Features

Virginia Theodosopoulos Theo-Steelman '62, '69G
David C. Steelman '67, '70G
David: A graduate teaching assistant, I attended a meeting at Babcock House in November 1968 to discuss the possibility of participating in the faculty senate. Ginny Theodosopoulos and I were named to a committee to negotiate with faculty members. I chaired the committee, and Ginny was its most vocal member.

By early December, Ginny and I were seeing each other for breakfast every day. By early April, however, we had agreed to be just "friends." Yet at midnight on Tuesday, April 15, in the student lounge at Babcock House, I proposed to her. She accepted, but added that she would "chicken out" if we did not get married immediately.

We did get married just three days later. We rushed through the formalities, and at 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon, April 18, we were married under a tree in the backyard of the home of Professor Win Puffer and his wife, Geneva. In addition to being an associate dean of the Whittemore School, Win was a former minister, and he officiated. We couldn't afford a honeymoon, and we spent that weekend telling our respective families that we were married. That following Monday, the students in my freshman history class cheered when I announced my marriage. In April 2009, we will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary.

Marion Sheahan Stearns '45
Robert Stearns '47
Marion: In 1944, it was wartime, and uncertainty existed at the sorority house Alpha Xi Delta since our furnace tender had gone off to war. Tootie Carrier '45, my roommate, said that her cousin, Bob Stearns, was coming on campus and needed a job. So Alpha Xi hired him. Part of his pay was board. He roomed at Lambda Chi. And guess who had a job in the kitchen where he ate his meals. So that's how we met, over food and dirty dishes.

After practice teaching the 1944 fall semester in Portsmouth, N.H., I graduated in February 1945 and eventually got a job as a music supervisor in Springfield, Vt. Bob, a mechanical engineer, graduated in 1947 and worked for G.E. in Schenectady, N.Y. Our ways parted and we didn't connect again until Bob, an avid reader of the Alumnus magazine, read the notice that my husband had died.

Bob, having married and now divorced, was living in Livermore, Calif. The next time Bob flew east in his home-built Piel Emeraude airplane, he wrote me to let me know. So, after 36 years we met again and resumed our friendship. In the fall of 1982 we were married in Vermont on a hilltop where we could see New Hampshire mountains. We now live in sunny California.

Elaine Johnston Sanborn '51
Allison Quimby Sanborn '53
Al: Elaine and I met at The Commons in March 1950. She introduced herself as "Mehitable Schmunk from Nome, Alaska," and I was hooked. On our first date, we walked up to the football stadium and sat there and talked. Later on I called her, and she asked if this was a big snow job, and, after due deliberation, I responded that it was not. Now I was really hooked! Our courtship revolved around Notch Hall, movies and short trips in my Model A Ford. That car was distinctive, with its royal blue body with white wheels, so many people from that era would recall seeing it, I think. It was a two-seater with a rumble seat, so we could doubledate. We were married in April of 1952, and now have four sons and 10 grandkids.

Jenna Christensen Wertheimer '96
Ari Wertheimer '91
Ari: My wife and I met in 1992. She was a freshman and I had graduated the year before but stayed to work on a research project in Morse Hall. The day we met I was eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream in the MUB with a friend who would later be my best man in our wedding. A group of girls were walking by and my friend happened to know them and introduced me. Today, all I recall about that meeting was that I thought all the girls in the group were very attractive; my wife, however, recalls that she felt something right away and she commented to her friends as they were walking away that I was the kind of guy she wanted to marry. We later became friends through our mutual involvement in one of the Christian student organizations on campus and shortly after her graduation in 1996 we got married. Today we live in Boston and have five kids, the oldest of whom wishes we never left New Hampshire; perhaps he will return to UNH and meet his wife there as well!

Alice Pince Mullen '78
Kevin Mullen '80
Alice: Kevin and I met at Freshman Camp in 1975. I was a first-year counselor and he was an incoming freshman. On the last night of camp, the activity was the "untalented hour." The group didn't have a counselor participating, so I joined them. Everyone had a partner, except Kevin, so we paired up.

The way the skit works is one person stands in front of a table and the other stands behind them. The person in front puts their arms into the leg holes of a pair of shorts, and their hands into a pair of shoes. Then they put on a long-sleeved shirt backwards. The person behind puts their arms into the sleeves and ducks down.

The group did a routine to Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. I had never done this before so when Kevin started doing crazy things with his/my hands, I was a little shocked. But everyone in the audience was laughing so hard, I started to laugh. The applause was huge. I was so happy that I gave Kevin a big hug and a kiss at the end.

When I got back to campus, I realized I couldn't remember his name or where he lived. One day I saw him in Philbrook and yelled, "Hey, Arms!" He yelled back, "Hey, Body!" Through a personal ad in The New Hampshire, I invited him to my first pledge dance. It read, "Hey Arms! How would you like to escort your Body to the Chi Omega pledge dance?" He accepted. We were married in 1981 and are still best friends.