MIZZOU NEWS

Summertime Fun

@Mizzou readers share memories of summer fun at Mizzou …

I will never forget the summer of 1994 when I was lucky enough to be a Summer Welcome Leader with 31 other amazing Mizzou students. Over the course of the summer we, like the orientation leaders of today, interacted with thousands of incoming students and their families. Campus tours on 95-plus degree days, work days that started at dawn and
lasted well into the evening, and fun “evening escapades” to relax before we got up to do it all again. It was the most fun and most exhausting summer of my life!

– Kellye Crockett-Bunch, BES '96, MA '02

My husband Scott and I were Summer Orientation Leaders during summer 1981. We have such great memories of being on campus that summer. Living in an unairconditioned dorm didn't seem so bad back then! By day we walked backward giving campus tours and encouraging incoming freshman to experience everything Mizzou had to offer. By night we took over By George disco and danced the night away to “Stars on 45.” Romance blossomed among that group of orientation leaders with at least four marriages. What a fantastic summer that was!

– Pam Debandt, BJ '83

Because I took a semester off from school to work an internship, I was slated for a December graduation and decided to spend my last summer in Columbia. In addition to taking a class or two, I finagled a work-study job as art director of the Missourian's Sunday magazine.

Working alongside a good friend, who served as editor, we produced some great issues that summer. Among them was one on the current state of Apartheid in South Africa — featuring a main article and photos smuggled out of the country by a fellow
J-School student, who later became South Africa correspondent for a major weekly magazine. I remain proud of that issue to this day. It sounds serious. And it was. But that was also the most fun I ever had at a paying job.

That was far from the only fun I had that summer, though. I also had a serious summer romance, including many lazy afternoons swimming and picnicking with my girlfriend at the strip pits outside of Columbia. In the evenings, we had our pick of uncrowded restaurants. And we saw a number of bands at the Blue Note, then at its original location near the Business Loop.

The pace of that summer, the combination of fun at both work and play, and the joy of a blossoming romance made it one of the best summers of my life.

– John Marsh, BJ '86

I finished my sophomore year and decided to stay in Columbia during summer 1969 to take a class and work. Three other Kappas and I rented an apartment at Holiday House. Because my home was in the Chicago suburbs, my mother had come down to Columbia to bring some things I needed (I think she really wanted to check out where I was living). She was the first one to enter the apartment, and when I entered, she had struck up a conversation with a young man fixing the garbage disposal. Little did I know that he would become the love of my life and that we would get married in August 1970.

– Jan Swenson, attended MU, '70

One summer in the mid-1970s the fine people of Columbia decided the best way to handle downtown traffic was to build a system called “the loop” which diverted traffic off Broadway. Every intersection's street lights had an island that forced you to drive left or right to stay off the main street. The plan was ingenious, the building and execution were perfect. What the planners forgot was that the student population would return in August.

School came and the students ignored every island, every arrow, every directional sign and drove right over the islands to get through downtown Columbia. The city had to spend thousands of dollars modifying their system to accommodate differing opinions on how to handle The Loop. Ooops!

My work-study job was at the College of Education Lab School (closed in 1978) with the most wonderful people who always made me feel special by including me in their summer fun. At least once a week during that summer one teacher in particular would say to me, “Let's go loop da Loop,” and I knew she meant we would go shopping downtown (which usually landed us at the Candy Factory, located on Broadway at the time).

To this day when I visit Columbia to see my kids (classes of 2006 and 2010), I happily say, “Let's go loop da Loop.”

– Ellen Baker Geisel, BS Ed '78

The summers around Mizzou in the late 1960s and early 1970s were filled with work mixed with summer school. Seems I was always taking a class to keep up plus working.

I held three jobs of note while going to school, both summer and during the year. My longest one was working for the blood lab as a technician drawing blood at the University of Missouri Hospital. We would have to be in by 6 a.m. (I am not a morning person) and do the rounds. I usually drew from patients in the intensive care units and those on the heart floor. It was challenging, fun and sad all at the same time. I was kind of good at it and drew blood from the hard patients. Once I had a lady who had heart surgeries (they weren't as routine back then as they are now) and I was the only one who really could get the blood needed for her crucial blood work. We were friends. She died during my second year there, it was a sad day. Some of us also got to stay during the day sometimes if the regular techs were off or sick.

