WJC SWEETHEARTS Susan Johansen Arbo '86 Steve Arbo '84 In February of 1984, graduation was fast approaching for senior Steve Arbo. He had planned to spend the rest of his life with a Jewell girl. Now the "market" was closing and he needed to pick one - fast! He had taken lots of girls to many Fine Arts events but he'd never found the one who was "just right." Then one evening, CUA VP Steve was preparing to have his picture taken with the CUA board and committees for the Tatler yearbook. A blonde sophomore came up behind him and mussed his perfectly coifed hair! (They knew each other casually - he had dated her freshman roommate a couple of times and he had co-chaired Tatler Revue when she had walked for Queen just weeks before.) As they walked back to Ely that night, sophomore Susan Johansen said to her friend, "I hope that Steve Arbo calls me!" He called the next day and invited her to the upcoming Fine Arts event but she couldn't make it because she worked the campus switchboard. So, she invited him on a group date to Whispers, the KC dance club. As the semester flew by, they attended the campus production of Romeo and Juliet and chased a tornado across Liberty. She became his Fiji Island sweetheart and sat with his mother at his graduation in May. After two years of a long-distance relationship (Liberty to Lawrence, Kansas City to Oxford, Kansas City to St. Louis), Steve wed his Jewell girl in September 1986, and unlike Romeo and Juliet, they have lived happily ever after. Steve Arbo then. Susan Johansen then. Steve and Susan now. Robert Cunningham '63 Linda Kulmus Cunningham '62 French wasn’t one of my favorite classes. If the subject wasn’t science or math, it was boring or a waste of time. However, in the second year of French, Linda Kulmus sat in the row in front of me and she would always ask, "Did you have to write in philosophy class?" Seeing her and talking to her certainly made French class much more interesting. I finally got up the nerve to ask her to go on a double date and our time together became more than just French class. Linda graduated a year ahead of me and taught foreign languages in Kansas City. I got a job answering the WJC switchboard at night and I could use the special toll free telephone line the college had to Kansas City to talk to Linda. Immediately after I graduated, I had a summer job working for NASA at a satellite tracking station in Santiago, Chile, and we communicated via air mail. Upon returning from Chile, I began graduate work in physics at the University of Missouri in Columbia. In the summer of 1964, I worked for NASA in Hampton, Va., and again we communicated by mail. After I received M.S. degree, Linda became my WJC graduation May 1963 At Robert’s Boeing retirement celebration October 2006 wife on June 5, 1965. We spent our first summer together in Liberty while I taught physics in summer school at William Jewell. She helped me though the remainder of graduate school including teaching me German to fulfill my two-language requirement for a PhD degree. Recently I retired after 33 years spent working for Boeing in St. Louis. We have two children. Mark lives in Eugene, Ore., and has his own physical therapy business. Jill is a nurse in Tulsa, Okla. Back in those early days, Tony Bennett had a popular song with words something like, "I left my love in San Francisco." Sorry Tony, but you should have attended William Jewell. That’s where I met my love and kept her. John Dembski '97 Johnna Hocking Dembski '97 The Dembski’s wedding day taken on the steps of Jewell Hall It was the start of spring semester 1995 when I first noticed the man I would marry. We were both enrolled as students in WJC’s evening division and taking Managerial Economics. Neither of us were "typical" evening division students, John being 26 at the time and myself being 24. We both had been in the workforce and were taking advantage of the tuition reimbursement programs offered by our respective employers. This particular semester was very taxing on both of us so the romance didn’t bloom just then, but we did become friends during class breaks taken on the front steps of Jewell Hall. The semester ended and we parted ways for the summer only to be back in the classroom together in the fall semester, 1996. It was at the direction of Dr. Otis Miller that we ended up together. That fall, we were both in Dr. Miller’s Business Statistics class. Unknowingly, we sat by each other and our friendship was then renewed. Dr. Miller had made several suggestions to find a study partner and that is exactly what we did. On a rainy September day we met at the library to study for the first test of the class. We studied and talked, and talked, and talked some more and romance had begun to blossom. Class began at 6:00 p.m. and shortly thereafter we were knee-deep into one of Dr. Miller’s "no-calculators allowed" tests. After class, John invited me to join him at a restaurant to debrief. We sat and talked