READERS WRITE
Let's be honest, asking for student center memories didn't bring quite the torrent of our previous issue's request for weather tales. Still, the correspondents we heard from responded with heartfelt notes about the roles these campus places played in their lives. Our favorite letter, Pamela and Herb Hunt's story of love, marriage, and Billings.
NEXT UP:
Time to use your imagination. You’re a student once again. You wake early, shuffle across campus, make your 8 o’clock at Old Mill in time, only to find a note on the blackboard that your professor is sick. Suddenly, you’re faced with four free hours before your next class in the afternoon. Where do you go? What do you do? There’s just one person who can tell us. E-mail responses to vermontquarterly@uvm.edu or Vermont Quarterly, 86 South Williams, Burlington, VT 05401.
THE PRIZE:
The author of our favorite letter will receive his/her choice of a print from the stock of UVM Photo. So, write us a great letter and check out the campus scenes that you might win at uvm.edu/~photo.
—Thomas Weaver, Editor
Tell us your favorite memories of uvm student centers past.
WRONG NUMBER WAS RIGHT
On a cold Saturday afternoon, December 4, 1971, the dorm phone rang in Patterson Hall and I answered it. The voice on the other end asked for me, identified himself, and said, “I met you at the Blue Tooth.” Surprised, I replied, “I’ve never been to the Blue Tooth!” After talking a while and unable to resolve the case of mistaken identity, he asked me to go out with him, instead of the woman he was actually looking for.
We spent our first date at a UVM hockey game. Within a year, we were living together and studying a lot at Billings Student Center. One glorious day in March 1974, while reading in the Round Room, we took a much-needed break. In a moment we’ll never forget, we decided to get married as soon as the semester was over. (Blame it on spring fever!) After spending so many long hours in that wonderful space, it seemed a perfect place to imagine our next adventure together. Apropos, one of the best wedding gifts we received was a UVM mirror with a painting of Billings on it. This nostalgic reminder has hung in every home we’ve lived in for the past thirty-three years. Yet, this Catamount couple still celebrates the serendipitous way we met on that long ago December day. By the way, on the fifteenth anniversary of our blind date, December 4, 1986, our one and only child, Jonathan Zachary, was born.
Pamela Collier Hunt ’75
Herbert G. Hunt III ’74, G’78 (UVM accounting professor 1987-2001)
Long Beach, California
LOUNGING IN MEMORIAL
It is always a pleasure to read the Readers Write column. The words “Dudley H. Davis Student Center” caught my eye, as I have been watching the center’s progress even though I am only a summer resident. I am lucky to be able to “turn the clock back farther to the days in Waterman’s basement,” the center of activity in the early fifties. Our class of 1953 dedicated that Ariel yearbook to the Hall of Fame in Memorial Lounge. Jean Millis Gilpin ’53, a classmate at Burlington High School as well as UVM and then president of Staff and Sandal Junior Women’s Honorary, and faculty advisor Betty Bandel were instrumental in building the exhibits and furnishing the lounge. Jean’s father was president of UVM in the forties.
The lounge was a place to “meet and greet” and, for me, a place to study and wait for my brother, John Heins ’52, as we drove together to the family home in Williston. It was in the lounge, where I had to borrow a nickel to buy a 25-cent chance, that I won a ticket to all the events of the fabulous Winter Carnival weekend. What fun in those days.
Marion Heins Crane ’53
St. Albans, Vermont
Clearwater, Florida
SPIRITUALLY CENTERED
The Protestant Center, on South Prospect just north of Waterman, and the Newman Center, on the corner of South Williams and Main, were my spiritual homes at UVM. Each had its distinctive social structure and governance. The former was student-run and my experiences there included bridge into the a.m., prayer services at Ira Allen Chapel, improvisations on the piano, and the quiet, occasional presence of Vermont abstract artist Peter Heller. The Newman Center was staffed with resident chaplain Fr. Philip Branon, his vicar—and “Mrs. Bean,” who, as the household lady, actually ran the place! There I often ate, met my future wife with an offer to help with the dishes (Beverly Roy ’66), read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, attended Mass, took prep classes to be confirmed as a Catholic in May, 1964 and married the next month, and one day that springtime saw my Mom (nee Regina McCabe, raised Catholic) coming down the stairs after she had unexpectedly met with Fr. Branon.
Harold M. Frost, III ’64
Sheffield, Vermont
(for UVM staff)