Indiana Alumni Magazine
Time to Fall in Love
Take all those raging hormones and put them on the same campus, and what do you get?
by Diana Clark
Something about college seems to make people fall in love. Perhaps it's the atmosphere, the way everyone is alive in that newly independent way, eager to meet people and experience new things. Maybe college is just the time when those darn biological clocks are ticking and people start thinking about finding that special someone.
For whatever reason, many people meet their spouses in college, and Hoosiers are no exception. You might be surprised by how these alumni found love, or their stories may resonate with your own experiences.
WHEN DEALING WITH STRANGERS
The world of blind dating is strange and risky. Rules must be followed when two complete strangers go out with one another. Perhaps the most important of these rules is not to fall in love. Set-ups are just practice for the real thing. Or so you think. These IU grads broke blind dating's cardinal rule.
Mary Mahon Munchak, BA'81, BS'82, was "not much for blind dates," but she agreed to go on one with a group of people, hoping to find strength in numbers. One night, three young men took Mary and two of her friends to the Runcible Spoon, a Bloomington coffeehouse. Mary was surprised to find she was enjoying herself.
"What I remember most is that Steve and I made the same pun at the same time," Munchak says. "'How odd to find someone who has the same quirky sense of humor,' I thought. We began to date. Steve was working on his doctorate in physical chemistry, and I was getting my undergraduate degree in chemistry. I definitely think it's the 'chemistry' that has kept us together all these years."
Virginia Helfenbein Sampson, BA'53, also had to be persuaded to go on a blind date. "On Valentine's Day 1950, I pledged Chi Omega," Sampson says. "After the ceremony, one of the actives asked if I'd like a date with her neighbor, 'a really great guy.' As a new pledge, I could hardly say no." On the night of Feb. 18, Cal Sampson, BS'54, took Virginia to the IU-Purdue basketball game. The Hoosiers won 60-50.
The two continued dating, and Cal was called into active duty the following spring during the Korean War. "We continued our relationship writing letters," Virginia remembers. "In the fall of 1952, Cal returned to campus. Outside Sycamore Hall, where Cal first kissed me, we became engaged and finished our senior year together, attending all the basketball games of the championship year of 1953."
Richard Wheat, BS'50, a veteran entering IU at the age of 27, had trouble finding women his age to date. One day while having coffee in the Commons with a few other veterans, Richard met a woman who offered to set them up with a few ex-military nurses she knew from class. On that blind date, Richard met Janet Wilson, BS'49, "a very pretty girl with a beautiful smile that would light up the room." They married the following summer and were together until Janet's death in 1987.
A STORY TO TELL
Sometimes blind dates bring two unsuspecting strangers together. Other times a set of more peculiar circumstances does the trick. Steve Pflugner, BS'97, met his wife when he was locked out of his apartment.
"Four friends of mine came to visit me the first few days of August 1996," Pflugner says. "After happy hour at Kilroy's, we made our way back to Hoosier Courts and found that my keys had been locked in my apartment. We knocked on the neighbors' door to use the phone and met Kacy [Strell, BA'97] and her two roommates. My friends and Kacy's roommates hung out that evening. The next day I invited Kacy over for dinner, and we started dating."
Molly McCaffrey, BAJ'92, met her spouse in equally unlikely conditions. "I met my husband, David Bell, BA'92, while doing a homework assignment for Will Counts' [MS'54, EdD'67] photojournalism class," McCaffrey recalls. "Our first assignment was to photograph strangers. Counts made a big joke about how we might end up meeting someone we would become romantically interested in. I remember thinking that would never happen to me. Of course, that same afternoon I was proven wrong when I sat in the Read Hall lobby taking photos of my future husband. We lived on the same floor and started dating a few weeks later. That was September 1990, and we were married July 1998."
Julie Nelson, BGS'94, JD'97, and Gus Bernard, MA/JD'98, met in Bloomington as law students. "Julie and I first met at a law school orientation meeting of a group of returning students called the OWLS (older and wiser law students)," Bernard says. "Soon after, we discovered that we were assigned adjacent over/under lockers. During the next two-and-a-half years we met almost daily at our lockers. During the spring semester of the third and final year of law school, we began dating. We have been together ever since. We became engaged the day after Julie got her law degree."
