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RPI
Reunion
Martha
Moore '39 BS/SW enjoys the RPI Golden Circle Breakfast.
Memories
flowed along with the wine and music under the elegant Rotunda of the
Jefferson Hotel at the opening Reception and throughout the
weekend—the 50 Year Breakfast, dinner at the Virginia Museum, tours of
campus, and School of Social Work festivities. “I thoroughly enjoyed
everything, from Friday at
3 pm
till Sunday at
1 pm
,” Les Simpson ’57BS/E says firmly. Fantastic! I met lots of people I
didn’t know, and people I did know but didn’t remember,” he
laughs. “It was an absolute delight. I’ll do my best to be there
next year.”
What did they talk about? “Other people: ‘Have you ever heard from
…who graduated and then dropped off the face of the earth?’” Les
had not seen the campus in nearly 20 years, when “they had done a lot
then, but nothing to what it is now. I am glad they kept the old
houses,” he says. “Three of us lived in a small apartment on the
third floor of Adams House at 914 West
Franklin
. We had a lot of
fun.” Les adds thoughtfully, “That’s probably why I had to take
English four times to get credit for two classes.” Les was president
of his class, something “I’m even prouder of now. I’d do anything
for good old VCU. And you better believe I’ll be tuned in next year to
see the Rams play!”
Spellbound by laughter at Stone Age
RPI vs. Modern Day VCU
“It was wonderful!” says Alice
Gaskill Taylor ’66BFA Fashion. “A group of us from the arts met
last year and agreed to come again this year.” The stories flew
“about who we knew, and who we dated, our escapades. It was so
different then. Men’s and women’s dorms were separate. We had to
sign out where we were going and be in by
10 pm
. We could wear shorts
or pants to class, but outside, they had to be rolled up under a
raincoat.”
At any time, their house mother might do a “room check” for tidiness
and made beds. “Neither I nor my roommate, Bobbe
Kennedy ’66BFA Fashion (who later got an
MSW
at Fordham, and a PhD
in Public Health and Master of Pharmacy at
Columbia
) were
characteristically neat,”
Alice
remembers. “So at
Christmas when we all decorated our doors, we wrapped the door in paper
with a big ribbon and a card that said, ‘To Miss Ranier From Bobbe and
Alice: Do Not Open Till Christmas!’”
Jo Lynne DeMary and Ed Peeples congratulate Sandra
Ogden Struckman '57 OT/AH.
“Absolutely delightful!” says Bill
McCracken ’58BS(OT)/AH, from the opening reception at the
Jefferson Hotel. (“I worked there as a bellhop in college.”) He
continues, “I’m retired from the 3M company, and this whole weekend
was as nice as any corporate event I’ve ever attended.” Bill and his
wife Marsha were especially impressed by the VCU students’ performance
from Smokey Joe’s Café.
“They were super. I thought I was on the floor with a
New York
show. We definitely
want to see more VCU Theatre productions.” [A June return engagement
for Smokey Joe’s Café has
been cancelled because of professional conflicts for the graduating
student actors. Check the VCU Theatre Department website for next
season’s schedule.]
The
McCrackens also socialized heartily; Bill is well-connected. “We were
a group, the OTs,” Bill says, “but I used to party with the
commercial art guys, so I knew a lot of them too.” He was impressed
with how far some alumni had traveled—“from
California
,
Oregon
,
New Mexico
, and the East
Coast—from all over.”
Reunion
this year was also the
90th anniversary
of the
School
of
social Work
, which held a
pre-reunion for
NOVA
alumni of the school.
Jacquelin Warren ’38
MSW
came to the
NOVA
reunion with her daughter Ellen Warren, also a social
worker. “We had a wonderful time,” she says. “It was such a good
opportunity to talk with everyone.” And she won a door prize, a VCU
blanket.
Warren
had retired only
recently from a 70-year career in social work, ending her private
practice only at 89 because of a stroke. “I was so lucky to find the
right thing.” She adds, “I’ve done just about everything.” She
worked with the Children’s Home Society in
Richmond
, placing babies for
adoption. As Director of Family Services for the state, “we set up the
first mental health services for children at mental health clinics in
Norfolk
and
Chesapeake
.” She helped
maintain connections with their families for children hospitalized with
mental illness.
Warren
was instrumental in
getting state licensure for social work professionals. “We were always
lobbying the state legislature. We’ve come a long way.” She wrote a
few professional articles based on her work.
She concludes, “The best thing that every happened to me was going
straight to the
School
of
Social Work
from college. That was
the start of everything.” (Since the reunion in March, Jacquelin
Warren has been diagnosed with lung cancer.)
The OT group look at an aerial shot of campus, 1958. Ann Poehlman
'57, Archie Blaha, Dolores Taylor Morgan '58, and Barbara
Innes Smith '55.
