AN EARLY STREAKER
When we arrived at the College of Puget Sound as freshmen in 1952, we didn't have “a” roommate—we had many. We were assigned to bunk beds in the basement of Anderson Hall, either in the “big dorm” or the smaller room called the “little dorm.” I was one of the fortunate ones to be in the smaller room with five other girls. We grew to be very close friends. We had to walk clear to the other end of the building to take showers, and I do remember one of the girls did that buck naked. She may have been the original “streaker.”
Berta Conklin Cohen ’56
Seattle
RETURN OF THE ODD COUPLE
Although we were both born and raised in the same hometown—Palo Alto, Calif.—our journey began when we started the occupational therapy program junior year. Must have been that KQED public TV T-shirt that Lucy [Lucy Anderson Jacob ’81] noticed I was wearing that singled me out as a fellow Bay Arean. We became roommates in off-campus housing. From there we realized our true talents: I can clean, and she can cook. Lucy taught me the art of shopping for grocery bargains, 101 ways to prepare cottage cheese, and how to cook balanced meals even with our busy schedules. I bought an ancient Electrolux vacuum and cleaning supplies, hoping to teach her the art of cleaning, to no avail. It was like The Odd Couple—we emulated those guys. Forty-two years later, when my best friend and I visit each other, Lucy cooks and I clean. Some things never change!
Annie Nachtsheim-Forburger ’82
Glendora, Calif.
SEVEN ROOMMATES?
In September 1961 one of Langdon Hall’s large study lounges was converted into a dorm for eight women. Each of the four corners had a bunk bed, dresser, and two wardrobe closets. Our desks were in the middle of the room, so that the lounge became a room divided into four quarters with desks in the middle. Welcome to Puget Sound! Among us were “the tall ones”—two who were close to 6 feet tall and were happy-go-lucky, vivacious, determined students. In Corner #2 were the nerds: a home ec-Pollyanna-lovely girl and an exceptionally brilliant but socially challenged concert pianist. In Corner #3 was the unmatched pair: a preppy Alpha Phi destined to date big-name Greeks and the other who pledged Chi Omega, loved too well, and left school prematurely. Finally, in Corner #4 was the athletic duo—a bouncy, outgoing, extroverted swimmer and her bunkmate, a shy Easterner who was bewitched by Rainier. We got along reasonably well, going to some meals together, laughing about our “situation,” and sharing clothes, makeup, and lots of stories. We rarely had serious disagreements, though we were not best buds. We endured because we were happy to be at Puget Sound; living on top of each other was secondary. We even posted on our door the name we decided proudly to call ourselves: The Eligible Eight! We probably learned a great deal more than we thought at the time from this experience. Our daily focus was on collaboration and tolerance. Still, one can have just so much of a good thing, and without any fanfare or mutual deliberation, two girls departed during winter break: one to live with her sorority sisters and the other to share a room for four but with only two in it. Twice the space. Half the fun.
Nancy Jeanroy Hansen ’65
Stratham, N.H.
NO ARGUING WITH THAT
It was move-in day, freshman year. I arrived first to the dorm in Todd Hall—it was the room right over the main entrance, and it was pretty small. My roommate, Pat, arrived. At age 18, I was about 120 pounds; Pat was a football lineman, over 6 feet and well over 200 pounds. After introductions, he looked me up and down, and said, “You’ll be taking the top bunk.”
Bill Potter ’91
Lakewood, Wash.
BONDED BY MUSIC
I lived at A-Frame E. My roommate, Steve Brune ’74, was a musician and played acoustic guitar. I was a big rock fan and had already been to a lot of concerts. Steve played this one acoustic album every day, Basket of Light by Pentangle. It drove me crazy at first, but by the end of the year I was converted, and that opened up lots of doors to other music. We had epic parties there! We even made our own T-shirts. I made another lifelong friend there, Dave Abbott ’74. I’m still connected with around 100 people I met at Puget Sound, and we have a reunion every 10 years.
Tom McCarter ’75
Vista, Calif.
FRIENDS FOR LIFE
BFF is the current status of my relationship with my college roommate. Jim Beecher ’62 and I roomed together for three years in New Hall before he journeyed off to get a law degree at the University of Washington. Jim was the perfect roommate for me. He was stable, thoughtful, accepting and a kind soul. Sixty-plus years later, he still calls me on my birthday. He is the poster child for kindness, harmony, ambition, and acceptance. He was an anchor of reality to my ship of personal turmoil. Our lives, careers, and relationships have been blessed. He is the rock and mirror that reflected qualities that have served me well in who I am today. My experience at Puget Sound was exceptional and I attribute that to the grace and good nature offered naturally by my best friend, Sigma Chi fraternity brother Jim Beecher, alias Mort Beemer.