some more getting to know one another, and it was at that moment we knew we were the one for each other. After that night we began to date, of course remaining focused on our education, but somehow we managed to plan a wedding, get married, honeymoon and ultimately graduate in 1997 as husband and wife. John proposed on March 18, 1995 on the steps of Jewell Hall where we had first met one year earlier. We were married on August 17, 1996 and one of our fondest memories is the limo ride up to Jewell Hall where we reminisced over our first few conversations held on the steps. We are still very happily married having just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. We have two children Nathan and Julia. John is The Dembskis now employed at Great Plains Energy (KCPL) as a Technical Professional and I am employed at Cerner Corporation as a Senior Software Engineer. Although it was challenging at best to be a full-time student while working full-time, we both feel that the Jewell experience has paid off for giving us a top notch education that has led to excellent employment opportunities and now raising our children in a Christian home. We are very proud to be Jewell grads. Jim Dunn '71 Kathy Moore Dunn '73 "When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew" William Shakespeare I met Kathy Moore on the William Jewell College campus in the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s. Her father, Dr. David O. Moore, was a noted professor and chair of the religion department. Kathy was a "looker" and already had a strong field of admirers. I was a long-haired, rascal, rowdy Sigma Nu - among the first on campus to ever wear bell bottom pants. Unfortunately for me, the lovely Kathy would not notice me, or my inept advances, until after her graduation from Jewell when we taught English together at Liberty High School in Liberty, Mo. Of course, Kathy has a much different version of this story. She claims it was I, not her, who was aloof and preoccupied. The truth is now clouded in time, but this much we know. Love was in the air and on the Hill. The wheel started turning in those early days at William Jewell and it was only a matter of time before we would find each other. And so it was, at William Jewell College, we loved each other from afar with the pure, unrequited love that only romantic English majors can understand. "I knew and she smiled;" it doesn’t get much better than that. Tamara Sager Everly '96 Tim Everly '94 Tim and I met my first semester at Jewell in Chapel Choir. Our fathers are both ministers and were friends from seminary. He introduced himself and explained the connection. What I didn’t know but later found out was that his roommate soon began trying to set us up. Embarrassed about that, I called to tell Tim I was already dating someone and not interested. We talked for four hours on that phone call, began dating and were engaged less than a year later. The proposal was so special because he blindfolded me, walked me up a hill, and sat me down on some steps to hear "Yes Sir, That’s My Baby" sung by a quartet. When I removed the blindfold, I saw that we were on the steps of Jewell Hall and Tim was down on one knee with a ring. I said yes, and we have been married for almost 13 years now and have three beautiful children. Karen Kerr Garrison '78 Michael Garrison '80 Mike and I had a variety of paths that connected us. We were both communication majors, so we had a variety of classes together, mostly our junior and senior years. We talked about assignments, class work, professors, all of the usual topics. We also went to the same church, so our paths crossed there as well. There were probably two pivotal moments in our early relationship. One was during a float trip - we were on a youth group float trip and even though we weren't in the same canoe, we found lots of ways to laugh, tease each other, push each other out of boats and generally, make a big step into our relationship. The other moment was from very different perspectives. I had the role of the crazy mother in the Tennessee Williams play 'Summer and Smoke.’ In this character, I wore disheveled clothing, sported grey hair that stood straight out and acted totally loopy. The character I portrayed talked to her lemonade glass, worked aimlessly on jigsaw puzzles and made random and odd comments. It was a fun part for me to play, as, from my view, I was being an actor. Mike, on the other hand, was in the audience. While he'd known me from classes, he now saw me very differently. He told me after we began dating, that when he saw me in the play as 'the crazy lady,' he wanted to get to know me better and find out why I’d taken that part! He thought it was a memorable character and he wanted to meet the girl under the weird make up and costumes. He still shares that story with our kids and reminds them that their mom is really a 'crazy woman.’ Richard P. Groves '64 Mavis Miller Groves '64 Mavis and I met sometime during our sophomore year on the steps in front of Gano Chapel. Mavis says she doesn’t remember it; but I do! She was a transfer student from Trenton Junior College in her first year at Jewell, and very immersed in the requirements of being a music major - Concert Choir, band, voice lessons, practicing and doing homework for her music theory classes. I was fascinated by this perky redhead who had a great sense of humor and sang like a songbird. Our relationship evolved over the next three years. It took a while for her to pay much attention to this person who kept showing up where she was. Both of us were in the Baptist Student Union (BSU) Choir which made lots of Sunday night appearances in western Missouri and two trips to Ridgecrest, North Carolina - performing at churches along the way to earn our meals and a place to sleep. (Barbara Bray was the choir director. Tom Bray was the Religious Education Director who set up all the trips.) I suppose our favorite place on campus was on the steps in front of Gano Chapel where we met and where we could socialize with our friends before and after chapel and at other free times. We married in September following our senior year (1964) and moved to St Louis where we both got our master’s degrees at Washington University. In spite of not beginning with a creative, on-campus proposal we have enjoyed a wonderful 42 year marriage, and still counting. Our two sons (Jason '96 and Jordan '97) are William Jewell College graduates as is our daughter-in-law (Megan Rutherford Groves '98). We have another 15 years to convince our grandson, Andrew, to enroll at William Jewell. Don Herman '49 Ann Joy Petty Herman '50 After World War II, colleges and universities experienced "boom" years. William Jewell College was enjoying the same. Dormitories were full and a number of students were housed in off-campus accommodations. One day on the way to lunch, a person from the Lambda Chi Alpha house came out and asked if he could join me. I responded "yes"; we became very good friends, and I joined the fraternity. The fraternity had a dance and I had no date so my fraternity brother arranged a blind date for me who was a friend of his date. I met Ann Joy that night and we started dating. We are still dating after 58 years of marriage. My marriage proposal was declared in a borrowed jeep parked in a pasture by a railroad track. Some "blind dates" turn out great! Jeff Hon '86 Sarah Hassanein Hon '88 We formally met in the spring of 1986 during a Concert Choir tour. It was only after my graduation in May and the beginning of the next school year that we actually started dating. For the last two years of Sarah’s time at Jewell, we spent as much time together as possible, even with my new job and Sarah’s study schedule. Sarah graduated from Jewell in May of 1988; we were married in June. After four years of medical school at the University of Health Sciences and then residency in neurology at Kansas University Medical Center, we eventually came back to Liberty, where we had met on "the Hill." I entered seminary and graduated with an M.Div. from Saint Paul School of Theology. At present, I pastor New Song, a new church just west of Liberty, and Sarah has a successful neurology practice on the North Kansas City Hospital campus. We have two wonderful children, Michael (14) and Rachel (7), who we hope will someday attend Jewell. We come up to the campus often for music lessons and various functions. We consider ourselves to be blessed in so many ways, but one of the greatest is to be in the Liberty community and to have such great memories of our undergraduate days at William Jewell College. Jeff Hon and Sarah Hassenein dressed for Concert Choir concert The Hons now Gerald E. Hudder '54 The fall semester of my sophomore year I was not eligible to play in the conference football games. This was really hard for me, but also that fall a beautiful young lady from West Virginia was among the new students in the entering freshman class. Although we did not date early that semester, by the end of October we were friends and I was not sure what she saw in me but I was HOOKED. Jean Anne Winkler (Hudder '55) was my first real girlfriend. She was a very good student and had extreme self discipline. If she had not been so disciplined, I know I would not have passed some of my classes - she really was a great tutor. We became best friends and our love was beginning to make my life take shape. Even though my grades did not change dramatically, they were becoming more acceptable. That Christmas she took the bus back to West Virginia. I was working at Bedinger’s Furniture, and Don Haynes and I could not leave for home in St. Louis until late Christmas Eve. The snow was falling hard. We missed the last bus to St. Louis, so we decided to hitchhike and got in with some guys who were not sober, but we stayed until we got to Columbia, Mo. We caught up to the bus and were lucky to make it home. After