My second job at the medical center was as an on-call morgue technician. We would be called in to pick up the bodies of those who died between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. It meant being called out several times in the wee hours during those two and a half years. Sometimes getting the body of a really big person onto our carts to the morgue was a real chore. Once a 350-pound woman's body hit the floor. It was worse when three of us tried to pick her up and get her onto our movable cart. She barely fit in the cold storage bins. We also got extra work and would retrieve patient files and items from a giant warehouse the medical center had in another part of the city. Sometimes we would goof off and drink a beverage and take our time about it, but not too long.

I guess the most interesting part for me was assisting with autopsies. We helped the doctor do the “harvesting” of organs. Because it was a teaching hospital, the organs were all kept, and we had to put each one in the proper preservation mixture. I learned a lot about people, autopsies and health issues. All techs were responsible for removing the brain of the deceased and putting it in a jar with formaldehyde. We had to cut the hairline and peel the skin, without nicks so the morticians wouldn't cuss us, cut off the skull cap with a saw and then remove the brain carefully, intact from the stem going into the neck and do it without injury so that the brain could be studied or cause of death determined. Then, we'd go have breakfast.

My third job was teaching photography for about a year and a half at the juvenile correction facility in Boonville. I would have 6-10 boys each afternoon for three hours and taught them about photography. It was interesting working with some of the tougher juveniles. We even produced a yearbook for the institution one year. We kind of had free reign inside the facility and once a group went to a work camp to take photos. It was a popular class for boys who didn't have a bunch of violations or get into trouble. It was a reward class.

Of course, I also managed to have fun, party a little and get refreshed. The Old Heidelberg restaurant was a favorite place.

– Mike Johansen, BJ '71

Downtown Columbia memories sent after the June issue of @Mizzou was already published …

I was in grad school from 1966-70, and I, too, remember the White Shoulders aroma coming from Gibson's and the local A & P grocery store on South Ninth Street. I worked at that A & P and at a men's store farther up “The Strollway” on Ninth Sreet called Woody's. Dan Devine and many athletes were regulars. I recall fondly the G & D Steakhouse for good cheap food and the art theatre close to it where we could see the avant garde/risque movies from Europe that are downright tame by today's standards. I lived in a graduate science fraternity at 1419 Wilson Ave, Gamma Alpha, that apparently doesn't exist anymore. I wonder if any readers know what happened to Gamma Alpha? Best wishes to all.

– Ed Ansello, M Ed '67, PhD '70

Editor's Note: The MU chapter of the Gamma Alpha Scientific Society was a fraternal organization geared toward a cooperative living environment for male graduate students in biological or physical sciences. The society dissolved in 1972 and the Gamma Alpha Association Insured Loan Fund, created by the sale of the Gamma Alpha house on 1419 Wilson Ave., was formed to distribute scholarships and loans to MU students. Called the Gamma Alpha Graduate Fellowship fund, it was used last year for doctoral students studying neurosciences, an interdisciplinary program that receives no departmental funding. The MU Graduate School administers the fund.

In 1969 when I was a medical student, I lived at Dockery-Folk Hall which was a women's graduate student dormitory. On Saturday nights after studies, laundry, etc., were done, a few of us girl medical students (there were only a few of us in those days) used to go to an all-night donut shop. I cannot remember the name or location, but it was downtown. Now my son is at MU as a resident doctor, and several times when I go visit we have tried to find it. Does anyone know where it is or was and if it is still operational at a new location perhaps? Columbia has grown a lot since I graduated in 1973.

– Edna Perez-Koury MD, '73

Editor's Note: The local downtown donut shop was called The Bakery on 518 E. Broadway (although the location may have changed along Broadway from time to time). The shop was near a small diner, a bank and a country-western bar. Those businesses, along with The Bakery, are no longer in operation.

Archives | Comments | Home

SUBSCRIPTIONS
Subscribe | Change Your Address | Unsubscribe

Copyright © 2008 — Curators of the University of Missouri
DMCA and other copyright information.
All rights reserved. An equal opportunity/ADA institution.
Published by the Mizzou Alumni Association
Questions? Comments? E-mail comments@mizzoualumni.org

Last Update: April 1, 2008