Alumni Memories

  1. Stockwell, 1990

    Re: President Little’s dorms (Jan. 2008): Fall of ’90 my parents dropped me off at Stockwell. What a magnificent building. There were lotteries on which room a student would get the following year. The rooms with the bay windows and such were the most coveted. Now I hear that Stockwell is becoming co-ed.

    • Kristen
    • BSN
  2. On My Own

    Re: President Little’s dorms (Jan. 2008): What I remember about my early dorm days is not probably what the University would want to recall. But I entered right after the radical days had died down and left in its wake dope and independence.

    I was fortunate to be the first student to room in what had been South Quad’s “guest rooms”. That meant I (and I alone) had my own built-in bathroom! So I didn’t have to brave the cold cruel world of shared showers!

    I lived in what was then called “Kelsey Hall” (that section of the dorm reserved for jocks and honors students). A stranger combination could not be imagined.

    The University’s description of “an intellectual community” of honors students and professors could not have been more false or imagined if it had been forged and counterfeited by the Kremlin (our archenemy at the time).

    No professor even stepped foot into our dorm. And the only “education” that took place was how to smoke dope, a passionate pastime promoted by many of our Resident Assistants (RAs)and our most illustrious members.

    What I remember most about my first days in South Quad is when our Resident Director called us all together and said “Look, I’m going to Med School. So I don’t have any time for your problems. So don’t bother me!” Wow! Guess I’m on my own now.

    And that pretty much appealed to me. Sink or swim. And boy did I start swimming in a sea of strange things I’d never seen before like:

    1. That guy who worked at the Bookstore and always wore a girl scout outfit (with the nicest legs, by the way, on campus!) A fact that shocked the s— out of me when I overtook him one day and discovered—as I blurted out quit loudly and inappropriately—”it’s a guy!” I don’t think I’d ever seen a “cross dresser” before, or known they even existed!
    2. Or how about the “flasher” who disrobed in front of everyone at summer orientation. To which the RA simply yawned and said, “Oh pay no attention to him. He’s just looking for attention.”
    3. Or how about the famous Kelsey “porn nights” where I saw (for the first and hopefully last time) a woman straddled to a horse! (You remember, come on!)
    4. Or the whole “Shakin’ Jake” craziness and “Dr. Diag” diatribes. I always thought Jake was crazy until I realized he had more women fawning over him at Dooley’s Bar than I did!

    The whole point is it DID shock and upset me. It scared the h-e-double hockey sticks out of my parents (not always a bad thing!). And maybe that’s what I needed to break out of my sheltered, lily-white, suburban world. A subterranean culture of crazies, hallucinations and alternative lifestyles. Along with some radically different ideas about how the world should work (and how it DIDN’T revolve around ME anymore!)

    I suddenly was confronted with the fact that there were a whole lot more opinions and views and (yes) screwballs out there than I ever imagined. But somehow, I felt a little “savvier” about life after I got over my shock.

    And I know it prepared me to face this weird and wonderful world a little more open-minded, a little less shocked and a whole lot less afraid than when I went in. And that, my friend, is what a “liberal education” is all about.

    Nobody “drinking the Kool-Aid” in those days. Instead, everything was about challenging the status quo. That’s what I’ll always fondly remember of my long ago “dorm days.”

    • Paul Roberts
    • B.A. Political Science & History
  3. West Quad construction

    Re: President Little’s dorms (Jan. 2008): Only Allen-Rumsey House in West Quad was built before WW II, and during the war it was used for training naval officers. Chicago House was used as a women’s dorm starting about 1955.

    • John F. Sprague
    • B.S.
  4. Self-built loft furniture

    Re: President Little’s dorms (Jan. 2008): I lived in a “triple” my sophomore year (400 Newberry). We were forced to be creative given the size of the room. We made our own loftable furniture—we propped one of the beds on 2 dressers and put a desk beneath it. It was a miracle that no one got hurt. We also had 3 computers, 2 printers, 3 desk lamps, one halogen lamp, a fridge, microwave, TV and a VCR in the room. One day, one of us turned on her hair dryer and the whole floor lost power. This became a usual occurrence.