Paul A. Coulter ’63
Fullerton, Calif.
SURPRISINGLY GOOD MATCH
She was a cheerleader (who probably liked glitter) and I was a three-sport athlete (who did not like glitter). She didn’t check her social media (a red flag back then) to respond to my overly excited but slightly nervous, “Hi we’re gonna be roommates” message. She finally responded and she said she’d bring a mini-fridge since I was bringing a hand-me-down TV. We also made plans to split the Netflix subscription. So maybe things were gonna be OK. And they were! She hated glitter and rocked all black bedding. I actually had more “pink/girly” stuff than she did! She had a car and, as a Tacoma local, she introduced me to Hello Cupcake and taught me how to do the Puyallup. She and I weren’t your typical “besties,” but she is one of the best things to have happened to me. She was a safe space, a giver, and someone who saw me at my worst (suddenly bursting into tears when my mechanical pencil lead broke one too many times); my silliest (deciding to rearrange our room for the umpteenth time due to needing a better study vibe); and my truest (finally getting “out” for a night after not wanting to be social and then needing to be dragged home because my exits often took an hour since I had to say goodbye to every single person). Her family became my family; and mine, hers. We are terrible at staying in regular touch (the best of friends sometimes are!) but we do celebrate the heck out of the big moments. From graduating to pursuing graduate degrees; from dancing at each other’s weddings to becoming mothers—we make an effort to be there for the big things. Despite not being “perfect” matches as a roommate pair, we can’t imagine our lives had that not happened. So, thank you, random roommate pairing process. Or whatever magic was at play for the fall of 2008.
Lindsay Hammond Stoddard ’12
Portland, Oregon
DO NOT DISTURB
My freshman roommate on the fourth floor of Seward Hall (independent) was from Jamaica. Her family had moved to Seattle. It was my custom to take a siesta after lunch and before my midafternoon class. Even though she had been an exchange student to South America, and was thus quite familiar with this custom, she’d inevitably come back to our dorm room after lunch, swing the door open wide, and in a pronounced Caribbean accent exclaim, “What, woman, sleepin’ again?!”
Michelle Gutierrez ’86
Sunnyvale, Calif.
A HAWAIIAN CONVERT
My first roommate in Todd Hall was from the island of Oahu and spoke Hawaiian in his sleep, kept a rice cooker in our room, and could be quite opinionated. He invited me to visit Hawaii and to stay with his family during Christmas break. It was quite an adventure! Following this, I decided to join the Hawaiian Club at Puget Sound.
Don Wasielewski ’73
Tacoma
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
My first-year roommate and I were randomly paired together as part of the humanities program, and I wasn’t sure how we were going to get along. We had fairly different personalities and interests, but we were both from the East Coast with few, if any, connections in Washington. He had been taking an introductory Thai course first semester, and I remember him listening to an incredibly repetitive Thai nursery rhyme called “Chang Chang Chang” (the word for “elephant”) in our dorm room so often that it became a sort of inside joke. Over the semester, we grew closer as friends as we realized we had very similar senses of humor. So it concerned me when I came back from winter break to find an ominous note on the whiteboard outside our door: “We need to talk about the elephant in the room.” Immediately worried, I stepped inside to find at least two dozen clip-art elephants hidden throughout our dorm room. I couldn’t stop laughing, and for the rest of the year (and the next year, as we decided to live together again sophomore year), we traded back and forth hiding these paper changs in each other’s things—backpacks, shoes, pillowcases, almost everything was fair game. Eight years later, we’re now neighbors in Tacoma and still hide them in each other’s things when we get the chance.
Nick Gerard ’19
Tacoma
A DRAWER FULL
When I was a 1973 rookie in the Beta Theta Pi house, we would swap roommates every six weeks to get to know each other. I recall a senior member moved back into the house and then did a Winterim course overseas. He left us with three guys in a four-guy room. This was not a problem, of course. However, you know what they say: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Our elder roommate had not been pleased about bunking with us young men, and when he left, he gave us a stern warning to not mess with his stuff. You can guess how that would present us a fine challenge. We discovered that his meal ticket was active, even though he was in Egypt. Not wanting to let his money go to waste, we ordered a sack lunch for him every day. He returned to an immaculate desk and closet. Have you ever seen a four-week-old tuna sandwich? His desk drawers were full of them.
John Mitchell ’77
Lake Stevens, Wash.
