In a class Facebook group conversation about the Beer Vault (now, there’s an example of how wide-ranging those conversations get), Rita Mulholland Yeager commented that her parents met when her dad was making deliveries to Rita’s grandpa in the 1940’s and noticed his pretty daughter.
You won’t be surprised to hear that other classmates’ parents had an Ann Arbor love story, too. Those really run the gamut and, oh my, some of our parents were just babies when they met, or so it seems now from our vantage point at age 75.
Barb Kendall Souza’s parents were only 20 when they got married. They met at a drugstore in Ann Arbor where Barb’s dad was working. Her mom and some friends came in for ice cream and he was the one dishing it up. Afterwards, he went home to tell his parents he had met the girl he was going to marry. He did marry her and their marriage lasted for 59 years.
In an interesting side note, Barb’s mother’s roommate was Cheryl Meyer Sartori’s mother-in-law, Isabelle. On her dad’s side, there’s another Class of ’65 connection: one of the classmates who graduated with him from Saline High School in 1939 was Bonnie Holzhauer Bean’s mother.
Another classmate whose parents had a Class of ’65 association is Duane Brown. His mother and his dad’s cousin were classmates at AAHS. His dad lived in Pinckney, but his Ann Arbor cousin fortunately decided he should meet the girl from his class. That cousin’s daughter was our own class member Dianne Kelley-Sanchez.
Here's a very sweet one from Kathy Kress Sudweeks. Her mother was a private nurse and the brother of her patient was Kathy’s future dad. They were drawn to each other but because of what felt like insurmountable religious differences, she went to California to try to forget him. Kathy picks up the story: “He wrote to my mother’s mother declaring his love.” And despite the family differences, “she wrote to her daughter, my mom, telling her to come home and marry someone who loved her that much.”
Nancy White Paul’s parents didn’t exactly meet in Ann Arbor, but close enough, at the University’s Biological Station on Douglas Lake near Pellston—aka Bug Camp. Nancy wrote, “Mom was there as a camp kid and dad was filling a prerequisite for dental school.” They married after the war and her mother became a dentist, too.
Here's a name we’ll all recognize: the Pretzel Bell. When Pamela Conn Hyde’s dad moved to Ann Arbor from Canton, Ohio, he got a job at the P Bell. Her mom had moved to Ann Arbor from Charlevoix to work. As Pamela reports, “She dated my dad because he made her lunch every day” and his red-haired jovial Irish ways didn’t hurt, either. How does that old saying go? “The way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach”—or something like that.
Another Ann Arbor institution was the setting for romance for Cindy Robbins Elder’s parents: Nichols Arboretum. They both worked at Michigan Bell, her dad as a supervisor in the switch room and her mom as head operator. He and other guys would hang out in front of the building and check out the girls. He wanted to meet Cindy’s mom, but he was rather shy, so another couple arranged a picnic at the Arb. By Valentine’s Day they were engaged and married two weeks later!
The University was nothing if not fertile ground for romances. Patricia Arnold Carney told me, “In about 1928, my dad came to the U of M from Cornell to teach Paleobotany. My mom came from the University of British Columbia and the University of Washington soon after to get a PhD in botany. She earned her first-ever less than A grade, from HIM! Still, she married him. Their honeymoon was a very long fossil collecting trip.”
My own parents met when my father, who was earning his PhD in the School of Music at Michigan, was proctoring an exam for incoming Master’s degree candidates. My mother turned in her paper and presumably also turned on her charm because they spent the next couple of weeks hoping to run into each other again somewhere on campus. One day, as my dad was chatting with a colleague at Burton Tower, my mom came down the steps and…well, here I am.
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