Before
Reunion
, Arlene “Archie” Blaha
’57BS(OT)/AH talked about coming to
RPI
“sight unseen” in 1953 from faraway
Pittsburgh
, because she
could afford the tuition. “We were expecting a campus.” As Archie and her mother walked from the Byrd Hotel
across from the train station, the “campus” never appeared, just
more city houses.
Most important to Archie was the cultural diversity. Yes, diversity, in
Richmond
, in 1953.
“Neither I nor my mother had ever been south of Mason-Dixon.
RPI
changed my whole perspective on life. We were all kinds of people from
all kinds of places.”
There were students from farm families, students whose mothers worked,
older students who had come back to school, like Edith “Budge”
Abbot, a teacher from Massachusetts—who had a car. “I met southern
aristocrats, ‘magnolia ladies.’” Her first weekend in
Richmond
,
another student invited Archie to go to church with her. “I have to go
to my own church, first; I’m Catholic.”
“Oh, well, I can’t be friends with you then.”
Brown v. Board of Education, Archie remembers, “upset the dormitory.
We had terribly long discussions.” The first black students were in
the evening program, in the
School
of
Social Work
.
However the experience went, “No matter where we came from, we had to
accept the fact that the world was bigger than we had thought.”
Archie
has had a career in public health. ”The HIV-AIDS epidemic hit just
before I retired. My friends at Whitman-Walker Clinic asked for
help—and I’ve been there ever since. That, too, has been a
fascinating experience, and an occasion to revisit prejudice.”
Les Sipmson’s roommate, Ed
Peeples ’57BS/E, spoke to classmates at the Golden Circle
Breakfast honoring graduates of 1957, about
RPI
’s “educational
synergy, where this phys ed major was to gain life-long affection for
great music, the fine and performing arts, behavioral sciences and
history and an enduring appreciation of the work of the health
professions, business and the sciences. And then there was all the rest
of that
RPI
learning absorbed without boundaries.”
Most important, he said, “were those remarkable educational
missionaries who taught us and administered over us. Some were the rare
characters who stretched our minds and our commitments and others, the
straight-laced ones, who keep us civil. You remember them well. I do
too.”
Ed looked to the future and continuing growth from those beginnings.
“Keep tuned to the news reports of our young strapping progeny, the
Virginia
Commonwealth
University
,” he told alumni.
“Watch for the next Noble Prize emanating from this place, watch for
another star to light up Broadway, watch for the next life changing
technology to emerge, watch for the next Pulitzer Prize, and watch for
the next sports record to be broken.
“Watch closely this place, which could not have become what it is
without heeding the voices left among the cobblestones on which we trod
in our youth so many years ago.”
RPI
Evening
College
“We changed our lives to
get there. It was an adventure.”
--Mary Jane Sale ’67BS’70MS’77PhD/H&S
Mary Jane Sale is an
RPI
grad who
benefited from the
Evening
College
, which at
one point was the largest in the country. Like many women in her
generation, she left college to marry.
“Three babies and 14 years later, I decided to return,” she says.
She began taking one class at a time, more when she could. Two years’
work took her four years.
Yet,
“it was a life transformation for me.” She continued to graduate
school, “something I would never have done without the faculty’s
confidence in me,” earning her PhD in psychology in 1977. In VCU’s
evening college she felt “high energy, an audible beat about the place
that I found compelling. Psychology became a driving force, insisting
that I study and learn more. My professional life was always dominated
by attitudes born in those exciting days. And it still is.”
Mary Jane and her friend Betty
Hunt Hillsman ’69BS’75
MED
drove to class in Mary Jane’s Mustang.
Betty remembers it breaking down and catching fire. “We found a place
that wasn’t really a parking place, behind
Shafer
Court
. And the
police were so nice to us! They called us the pilot and the co-pilot.
We’d meet at the Slop Shop and the police would escort us down the
alley to the car.” Betty became a teacher at Collegiate.
Betty the math major coached Mary Jane in algebra and intervened with
the professor to get her into the required math class. In return, Mary
Jane picked up Betty’s child from school. “Math had always been my
Waterloo
. In second
grade, they put me in the corner counting things,” Mary Jane admits.
She earned a B in math at
RPI
.
They
were having so much fun their next door neighbor, Shirley
White, joined them. She graduated and became an elementary school
teacher and then a principal in
Chesterfield
County
. Then
Betty’s mother joined them for awhile.
Gloria Irvin ’66BS/H&S’70
MED
joined their carpool, became a school
counselor and then later had a successful career in real estate. “The
counseling courses are useful, selling houses,” she says. “Sometimes
people just have a hard time making a decision. They want the house,
their husband thinks it’s fine, but they hesitate. You have to direct
them.”
The myth is that commuter students didn’t have a sense of belonging.
Mary Jane says, “There was a sense of camaraderie, of purpose, and
hopefulness. We were housewives. Doors were opening for us that wouldn’t have opened without
RPI
’s Evening College. We
talked and talked and talked, and studied together.
Being in school was really a thrill for
us.”
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