My Macalester Experience
Share Your Memories with Classmates
Online submissions for the 2018 memory book is now closed.
A special thank you to classmates who shared memories and photos. A printed version of the Memory Book will be distributed at Reunion.
Read Classmates’ Reflections and Memories
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What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
Having an independent history course where I got to discuss ideas one on one with a full professor. SWAP was also very important to me.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
I really loved dorm life. I have great memories of times spent with roommates and dorm-mates.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
I continue to see many Mac classmates today and find them as delightful today as they were 50 years ago. It also blows my mind how accomplished they are now.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
When ever I find myself approaching a knee jerk reaction to an issue or event I force myself to think back to Mac. We learned to think through issues and look at all sides before making up our minds and stating our opinion. I think I do that. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
My trip to Paris during Interim 1967. It was the beginning of a love of France which continues to today. I majored in French and spent a year in France after graduation. I so value the education we received. The French literature, Dr Hill’s philosophy classes, a foray into calculus,…all the tools to a wonderful life.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
My Dad died suddenly in December 1966. I was studying for finals when I received the call. Everyone at Mac was so supportive. I went home and then on to Paris for Interim. Finals were pushed out to February. Don’t know how I would have managed without the support of the Mac community.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
Simply my Macalester education has allowed me to live the life I’ve wanted to live.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
I’ve tried to emulate the Macalester environment- striving, understated, moving things forward, empathetic. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
As a transfer student, I was looking for more in a college than my original choice offered. Macalester provided what I was looking for: professors that challenged us to think critically and exposed us to new ideas, an active and engaged student body, lifelong friendships, and exposure to new experiences. Without a doubt, my two trips to France in 1967 were most influential. Both of these experiences opened my eyes to a world I never imagined growing up in a small town in southern Minnesota.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
Recently I found a picture that had been taken of several women ironing outside Bigelow Hall. It happened to be part of a fundraiser for an orphanage in Vietnam. An article in the May 14, 1967 issue of the Mac Weekly announced this event as: “Tuesday-Thursday: Bigelow Hall’s Women’s Association of Slaves will be available to do ironing, mending, and similar tasks for the fellows.” (!!) The announcement alone says volumes about where we were as a society in 1967.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
“Why aren’t you working here?” asked Mac’s then-president John B. Davis when I met him at a reception during our 10th class reunion and told him I was a librarian. His question proved to be prescient when I was offered a job as a reference librarian 10 years later as the new library, now the DeWitt Wallace Library, opened. Over 20 years working in the library offered me a chance to stay connected with the college and to work with new generations of extraordinary Macalester students.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
I would like to think they have shown up in my various roles as wife, parent, grandparent, educator, and volunteer in various community organizations. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
While it’s hard to pick just one, certainly the travel & work experience during the summer of 1967 on SWAP was a major growth episode for me. It helped to focus and coalesce many years of education and experience into a useful framework for understanding and engaging the world. Also significant was the chance to interact with caring faculty, talented classmates, and to do honors work in my major. Finally, helping to grow the soccer program into a varsity sport provided its own set of rewards.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
In our senior year, my roommate Ward Benshoof & I earned our meals by serving as Sunday cooks in Wally Hall (the old dining hall). We prepared lunch and dinner and, most of the time stayed true to the SAGA recipes provided. Occasionally we dabbled in improvements. We did bring tears to the eyes of our SAGA manager the time we added some kick to the fairly bland chili recipe provided. Seriously, tears to his eyes. The well-received tasty results were just more kicky than he expected.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
My family, work, social, and volunteer life have all greatly benefited from the questioning and lifelong learning skills I encountered and, with the help of top notch faculty and classmates, began to hone in my years at Mac.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
