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Love, CMU style

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Love, CMU style

Mike and Pam
It wasn’t love at first sight. We met my senior year when Pam was a freshman and dated my roommate from Robinson Hall. She thought I was boring (and old), and I thought she was a ditzy freshman.

After graduation we continued to be aware of each other, but she was just one of “the boys” who came to football games and hung out at The Pub at Homecoming every year. Our lives went different ways. I got married, while she stayed single and dated. We had about zero in common other than occasionally crossing paths at CMU events.

About 10 years out of college Pam moved into a career in human resources, which is the field I had been in since grad school. She started picking my brain on the profession, and I became a mentor. I got divorced, and she became my mentor on re-entering the single life. We became pretty good buddies over the next few years, swapping ideas about “dating strategy.”

One New Year’s Eve we started dating … more than 18 years after meeting each other at CMU. We were married in 1994.

Pam and I have always thought that the best years of our lives were when we were college students living a really simple life with little furniture, simple food, walking where we wanted to go, and of course having cheap adult beverages every once in awhile!

Most people our age escape their busy lives by going back to the basics with small vacation cottages. However, that wasn’t going to work for us, since we spend a lot of our free time in Mount Pleasant. We have football and basketball season tickets, we visit my son, who is a CMU senior, I have development board activities, and Pam has alumni board activities, so we really spend a lot of time in Mount Pleasant.

So we set out to rent a small student apartment and found one at the corner of Main and Bellows right at “The Gateway to the Student Mardi Gras.” Now we are probably the only people on Main Street carrying AARP cards! We sleep on blow-up mattresses, have milk crate bed stands, filing cabinets for end tables in the living room, and a 25-year-old TV. My son even gave us the old couch from his dorm room when he moved off campus.

When we get into town on a Friday night we may walk downtown to one of the watering holes for sandwiches and pitcher specials. During the day we might walk around campus, spend time in the library, hang out at a coffee house, or watch sports on TV. Food is grilled outside most of the time, but cheap beer has been replaced by martinis. Bottom line: the apartment is an inexpensive time machine back to the 70s.

A couple of our alumni friends are trying to find something in Mount Pleasant like our apartment. They have or will have children at CMU and are also coming up for games. And I’m sorry to tell some of our Main Street student neighbors, but many of our friends also have said it could be a retirement option later on. Oops! There goes the neighborhood!

Michael R. Murray, ’75
Grandville (and Mount Pleasant)

Jim and Jan
It was the first weekend back from summer vacation. The year, 1973.

I was working a Friday evening shift as an on-air DJ at one of two campus radio stations, WCHP, when the request line rang. “Play something sweet,” said the voice on the other line. “Sure,” I replied. I think I played “Color My World” by Chicago.

I was sitting in this glass-enclosed broadcast booth when, just as the requested song ended, two of the most beautiful women I ever set eyes on strolled into the studio. “Twins,” I thought. “Who cares?” came an answer from my subconscious.

“We’re looking for the DJ. We spoke with him earlier today, so we thought we’d come down to see him,” one of the two said.

But DJs changed shifts about every four hours, and the guy they spoke to was long gone. I most certainly didn’t want to drive them away, so I put on a really long song, which gave me plenty of time to talk to them.

Well, as it turns out they were not twins but sisters. We had a great conversation, and I invited both of them to the first party of the year.

Both were charming, refined, mature, and drop-dead gorgeous. One sister was an entering freshmen and the other a transferring junior. The party was fun, and by the end I had made two new acquaintances. No further dates were made or numbers exchanged.

On the first day of mass media class, I was stunned to see the junior transfer, Jeanette “Jan” Wallag, in the same class.
We became inseparable. I was a broadcast major, Jan was a journalism major. We shared many common interests and participated in way too many campus activities. We graduated in 1975 with degrees, equipped to take on the world. We married in 1980.

College sweethearts brought together by fate and a phone conversation with a DJ who invited the sisters to the radio station only to find “he” wasn’t there, but I was. How lucky is that?

James J. Pagano, ’75
North Hutchinson Island, Florida

Ila and Don
As we started dating, I would vow over and over, “This is the last time I’m going out with that Don Majeske!” We were married January 8, 1955. We danced together at lots and lots of dances at Central and have continued to dance our way through life together.

Ila J. Langworthy Majeske, ’53
Ann Arbor

Bob and Sue
Sue swept me off my feet in March 1968 at the Log Cabin Record Shop on Mission. We married the weekend before Thanksgiving in the chapel next to the student center. After class on Wednesday, we went to Detroit for a weekend honeymoon. We enjoyed the Hudson’s parade in the rain and attended a Detroit Red Wings/St. Louis Blues hockey game. We returned to class on Monday. CMU will always hold a special place in our hearts!

Bob Haist, ’68 MBA ’69
Chestertown, Maryland

Pat and Bill
Bill and I were in the same freshman orientation group during the summer of 1968. At the first mixer in the fall, Bill came up to me and said, “Do you remember me? I was in your orientation group this summer.” I replied “No,” and walked away. Not wanting to lose face in front of his friends, Bill followed me and asked me to dance. It was the start of something wonderful! We celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary this summer!

Pat (Barath) Daniels, ’72
Mount Pleasant

part 3

Mike and Pam Murray