Recently, Nelson and Bernard, now married, tried to track down their old lockers, but to their regret the lockers had been replaced with newer ones.
Dorothy Moore received her engagement ring from Gerald Spore, who popped the question in the Well House.
Courtesy photo.
Working as social chairman of the Independent Students Association, Dorothy Moore, BS'50, had to find a pianist for a series of dance classes. "Someone told me Gerald Spore, BS'51, a returning GI, could play anything we needed," Dorothy recalls. "At his friend's suggestion, I called him. We dated and became engaged in September 1949 when he gave me a diamond ring in the Well House."
IN THE CLASSROOM
The main focus of college is academics, so it is only reasonable that students find love in the classroom. Greg Schneider, BME'86, met Pauline Powell Schneider, BME'85, in a music theory class at IPFW. Like Dorothy Spore, he needed a pianist. He recruited Pauline to play his piece for the class. "Upon dropping off my short composition, I realized that she was really quite attractive," Greg recalls. "After class, I informed her that I wanted to repay her for her kindness and asked if I could take her out to dinner." They have been married for 16 years.
Noel Stephens, BS'65, would never have met his wife if he had followed his plan to join the Navy at 18. "Due to some government mix-up, that didn't happen," Stephens says, "so I worked a year after high school." During that time, Stephens decided to attend Normal College, a precursor to the School of Physical Education at IUPUI. Arline Brennecke, BS'65, had come from St. Louis to attend Normal College and had classes with Noel. "I guess we became attracted to each other during the first semester," Noel says. "We began dating and continued throughout our four years at IU." They were married during graduation week 1965. Both went on to study at Boston College to become orientation and mobility specialists for the blind.
Before his final semester of college, David McNitt, BS'75, MSBA'86, sat down with his adviser to make sure he had fulfilled all his degree requirements. "Lo and behold, I needed three hours to satisfy an obscure requirement in History, Philosophy, and Religion," McNitt recalls. "So I scanned the IUSB schedule and found a 100-level European history course." Mary Herman McNitt, BS'78, MS'84, also enrolled in the class. They celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary this past summer.
Jan Mivelaz, BS'72, MS'76, and Jerry Foster, BS'74, ended up in a World Civilization class together when they both had late registration dates and didn't get into the class they really wanted. "We were assigned to the same discussion group, which met once a week," Jan recalls. "In the vastness of a huge university, we had a class of two. The teaching assistant said, 'I knew it! My other class has 50 in it.' So in 1970, long before there was a computer on every desk, Jerry and I met through a computer glitch. I could hardly miss a guy sitting all alone in a room in Ballantine Hall. Who says IU is too large and impersonal?" The Fosters were married for 20 years before Jerry's death in 1992.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
IU has always brought a number of international students to its campuses. The university's student population has representatives from 160 countries, and the Bloomington campus alone has about 3,000 international students. It should come as no surprise that many of these students meet their spouses at IU.
Naren Ramanuj, from Addis Ababa, met Susan Abraham, from Long Island, when they worked together at the Eigenmann cafeteria.
Courtesy photo.
Indiana holds a special place in the hearts of Georg, MA'58, and Marlene Brauer. Georg, a Fulbright Scholar from Germany, moved to Bloomington in the fall of 1957. "From the lounge of my dormitory there was a view over a vast lawn, and there, in January 1958, I saw a group of students diverting themselves in the snow," he recollects. "One young lady struck me especially through her appearance and joyfulness. She was Marlene (Albuquerque), who had recently arrived from Brazil.
"We succeeded in initiating our relationship during a dance party in the Center Hall. She was constantly surrounded by friends, but I finally asked her to dance and we became inseparable." Georg and Marlene have been married since 1960.