I guess most obviously in the learning and questioning framework I’ve used ever since – at work, with family & friends, as a volunteer in a variety of organizations. Perhaps telling here is the fact that both of our sons chose to challenge themselves at small liberal arts colleges in pursuit of similar educational experiences. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
I really can’t credit one experience at Mac. SWAP, Ambassadors for Friendship, interning in Washington, D.C., the Canadian-American Conference, Drama Choros, and studying under Prof. Hildegard Binder Johnson were all lasting and formative experiences.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
My father died during the first month of my Freshman year. The Dean of Women helped me pack and drove me to the airport for my flight home. Upon my return, my Bigelow Hall dorm mates had decorated my room and had little gifts for me. The College arranged for an interim scholarship until our family finances were determined. In short, the Macalester “family” embraced me and let me know this was not just my college, this was my new home away from home.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
Mac was nurturing and intellectually provoking. People were kind and inclusive. There was a global perspective. Since Mac, I have tried to be a life-long learner, give back in time and personal resources to causes and individuals, and to look beyond the comfort zone of my home. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
The faculty, the students and staff and all the people who created trusting relationships and the environment we lived in and studied. Dorm life was wonderful with the friendship of people like Mary R Westra, Jodie Erickson and Carol Schifelbein Erickson who looked after me in those first months. But, mostly it had to be the International Center, Harry Morgan, Jim Toscano and all the people there who gave a chance to cook food, gather
and share and talk.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
Almost every event that first year at Mac was significant and memorable for me. Perhaps some of the speakers at Convocation and Chapel were more impressive in the social and political context and left a bigger impact. I was moved by the challenging speeches of William Sloane Coffin Jr. and Eugene McCarthy on social responsibility and questioning power. Then also was the summer trip with Ambassadors for Friendship; visiting Arkansas in racial tension, Texas and the little tangle with the traffic cop, or camping with the grizzly bears in Yellowstone. I do remember so well a remark at a picnic in Little Rock, when I heard a woman tell me how they accept the blacks but they would never want to be addressed by their first name from a black person; stunned is how I felt.
How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
Certainly being active in social and community activities. I have enjoyed organizing girls soccer in Minneapolis where I coached and helped incorporated an extensive city league. Teaching was fun but organizing for a professional labor union at the University was really the best challenge. My time at the Minneapolis Neighborhood Organization was also important and productive with the community. The Neighborhood Revitalization Program offered funds to neighborhoods to invest in local programs for various programs. I have also been active in city politics working with the Mayor and city council members.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
Activism and doing the right thing. We moved to Pontiac, MI in ’73 when all the big GM folks vacated the neighborhoods in fear of busing. I really believe that our time in the city during racial tensions and changes in the urban evolution has greatly influenced mine and my children’s awareness and activism with the constant challenge of racial issues in the country. Mac somehow always created the challenge to stand up for something, take and stance and try to make a difference. I see it in so many of the graduates who have come after us. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
Activism and internationalism. SPAN was critical. My November 1967 journal is typical: “Today we picketed Mondale for avoiding a strong stand on Vietnam. Later, we heard a speech on Soviet hegemony which Yugoslavian journalist Branco (from MAC’s World Press Institute) critiqued. Standing in Viet Nam peace vigils lets me watch others flying across campus preparing for their ‘world life.’ What part of our future lives will social concerns claim? If you don’t live your concerns, they vanish.”Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
My Wally Hall triple catapulted me from a preacher’s kid, teetotaller, Girl Scout life into one of guerilla theater, Petula Clark, 3 a.m. existential exegesis, and Estee Lauder. My roomie Jean wowed me with thespian skills and MAC Phase Three literary magazine “commentaries on lived lives.” She later taught and conducted research on atypical child development at Michigan and the U of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ. Today Jean and I still revisit topics of yore, plus ones of which we never dreamed.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
Dr. White, puffing on his pipe, mesmerized us with philosophy and inspired me to write on the epistemology of a love-based knowledge. Mary, Min, Renee and I designed a philosophy of social science course with Dr. Weiss, attuning me forever to methodology. Dr. Armajani’s support of my SPAN Israel research and graduate school in Beirut, plus TAing for Dr. McCurdy’s interim student subcultures course applying ethnographic techniques to Macalester, launched my Middle East anthropology career.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