Christmas I called Jean and found out which bus she was taking back to Jewell. I met that bus and we were reunited again and became even closer friends. That semester we both worked downtown and looked forward to being together in the evenings and on Fridays and Saturdays when the women could stay out until eleven. After we kissed goodnight at the back door of Melrose, I would walk "home" through the President’s driveway and would frequently see Dr. Binns sitting in his study reading a book and smoking a cigar. Jean and I went "steady" the rest of our college days. Our partnership was strong and loyal for the rest of our lives. There was never any question of who had the brains and the beauty on our team. What a blessing she was then and still is to me. There was no way to show my appreciation of her gifts of faith, love and the positive influence that she brought to our union, but she always knew that I was loyal to her. Hazel and Henry then Hazel and Henry now Hazel Oglesby Michajliczenko '73 Henry Michajliczenko '72 Henry and I met in the college cafeteria; not very romantic but certainly very memorable! Shortly after arriving on campus my freshman year, I was scanning the Student Telephone Directory and noticed the most unusual last name. It was the longest name that I had ever seen and just for the fun of it, I learned how to spell it. A few days later as I was working in the college cafeteria checking student IDs, I met Henry. Teasingly, I told him that I could spell his last name. Henry had his doubts so I promptly and correctly spelled it for him. Talk about the ultimate icebreaker! Although we didn't start dating until Henry's senior year, we were good friends andenjoyed teasing one another whenever we saw each other on campus. Later when Henry proposed, he jokingly told me that he wanted to marry me because he knew that I could spell his last name. In July, 2007, we will celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary and I must admit that I still love spelling that very long and most unusual last name. Lavonne Garrison Moore '79 C. Richard Moore, III '81 I met my husband at WJC. It was in Opera Workshop Winterim, January 1978. I was a junior music major, serving as properties manager for the production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." This cute, ornery, freshman FIJI pledge was singing bass in the male chorus. I remember he wore a green elf suit complete with green tights, and curly-toed shoes. I pretty much wrote him off since he was younger than me, and I was seeing someone else (from a different fraternity) at the time. And too, what would you think of someone running around in an elf suit trying to come on to you?!? But he was persistent, and as it turned out, also in Chapel Choir with me. We went on a choir tour together, which presented lots opportunities to get to know one another. Eventually, we ended up dating, but then went our separate ways after his graduation. Some years later we reconnected, and he moved from Miami to join me in San Francisco to marry and start our life together. The rest is history. Over twenty-one years and four states later, we have 3 kids, 2 beagles, 2 cats, 2 gerbils. . . you get the picture. Presently, we are blessed to live in the beautiful community of Roanoke, Va., nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and we love it here. Life lesson: husbands turn up where you least expect them, and you often don’t realize they’re husband material at first. Given time, they can turn out to be gems. We remember fondly our years at WJC. Patricia Zwiebel Petty '77 Bob Petty '76 In spring of my freshman year in 1974, out of the blue, I got a call from Bob Petty, who identified himself as a KA and a friend of several of my sorority sisters. He asked me to Old South, which was a pretty heady invitation for a freshman girl. I accepted his invitation for this blind date, then asked my sisters about him. That he had a silver 1976 Camero and was a "fun guy" were the recommendations to his credit! In those days, the men of Kappa Alpha rode up to campus on horseback, dressed in uniform, to present roses and a parchment invitation to their dates. Many of my sorority sisters were also attending Old South and it was romantic to have the men serenade us. Bob and I enjoyed Old South weekend’s activities and, yes, he was a "fun guy." We dated exclusively from that point on, marrying on October 1, 1977. We’ll celebrate our 30th anniversary this year. Who says blind dates don’t work out! Andy Pratt '81 Pam Knight Pratt '81 Pam (Knight) Pratt '81 and I were high school sweethearts. Our first year in college, I attended Jewell and Pam attended Illinois State University. Right before Valentine’s Day, we had a good snow. I made the football field into a giant Valentine Card. Jeff Buscher went to Pillsbury and took a picture of my "Valentine" from the window. Pam and I were married on the east lawn of the President’s Home in 1981.