Naren Ramanuj, MBA'78, came to Bloomington from Ethiopia. Susan Abraham, BS'79, met Ramanuj while working in the Eigenmann cafeteria. "He was the milk boy, and I was the dessert person," Abraham says. "A fellow resident, Mike Boone, BS'79, introduced us. Naren seemed shy and a bit homesick. I figured he was too shy to ask me out, so I asked him for a date to a Brazilian music concert. We hit it off and became inseparable. One of our favorite hangouts was the basement of the IU library, where all the international newspapers were. In fact, after that first date, Naren took me to the newspaper reading room — real romantic!"
While some students come to Indiana and find love, other students leave IU to study abroad and meet their future spouses halfway around the world. Amy Culley, BS'98, attended an IU summer program in the Netherlands in 1997 and met Ryan Collins, BS'98, after finishing their final exam.
"I was waiting in the courtyard for someone to make the 20-minute walk back with me to the dorms," Culley recalls. "Ryan said he wanted to walk back, so off we went, two strangers meeting for the first time. We talked about the exam and home and where we still wanted to travel before we left. The conversation was so easy and effortless that I was sad to arrive at the dorms without some excuse to keep him talking. Luckily, he came knocking on my door that night to ask if I wanted to explore the town with him and his friends." The two were married this past November.
Seth Gillihan, BA'97, and Marcia Leithauser, BA'97, met during their junior year abroad in France. "We lived in the same dorm in Strasbourg and became friends during the first three months we were there," Gillihan explains. "A romance developed gradually, and by December we had truly fallen in love. As the French said to us, to describe the initial period of nervous excitement, we were living on love and water."
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
A romance that began in Strasbourg led Marcia Leithauser and Seth Gillihan to the altar in 1996. Courtesy photo.
Some people always wait till the last minute. For everything. Marilyn Hutchins, AGS'99, met Timothy Hutchinson, AGS'99, at IU Southeast as they stood in line to graduate. "We were next to each other in alphabetical order, and we had a good time together," Marilyn Hutchinson recalls. "Afterwards, he looked up my number in the phone book, asked me out, and now we are married."
Cheryl Reiner Cheifetz, BS'92, left Bloomington unattached. She remembers her best friend and roommate Ilyce Brody-Zoloto, BS'92, mentioning Jordan Cheifetz, BS'92, but they never met in college. Ilyce married Steve Zoloto in October 1993. "At some point during the reception, Ilyce and Steve brought Jordan and me out on the dance floor, introduced us, and basically left us there. As one of Ilyce's mother's friends predicted that night, we were married a year and a half later on June 25, 1995."
Rita Marsh, BA'66, and Wade Birch, MS'68, EdD'70, met at an IU alumni picnic in Houston. "After a long-distance relationship of about a year and a half, we decided to get married," Marsh says. "Neither College Station nor Houston was common to both of us, so we decided to have the wedding at Beck Chapel in Bloomington. We have frequently gone back to Beck Chapel on our anniversary when we are in Indiana visiting relatives. We have now created our own memories of being on campus together, but not as students."
Donna Steinhagen Roth, BA'92, and Mike Roth, BS'92, didn't know each other at IU. They were first introduced several years after graduation at a surprise birthday party for Chris Cooley, BS'93, given by his wife, Elizabeth Cooley, BS'93.
"I was talking to Elizabeth when Mike came up to say hello to her, and he never left," Donna says. "I'm not sure I spoke with anyone else that night as we stayed at the bar talking when everyone left. Mike was such a gentleman that when the bar closed, he called a cab for us so he could drop me off at home before heading to his apartment in the opposite direction.
"On Sunday he called a mutual friend, Andrew Felrice, BS'93, to get my number. He called that first day, and I think I have talked to him every day since."
Like Donna and Mike Roth, who were married in October 1998, many people find their relationships are defined by their college experiences. However, these things never happen quite the way you expect. Whether stuck in a freshman history class, studying abroad, working in the Eigenmann cafeteria, or standing in line to graduate, IU students find love in the strangest places. 
Diana Clark, from South Bend, Ind., is a junior majoring in journalism and Spanish.