Macalester didn’t exactly instill new values, but it did provide an environment in which values my family had planted could grow. I was grateful for MAC’s focus on off-campus issues since I was nerdy and might have kept my nose in a book. Friends marched in Selma my freshman year, but I was too green politically to consider it. Myriad candlelight vigils later, I joined MACites marching in downtown St. Paul in April 1968 after Martin Luther King’s assassination. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
Going to Switzerland with SWAP.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
The bottom floor of Turck was all freshman the year I came and we GFTers formed a strong bound. I remember our reenactment of The Unsinkable Molly Brown and several pranks that rooms pulled on each other. One time my window was completely covered in a man-made snow hill.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
Just the mention of Mac has opened doors for me-both socially and in my career.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
The ethics of hard work and effort of excelling at whatever you do but also the ability to form friendships and have fun. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
My experience on SWAP in Switzerland with a farm family truly built for me life experiences. I was alone with a family who spoke little English so had to use my own resources to get through each day. Traveling for a month through Europe with Mac friends was a highlight of my college years. We learned how to be more independent. I am sure my parents thought Mac was following me around,.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
My internship for Congressman Karth from St. Paul in Washington DC was very memorable. Cathy Campbell, Mary Spaeth, Marlene Johnson and I stayed at Cathy Campbell’s house in DC while her parents were in the Bahamas. We even threw a party for Dr. Baird and all the interns while there. We were able to work all morning, roam the halls underground and then play tourist during the afternoons. We were able to attend the State of the Union with President Johnson and sightsee extensively in DC.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
At Mac we were encouraged to think for ourselves and gain self-confidence in who we were. I choose a teaching career in Special Education as I knew I wanted to help those in need. I was also able to leave my family and friends in MN and travel west for an adventure in the Bay Area where I met my husband and raised my family. I still return each year to MN because of my strong roots and connections to my fellow students. Mac helped instill that in me.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
There was a strong encouragement at Mac to be involved with state, national and worldviews. It was a politically raw time in the world and it seemed natural to become involved. Protests were common whether against Vietnam or for civil rights. I try today to stay in touch with what is happening locally and internationally and to express an opinion. I was in the Women’s March in 2017. Were my views formed at Mac? Probably. It was such a formative time in our lives. How lucky we were!! -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
I loved the Mac social life, the new friends, the bridge games in the lounge, the meetings with that special someone in the stacks. But the most influential experiences were the thought-provoking, challenging and meaningful courses taught by engaging professors. My life-long habits of mind were shaped by classes like Man’s Search for Meaning, Modern Isms, State and Local Government, Human Geography. These classroom experiences were enhanced by the opportunity to travel abroad and volunteer.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
As a geography major, I had the opportunity to work closely with Dr. Hildegard Binder-Johnson, a legend in her own lifetime. I worked as one of her TAs but one of my tasks was a bit unusual – I bought yards and yards of jungle print material and sewed curtains for her office in Carnegie. I believe they remained in place of many years.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
After leaving Mac, my husband and I ended up moving to live in Panama (initially because Gary was drafted and sent to teach golf on military courses in the former Canal Zone) We lived and raised our family there for 20 years. Because of our experience at Mac, we were able to embrace the experience of living abroad. We both worked as educators and communicated the power of learning to our own children and the students were served.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
I left Macalester committed to service and as a life-long learner. My roles as mother, raising a family living abroad for 20 years, and educator, helping to shape students of the next generation, have all been shaped by my Mac experience. I have no doubt that these values will continue to inform my life as I pursue the next chapter of my life. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
So many! I will eliminate snow days at the DH and mention the Washington, DC Interim term. I fell in love with DC then and have lived here most my life since graduating from dear old Mac.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
SWAP ’67. I left Mac at the end of May as a radically moderate Republican still supporting the domino theory justifying our presence in Vietnam. My travels and encounters with Europeans, especially a middle-of-the night conversation on a train to Oslo with a Norwegian peacenik, made ME an anti-war advocate and a Democrat. Sometimes you have to leave your familiar life to find out who you really are. SWAP did that for me.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
