Ann Asks: How you and Mom met

This is a tough one. Memory fades over time. I had to ask Mom (Jean) for help to get this one right. (Any errors are mine.) We just celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary on June 26, 2011, so I suppose this one is worth revisiting.

Jean and I both went to Coe College. Jean started in the fall of 1969 and I started in the fall of 1970. Coe had a single computer course at that time, a time of punched cards and the IBM 1130 computer.  I think Jean and I took the sole computer course in opposite semesters during the 1970-1971 academic year. Jean might have taken the course the year before. The point is we didn’t meet in class. We did have a couple math courses together later on, but that isn’t where we met.

It was the next academic year, during the fall of 1971 that we met. Jean was a junior and I was a sophomore. After having taken the computer class and doing well in it, Jean had gotten a job (work/study program?) operating the computer at night in the computer center. Students in the computer class would punch their programs into paper cards and submit them to Jean to be run through the computer. Jean operated the computer, cleared jams in the card reader, aborted programs that hung in infinite loops, and managed the line printer.

C. R. (Chuck) Nicolaysen was Registrar, Director of the Computer Center (a two room operation) and also taught some math classes as he was an ABD (all but dissertation) PHD candidate in mathematics. Nicolaysen was also coaching the distance guys on the track team and I’d been pestering the Registrar’s Office for a part-time job. Eventually Nicolaysen gave me a job as a night time computer operator and later as a tutor for the students taking the computer class. So Jean and I met when she was operating the computer at night and I was tutoring the computer students.


First Date
Jean says this was January 21, 1972 – her father’s birthday. Once again, Nicolaysen is involved. As I said before, Nicolaysen was coaching the distance guys on the track team. January was the beginning of the indoor track season, though the distance guys run year-round. Nicolaysen invited the distance guys over to his house for pizza and beer on January 21, 1972. What destitute underage college kid doesn’t like free beer and pizza? Count me in, Coach!

Nicolaysen had been gently twisting my arm to be the date of his college-age niece who was visiting that weekend. I was in the midst of gathering the courage to ask Jean to the pizza function during this period of verbal arm twisting. Eventually I persuaded freshman half-miler Ed Trimble to take on the role of host to the niece and convinced Jean to come with me. The rest is history, or I should say, the entire story is history.