Perfect Strangers

Alumni and current students tell us about their roommates – the ones who began as complete opposites and grew to be best friends, and the ones they ’d just as soon forget.

Shack Rats and Jitterbugging

Polly Hansel was my roommate starting in our freshman year in Colonial Club and continuing for all four years. Polly was an avid jitterbugger, a French major, and a fun person to be around. She attended my wedding to Oley Olson on campus in 1947; we attended her wedding in Canton to Jim Hitchcock in December 1949, with our four-month-old, Ingrid, in tow.

We kept in touch, especially after we moved to the Washington area, when Polly and Jim lived in Bethesda, Maryland. Sadly we also went to her funeral service – too soon an end for a vibrant personality.

One memory of college days was when Polly had to live off campus (across the street from Colonial) for a whole week because she was caught smoking in her room. I wasn’t a smoker, but I joined Polly as a loyal member of the Shack rats. We were devoted fans of the Shack’s Bill Syrios and his family.

– Sally Wade Olson ’46, Woodbridge, Virginia

Never Liked That Darn Cat

Tom Aten, Andy Boda, and I lived for a few years in Douglass Hall. As one would expect, there were good days and bad days. One thing that used to drive me a bit nuts was Tom’s cat. It liked to sit on my turntable (that’s a record player!) on an LP that was waiting to be played. It had a habit of digging in his claws for traction when I tried to get him off the record. What was usually left behind was a record that looked liked it had been trampled by track spikes.

What drove me the maddest was Tom’s custom of letting the cat sleep in his bed. Each morning I’d wake up, look over, and see Tom’s head on his pillow and the cat likewise, with his head on the pillow. Both were snoring away. It used to drive me crazy.

– Peter W. Snyder ’70, Flossmoor, Illinois

Parallel Lives

These two former roommates are more than close friends. They teach across the hall from each other, live on the same street, raised kids the same ages and genders, and married men from the same high school class.

Nancy Siegele ’73 and I met on the same hall freshman year. We were both involved in antiwar protests, were both short, and we worked together in the Kittredge dining hall dish room. By the end of the year, we had decided to room together the next year.

Sophomore year I went on urban quarter to St. Louis. In her junior year, Nancy went to the same social service agency in St. Louis for her urban quarter experience. The summer after our sophomore year, Nancy and I took a wonderful trek through Europe via train, boat, and hiking trails. It was a memorable trip, meeting wonderful people and seeing beautiful places – especially Skiathos, an island in Greece; Venice; and the hiking trail along the Rhine River in Germany.

We lived together in Miller Manor our junior year and then both chose a program house, but different programs, for our senior year. After graduation we went to live in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, near Alice’s Restaurant. We separated for the next year – Nancy to Wooster, me to my hometown of Pleasantville, New York. We moved back in together in Ithaca, New York, in the summer of 1974. We continued to be roommates until Nancy’s engagement and marriage to Scott in 1976.

Nancy left Ithaca in 1977 and so did I, after getting married to Bruce Miller, an Ithacan as well – our husbands both graduated from Ithaca High in 1968. My husband and I returned to Ithaca in the summer of 1982; Nancy and Scott soon followed. They had lived in Arkansas and Virginia before returning when Scott landed a job at Ithaca College.

We each had a boy, six months apart, and then a girl six months apart. The four children were all blond-haired and blue-eyed and were often mistaken for two sets of twins when we ventured about together. The kids grew up together. The only difference in our families is that I had a third child, another boy, in 1986, while Nancy completed her family in March of 2000 by adopting a baby boy from Guatamala.

Nancy and I ended up teaching pre-k, and we landed in the same school! Then Nancy moved to 201 Richard Place. Several years later, I moved across the street to 206!

Our friendship continues to be one of the most important things in our lives. We share the joys and challenges of child-rearing as well as the joys and challenges of teaching pre-schoolers from economically challenged families.

We try to take walks several times a week. Our families have developed traditions where we gather at birthdays, Christmas, and Easter. In the winter we like to cross-country ski and manage to go out together on treks a few times a year. In the summer we both love to go to the lake to swim, float, and kayak. For about four of the past six years we have made a summer trek to the ocean with our youngest sons and another pre-k teacher friend.

We have picnics together at a beautiful local park on the lake on holidays and weekends. When one of us enjoys a good book, we share it with the other. Most of my favorite recipes came from her, and our husbands enjoy chatting about old times when they went to Ithaca High school together.

Our friendship has never seemed like too much togetherness, because we know when to give each other space. We both have other interests and other friends. The fact that we both share a deep commitment to family – our own, and the families we work with in the Head Start program – may be part of what makes us understand each other so well.

We can tell each other anything. We even manage to disagree without hurting each other’s feelings – well, most of the time anyway. Having a friend like Nancy has deeply enriched my life, and I am pretty sure she feels the same way.

– Margi Beem-Miller ’73, Ithaca, New York

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