It’s the do-goodism. Oh, I know there are fancier words like giving back and community service, but I call it doing good. I’ve been fortunate to hold jobs where I could influence issues like gun control, domestic violence, rape reform, children’s public health and the election of women to public office. Plus, I’ve been a volunteer in feminist and Democratic politics since forever.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
An insatiable curiosity about the world and its people/cultures came directly from my Mac experience, starting with the unfortunately-named Man and His World. I ended up doing my Master’s thesis on successful practices in building a multicultural workforce. And without that curiosity, I would never have climbed in that Bedford truck in London and set off on an overland camping trip to Kathmandu in 1978. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
Mac was a place where the bar was placed higher than I had ever known. I took an elective (Mitau’s class) my freshman year and almost flunked out of his class! To almost lose out on the two years that I was so blessed to go to Mac would have been a monumental loss. “Persistence can win,” is the foremost lesson I learned at this school, a lesson that has served me well in all areas over my lifetime.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
Douglas Hatfield took our class to Guthrie to see Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard “performed by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Sitting in the front row, (yes and wiping Mr. Cronyn’s spit from my face on more than one occasion) this duo made words come alive for me. Writing started to take root with me there.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
I remember Paul Harvey would always say in his broadcasts,”Now for the rest of the story.” I think of Mac when I hear those words. It was there that I learned to dig deeper, listen more, and know that the only absolutes in life for me is that we are all alike, and we are all different. I learned that each and every one of us can make a positive impact in the life we choose.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
To make a difference in all areas of my life as a woman, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a community champion, an educator for many years, and now as an author were seeds that were first sown at Mac. Persistence does win, and I have been blessed to see the evidence of this over and over again. I am ever so grateful for all of the many wonderful people that touched my life during those two years. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
Being in an atmosphere where I learned there was so much I did not know and how my four years at Mac set me on a path of life-long learning.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
I lived in Wallace Hall all four years at Mac. While the other seniors moved off campus. I learned to know and enjoy the underclass residents living there.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
Having been a teacher for many years, then the Bush Foundation and numerous community boards, I am an advocate for giving time and resources to others.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
I am forever grateful to Macalester for giving me the confidence to discover who I was and spent the last fifty years hoping I am a better person tomorrow than I am today. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
I liked the in-depth Interim experience and the break it gave us in the middle of the school year. Two of my years I went off campus and these classes were especially memorable and showed me the world outside of Minnesota. I studied Marine Biology in Florida and Geology on a bus trip through the Southwestern US. Both were really fun as well as educational.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
I have kept in close touch with several friends I made at Mac and they have been a constant in my life. Another important experience was a field Botany class which introduced me to nature and this is a love that has grown through the years. I travel a lot and have been to nearly all the national parks in the US. -
What was the most influential experience you had at Mac?
SWAP. For a small town South Dakota guy, it was an incredible opportunity to travel and work in Europe for the entire summer at some small expense. It still seems hard to believe that we were turned loose on the continent and expected to find our own way.Share a story or moment from your time at Mac:
I was a transfer student and I recall walking into my first class, Modern Isms or something like that with this prof named Mitau. A big class in some auditorium. How spellbinding he was.How has your Macalester experience been reflected in your life?
I did a lot of independent study, mostly working on my Honors Thesis my junior and senior years, learning to program a computer, and then testing my econ theory about money. Long hours in the computer room and little faculty help. I guess somehow that translated into becoming a lawyer and doing transactional work.How have the values instilled in you at Macalester show up throughout your life?
Growing up at Macalester in an environment where questioning norms was acceptable, where respect of peers (and others) was the norm and where intellectual inquiry was expected, I have to believe helped define who I am.