The principal individuals represented in this collection are Serena F. Mathews, John W. Mathews, Homer H. Mathews, Catherine M. Friel, John B. "Jack" Friel, Charlotte Friel, and John Mathews Friel.

Serena Florence Mathews (May 19, 1871-April 28, 1952) was born in Darlington, Wisconsin (Lafayette County) to Catherine "Katie" Ann and William Blight Wallis. After graduating from Darlington High School in 1890, Serena made her way to Pullman, WA a year later where she taught in the first Lincoln School on West Main Street and continued her studies at the newly-opened Washington Agricultural College and School of Science (later WSC, WSU). The Wallis family eventually joined Serena in Pullman and made their home on the corner of Spaulding and Maple Streets, which later became the Methodist Church parsonage. Following her marriage to attorney John W. Mathews, Serena remained an active participant in Pullman civic affairs and club work and established a reputation for using her affiliations to advocate for the progress of women and other matters. During World War I, Serena served as the Whitman County chapter president of the American Red Cross and helped organize the "Community War Workers," a group of over 100 women that raised funds and distributed supplies throughout the local community. The Pullman Fortnightly Club, of which she was a longtime member (and where her mother was a charter member), was instrumental in securing Serena's nomination to serve as the 17th president of the Washington State Federation of Women's Clubs, a position she held from 1927-1929. Her work through the Federation of Women's Clubs helped to pass the County Library Bill in the 1930s, improving access to literature and information in rural communities across the state. She also advocated for child welfare reform, as well as reform for women inmates and developmentally disabled individuals. In addition to her work with the Women's Clubs, Serena was a member of the P.E.O. Sisterhood (Chapter S), Order of the Eastern Star, and the Women's Society of Christian Service of Simpson Methodist Church.

John Wilbur Mathews (April 27, 1864-May 1, 1917) was born in Huntertown, Indiana (Allen County) as the seventh child of Samuel and Elvira Mathews. His grade school days were spent in a wooden frame schoolhouse on his father's farm, and he eventually pursued classical training at the Methodist Episcopal College in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His professional aspirations brought him to the Eastman National Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York, followed by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he obtained his law degree in 1889. Following graduation, he formed a law partnership with the Honorable D.D. Moody at Auburn, Indiana, but after a year, the firm was dissolved so that John "might fulfill a youthful desire to go west." He arrived in Pullman in May 1891 and opened a law office, establishing a reputation representing Palouse region farmers. As a staunch supporter of "dry" campaigns at the local and state level, he prosecuted violators of the state's liquor laws during his term as Whitman County Prosecuting Attorney (1896-1898). Some years later, Ferry County Commissioners took notice of his diligence in this area and hired him as a special prosecutor to "clean up the lawless conditions in that county" (Pullman Herald, May 4, 1917). He married Serena Wallis in Pullman on November 29, 1894, and they had three children: Homer (b. 1896), Catherine (b. 1901), and Charlotte (b. 1904). In 1910, John and Serena purchased a homestead in Buhl, Idaho and developed it from sagebrush to irrigated hay grain crop production. Prior to his final illness, John was elected Mayor of Pullman "on a platform pledging the improvement of the moral conditions of the city and a continuation of its previous progressive program" (Pullman Herald, May 4, 1917).

Homer Hamilton Mathews (August 14, 1896-April 23, 1968) was the eldest child and only son of John and Serena Mathews. He graduated from Pullman High School in 1914 where he was a member of the football team (Whitman County champions in 1913-1914). He went on to attend WSC (1915-1918) and became a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity. He was a member of the men's glee club, as well as a trombone player in the school band. Like his mother, he became an educator for a time and taught in Yakima in 1920. He eventually moved to Sacramento, California with his wife Esther.

John Bryan "Jack" Friel (August 26, 1898-December 12, 1995) was born in Waterville, WA to John M. and Maude (Woolverton) Friel. Jack moved to Pullman in 1916 and began his studies in history, economics, and political science at WSC and joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity. After the U.S. entered World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Army (Camp Zachary Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky). After a brief stint in France, he returned to Pullman and lettered in baseball and basketball, earning all-conference honors in basketball in 1922. After his graduation in 1923, he began the three-year teaching assignment necessary to acquire a teaching certificate in the state of Washington at the time. It also marked the start of his basketball coaching career in the high school and college ranks, at Colville High School. He moved on to a three-year tenure at North Central High School in Spokane and coached the team to a state championship in 1928. Following his time in Spokane, he accepted a position as head basketball coach at WSC (later WSU), a position he held from 1928-1958. He also pursued a Master of Arts in Education at New York University, specifically in physical education methodology. He won 495 games as head basketball coach at WSC, which ranked him eighth in coaching wins in NCAA history at the time of his retirement in 1958. His most successful team was the 1940-1941 team which won the Pacific Coast Conference before losing to the University of Wisconsin in the NCAA championship game. Friel also served as the baseball coach at WSC from 1943-1945. After his retirement from WSC, he became the first commissioner of the Big Sky Conference, a position he held from 1963-1971. He also became the Northwest region's observer of officiating, and is credited with the implementation of the one-and-one foul shot. His contributions to the sport over the decades have been recognized with a number of honors, including the dedication of WSU Beasley Coliseum's Jack Friel Court in 1977. He was an inaugural inductee into WSU's Athletic Hall of Fame (1978), and was also named to the State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame.