    • Grace L. Wu
    • B.A.
  5. 350:2

    The 1951 freshman engineering class had about 350 males and two females, who had all their classes together. We were broken into orientation groups of twenty and the leader was an engineering upperclassman. This was only in the morning; in the afternoon you were on your own. Students were not allowed to have cars, so you either walked or rode a bike everywhere. Our leader told us that if we wanted to meet girls we should attend the “mixers” that were held in the afternoons, because there wouldn’t be any girls in our classes. But the first day of math class the two gals walked in and sat down in front of me and one turned around and said, “My name is Marion Pearson, what’s yours?”
    A few days later she ask if I understood the homework and suggested that I come over to her dorm and we could work on it together. Needless to say I went over, and several weeks later we started dating. June 6, 1956, we were married. So much for not meeting girls in engineering classes.

    • Donald Knapp
    • BSCE
  6. West Quad stories

    Re: President Little’s dorms (Jan. 2008): I spent my freshmen year (1968/9) in West Quad. My father, Gerrit Wierda, was a Big Ten champion in basketball in 1948 with U-M and told me stories of going to the union to eat oatmeal each morning (he won’t eat it anymore).
    In my own time, I remember one Friday or Saturday night there was a large commotion in the next room, which housed two 300-pound, 6′-5″ football players. The next day we saw the splinters that remained of the old, wooden furniture that was common in that second oldest dorm on campus. Who cared: that was the year that #1 Ohio State came into town and Michigan really showed their mettle. We stood throughout most of the game.

    • Chris Wierda
    • B.A., B.S.C.E., B.A.
  7. The 'M' at Midnight

    Re: President Little’s dorms (Jan. 2009): When I was a freshman in 1968, West Quad was my home. West was all male, and my hall—Williams House—was partnered up with the girls at Helen Newberry (all women). I made a fast friend at Newberry, and we got along famously. At one point late that fall, we made a bet. While I don’t remember the contested item, I DO remember losing the bet. We had agreed that the loser had to stand on the block ‘M’ in the center of the Diag at midnight, singing a song at the top of his/her voice.

    While the song choice was a good one and my singing was adequate, I felt oh-so-conspicuous as a sea of late night students made its way across the diag late that fall night. We did not bet again….

    • Mike Imirie
    • BGS
  8. Family history at U-M

    My adopted family started at the University of Michigan with Grandpa Baylis in 1908.
    Then the Sorensen family: 1933 Dental, 1933 LSA, 1961 Dental, 1962 LSA, 1961 LSA, 1963 LSA.
    And the Stout family: 1961 LSA, 1962 LSA.

    • James Robert Stout, Sr.
    • B.S.
  9. My attendance at U of M was split into two parts, before and after Military Service in WWII. Pearl Harbor happened three months after I enrolled as a freshmen. My being in the ROTC at that time helped a lot with basic training when I left in January 1943. I was too young to enlist until after my 18th birthday on April 1, 1942. After serving in the Army Air Force, I returned in the summer of 1946
    and had to live with the large group of returning vets
    at Willow Run Complex in Ypsilanti. Before the war, no
    student could drive a motor vehicle. After the war, most of us had cars to go back and forth to Ann Arbor. Non-vets in town, though, could not drive, and the police monitored this carefully.
    Years later I went back to the Willow Run complex and took pictures of the area. What a change! All the dorms and single housing and West Lodge were gone and in their place were blocks of residential housing.
    WE were the first graduating class from the “new” Business School Building in 47-48.
    I had such good friends there and had such wonderful memories both of Ann Arbor and Willow Run. GO BLUE!!!
    (As for 2008 football, WE WILL BE BACK IN SPADES!!!)

    • Maurice “Jack” Gartner
    • B.B.A, M.B.A.