Russian history, read the draft and secured Affiliate Scholar status at Oberlin for Farquhar. She resigned the honor, however, when President S. Frederick Starr returned from his sabbatical, believing that their conflict over an article of hers in the Oberlin News-Tribune, which had been heavily edited, would create difficulties for her.
In 1999 the couple moved to Kendal at Oberlin, where Leslie Farquhar spent a great amount of time volunteering as a photographer and a journalist. With her own equipment, she maintained a full darkroom at Kendal. She assisted with and took great pride in publicity for Kendal and the creation of full-page ads for the Oberlin Alumni Magazine. She also composed Kendal’s yearly full-page ad in the Oberlin News-Tribune. Farquhar’s photographs were exhibited in shows at Kendal and in one show at the Firelands Visual Arts Association gallery in Oberlin.
In 2000, as historian and publicity writer for the Oberlin Golf Club Women’s Association, Farquhar produced History of a Ladies Golf Group: The Oberlin Golf Club Women’s Association, 1950-2000 as a fund-raiser for the association’s 50th anniversary, and earned about $700. An earlier draft of the manuscript was humorously titled “Golf Without Balls,” in which she candidly exposed the prevailing unequal treatment faced by women members in a male-dominated private golf club.
Leslie Candor Farquar died on March 13, 2009 after a brief illness. Contributions were made in her memory to the Kendal Residents’ Assistance Fund in Oberlin and the Community New Hospice in Elyria.
Sources Consulted
Autobiographical statement by Leslie Candor Farquhar for the Oberlin College Archives, n.d.
Alumni file for Leslie Candor Farquhar (Oberlin College Office of Development).
Leslie Candor Farquar Papers (RG 30/401).
William K. Farquhar Papers (RG 30/380).
Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative InformationWilliam K. Farquhar Papers (RG 30/380).
Thomas and Katherine Farquhar Papers (RG 30/283).
Photographs: Subjects (RG 32/5).