Catherine Mathews Friel (November 18, 1901-July 27, 2003) was born in Colfax, Washington, the second of three children, to John and Serena Mathews. Like her mother, Catherine was active in the civic affairs of the local community. In 1919, her senior year at Pullman High School, she transformed the high school's Girls League into Pullman's Y.W.C.A. and served as its first president. She was also active in literary groups and other clubs in Pullman, including the Fortnightly Club (of which she was a third generation member) and the P.E.O. Sisterhood. She attended Washington State College where she studied English and joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. While working in the college library for 25 cents an hour in her freshman year, Catherine met Jack Friel, three years her senior. "Freshman girls felt sophisticated going with older men who had been to Europe," she recalled in a spring 2002 article in Washington State Magazine (Pat Caraher, "Catherine Mathews Friel is thankful for life in a small college town"). She stayed in touch with Jack after they graduated in 1923 and embarked on a teaching assignment at Dayton High School, where she taught English. She would eventually complete a Master's degree in English and subsequently taught at Pullman High School. She was a vocal advocate for historic preservation on the WSU campus, and went to great lengths to help save Stevens Hall in the 1970s. Stevens Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. But her efforts to preserve the legacies of WSU did not stop at the campus' first women's dormitory. Following the death of her son John and daughter Charlotte in the 1970s, she and Jack worked to establish the John Mathews Friel Memorial Artist Lecture Series through the WSU Museum of Art, as well as the Charlotte Friel Memorial Lecture in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication. In 1999, Catherine was awarded the WSU Foundation Outstanding Service Award for her contributions to the university.

Jack and Catherine married on August 28, 1926. They had four children: Charlotte (b. 1929), Wallis (b. 1931), John (b. 1938), and Janette (b. 1940). With the exception of Janette, who obtained a psychology degree from Stanford and earned a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, all of their children attended and graduated from WSU. Although (like Janette) he is not a principal subject of this collection, it should be noted that Wallis, a former Whitman County Superior Court Judge, studied political science and graduated in 1953.

Charlotte Friel (December 29, 1929-December 31, 1971) grew up an active member of the Camp Fire Girls organization. She graduated from Pullman High School with the class of 1947 and received her B.A. in Speech from WSC in 1951, where she was editor of the WSU student newspaper The Daily Evergreen and a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Her aspirations in the field of broadcasting took her to New York City, where she applied for and was offered an administrative job at Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). She advanced to the position of Manager of Research and Administration Corporate Affairs, a position she held from 1954 until her death in 1971. She obtained her M.A. in Communications from Columbia University in 1960, as well as her Ph.D. in Communications from New York University in 1968. Following her death from Hodgkin's Disease, the Charlotte Friel Memorial Lecture was established by Jack and Catherine in 1973 to bring in recognized professionals in the mass communications field to the WSU campus. Her papers and notes used to write her doctoral dissertation, "The Influence of Television in the Political Career of Richard M. Nixon, 1946-1962," were subsequently transferred from the New York University Libraries to what would become the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California.

John Mathews Friel (April 20, 1938-June 5, 1971) received his B.A. in Fine Arts from WSU in 1962. After working briefly as a graphic designer in the WSU Department of Publications and an art editor for the satirical magazine ASKANCE, he received a scholarship to study at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and later studied at the Los Angeles Art School. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve and was discharged on September 30, 1963. His hard-edge paintings became a hot commodity for individual buyers and collectors in the late 1960s and hung in business and private collections in the northwest, California, Chicago, and New York. His works "Interlock," "Thunderball," and "Flash" all hung in the executive reception areas of Columbia Records and the CBS Television Network in New York City. While living in Tokyo in 1966-1965, he had a one-man exhibit at the Tsubaki Kindai Gallery in Tokyo (1966). Upon his return to North America, he participated in a two-man collaboration titled "The IT Show," which was featured in the Albert White Galleries in Toronto, Canada, and the Rolf Nelson Gallery in Los Angeles. Despite his success in the fine arts world, John became "depressed and disillusioned with his artistic creations [and] he destroyed dozens of his paintings before his death." After his suicide in 1971, Catherine and Jack worked to honor John's memory as an artist and WSU graduate and in 1973 established the John Mathews Friel Memorial Artist Lecture Series through the WSU Museum of Art, where three of his paintings reside in the university's permanent collection. In 1980, Catherine donated some of John's papers to the Archives of American Art.