NEVER AGAIN
My first year, I shared “The Bomb Shelter” in the basement of Anderson/Langdon Hall with three other women. We had a tremendous amount of room in that oddly shaped, rather dark and cavernous space, but we still were impacted by the schedules of each other, especially at night. One of our roommates was taking a very challenging course load on her path to becoming a doctor, and she was struggling to keep up. She came up with a new studying strategy that she called the 20/20 strategy. Throughout the night, she would study 20 minutes, then sleep for 20 minutes. And so on, all night long. I can hardly fathom the experience from her perspective (just as she’s starting to fall asleep, it’s time to get back up, and vice versa)—but from our perspective, we’re hearing an alarm go off every 20 minutes, all night. Needless to say, it didn’t work very well for any of us. We woke up tired, and she ended up having to retake some of those classes. That was the last I’d heard of the 20/20 study-and-sleep strategy.
Shannon Hughes ’92
Carmel, Calif.
MY TWO JENS
I walked into my first floor Anderson/Langdon freshman dorm room in 1989 with equal parts excitement and trepidation. I was in a triple with two Jennifers, both of whom went by Jen. Jen 1 had long dark hair, Birkenstocks, Grateful Dead bootlegs, and a Jim Morrison poster for the door. Jen 2 had perfectly coiffed blond curls, expertly applied makeup, and a Flashdance style off one shoulder pink sweatshirt. Hmmm, I thought, this could be interesting … and it was. It was also informative, occasionally challenging, and a whole lot of fun. I got to live with two amazing, funny, smart, and supportive women. My high school’s social structure was set up like a Venn diagram. I had friends in several groups, but there was not much in the way of intersection. At Puget Sound, something very different was happening. The different groups were interacting and hanging out together. People popped up in all kinds of interesting places. I loved that. My Jens and I all embraced this opportunity. We met and interacted with way more people because we were all different and willing to engage with each other. It took me many years after college to be truly comfortable in my own skin. I knew what the goal was, because that first-year experience with my Jens gave me my first taste of how diverse and rich life can be when we are willing to be open to new people and experiences.
Emily Asbury ’93
Yakima, Wash.
A MOST MEMORABLE WOMAN
As “townies” and older students, Darlene Haglund ’77 and I gravitated to each other. I was a single mom working fulltime while taking classes. Darlene was married and raising five kids. She decided my son and I needed a local family, so she adopted us. While not technically roommates, we spent many nights together bumbling and laughing our way through organic chemistry, physics, statistics, and biochemistry. We did room together in Hawaii during the Winterim of ’77. In that cohort of science majors, Darlene was a rock star: encouraging, optimistic, centered, empathetic, hilarious, and radiant. With unbridled joy, she drew us together. Afterwards, our classmate Rich Barnett ’77 wrote an essay about Darlene for an English class. “She is a very extraordinary lady, the type most people my age would label ‘far out,’ and yet want for a mother. She’s an inspiration to everyone who ever wanted something badly enough to sacrifice themselves for it.” Here’s my favorite: “Darlene has a very simple and sincere philosophy about life—‘You ought to try to do as many things as possible before you croak!’” That she did: mother, wife, hygienist, environmentalist, teacher, marathoner, skier, backpacker, real estate professional, cliff diver, and yes, long-haul truck driver. I saw her a few days before she died in January 2024 at age 87. Her laugh was still contagious and her smile still lit up the room. I am grateful for the events of life that brought her into mine.
Ruth Ann Mikels ’77
University Place, Wash.
THANK YOU, JOHN MAYER
Getting a random roommate was definitely one of the things I was most excited about—and most terrified of—as the fall of 2004 approached and I was about to move into a basement dorm of Todd/Phibbs. I was paired with a girl who had a UK address, so my immediate thought was “Whoa, how amazing is this that I will have a British roommate?!” Cue getting the inaugural introductory phone call from my future roomie and her having a boring American accent. I was a little disappointed to learn her family lived in the UK, but she was actually very much American. Fast forward to 2004–08 and, with the exception of one year, we never stopped being roommates. We dressed up together for Halloween, shared cookies in the cafe, spent one weird summer dog-sitting for cheap rent in Seattle (that’s a tale for another time)—the list goes on. Since graduation, we’ve been in each other’s weddings, spent holidays together, and made those exciting phone calls to each other announcing new jobs and new babies. At some point, we started wondering, How did we get paired together? Of all the matches that could have been, how did fate align? After some brainstorming, we decided it was because we both listed John Mayer as our favorite artist in our roommate survey—the year was 2004, after all. So, thanks John Mayer—and Puget Sound housing, of course—for bringing us together.
Callie Snyder Bruhn ’08
Beaverton, Ore.
