Antiochians on Co-op

Antiochians’ memories from Co-op across the decades in their own words.

As we mark a century of cooperative education, we will continue to welcome contributions and memories throughout the year including in the next issue of The Antiochian. See more stories and submit your own at: antiochcollge.edu/co-op-100

Jackson Sherman ’39 working the Dispensary Desk at Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL, circa 1935.

1930s

Listen up

Esther B. Read ’31

Let everybody else talk—you learn a lot that way! But I admit that THAT was a difficult lesson for me to absorb (absorb: “to receive without recoil”—old dictionary, what does yours say?).

Co-op job board in Main Building, circa 1941.

1940s

Animal feeds

Robert R. Cruse ’42

A short but intensive course in animal feeds at the Eastern States mill—have used the knowledge on several occasions since, and recall most of it. Also, how lousy the winter weather can be in Buffalo, NY—they hadn’t defined the lake effect in 1938-40. Five feet of snow was routine. Subject not taught at Antioch.

Jolt of realization

Rollin Brewer ’48

I learned electricity can be lethal. I’m testing 60 searchlights (remember them?) October 1943 at the Brooklyn Sperry Gyroscope plant. Forgot to turn off the main switch, entered the camp to adjust the negative carbon, and got a jolt! If I didn’t have rubber insulators around my pliers, I wouldn’t be writing this!

Familiar face

Mary Bowman ’49

My first Co-op job opened the job at the Field Museum in Chicago in 1946, winter. It was begun in the Insect Department and I worked for the two assistant curators. They were nice guys and when my youngest daughter worked on her Co-op job (Phyllis Bieri) 30 years later, both of them were still in Insects and exclaimed, “Why haven’t you been back to visit sooner!” A mind-blower.

Remember the panties

Patricia Faist Johnson ’49

I had an early Co-op job at the Research Institute of America in New York City. I sat in a beautiful reception room where a bank of elevators opened into the area. One day a lovely, wellgroomed gal alighted on the arm of a fine gent and her panties fell to the floor. Without a moment’s hesitation or blinking an eye, she kicked them aside and walked across the room! I think “remember the panties” on incidents in my own life and try to handle them with such aplomb!

War

Jim Hawthorne ’49

World War II was the worst and most humorless Co-op experience I had. One, I didn’t know it would count as a Co-op experience, so never looked at it from that perspective. Two, I learned luck can outweigh ability, talent, knowledge, and position in life.

Joan (Ellis) Fireman ’45 working at Vernay Patents Inc., a company that started in the Science Building (now the Arts and Science Building) when they earned their Army-Navy “E” Award for wartime production.

1950s

The lesson of life

David Gold ’51

My first Co-op job was on the maintenance crew under Mr. Schaub. One day we had to dig up a sewage pipe which was clogged and as the plumber said when he opened a hole in the pipe and just reached in and scooped out the mess, he said, (Fred did), “Ya kin always wash your hands, son.” Lesson of life.

Woman at work

Netta Sanow Kaplan ’51

Hardest Co-op: working at Mt. Sinai Hospital in 1947 and feeling a part of the “lower” caste—from the uniform to the dining arrangements. However, I learned that people with every “labor” type work respected their work and themselves.

Funniest Co-op memory: Mice jumping into my lab coat sleeves while I was trying to inject them.

Chicken bravery

Ellen Lazarus Farwell ’53

On my first Co-op job in Chicago, I was learning to cook from a book called, “You Can Cook If You Can Read.” My roommate, who was expecting a visit from a young man, asked me to cook dinner for the three of us since I was the expert. I agreed to cook a chicken if she would buy it.

She came home with a whole dead chicken—guts, head, feet and all. I was stymied at first, but it occurred to me that dealing with the chicken couldn’t be very different from cleaning fish, which I had learned to do from my father (an avid fisherman who used to pass the messy part on to me). Somehow, I managed to slit the chicken open, pull out the innards, and chop off the extremities. What a mess! What a smell! But I cleaned it up and cooked it according to directions, and it was delicious. What did I learn? First, NEVER buy an intact chicken. Second, if you can handle smelly chicken guts, you could handle almost anything.

Ruth (Atherton) Gross ’51 on Co-op at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Joe must go

Joan (Cole) Straumanis ’57

When I was on my first Co-op job in Madison, Wisconsin (at the US Forest Products Laboratory) in 1953-4, I participated in the “Joe Must Go” campaign to recall Senator Joseph McCarthy. I attended rallies, distributed flyers, and spoke at events. Of course the campaign was unsuccessful, but I stayed involved. I even skipped the start of Antioch classes in Fall ’54 (big no-no in those days) to travel to DC to attend the McCarthy Senate censure hearings in person! Those WERE successful. McCarthy was censured and kind of wilted after that. A good model for current rogue incumbents.

Helping with love

Cecil C. Holland ’58

I learned that emotionally disturbed children can be helped substantially in a “good” state institution with care by professionals who love children.

Bathrobe for Steve

Byron H. Webb ’59

I had a job in 1955 wrapping packages for mailing at a store in NYC. They didn’t think I wrapped fast enough, and suggested I find another job. I changed to a sales job at Saks Fifth Avenue and among other sales, sold Steve Allen a bathrobe. I really enjoyed that job.

Esther (Gordon) Schweich ’56 working at the Library of Congress in May, 1952.

Barbara (Heim) Wright ’57 operates a photographic charging machine in the Central Circulation Branch of the New York Public Library in 1953.

1960s

Rubbing shoulders with Ike

Howard F. “Smitty” Smith ’61

Best Co-op: Two quarters in Foggy Bottom literally rubbing shoulders with Eisenhower and Kennedy and soaking up historical places and events! Traveling two quarters with C&NW RR out of Chicago and Clinton, IA.

Worst Co-op: 80 weekly hours on the clock, hiring summer employees from under trees for Libby’s tomato juice plant in Kokomo, IN. Got bit by a dog, shadowed employee disability fakers with the boss in bars at night, and ran his damn flag up the pole every morning! Almost got an ulcer, started coughing up blood! Wrote my Co-op report like a Rod Serling Twilight Zone/Peyton Place novel. Co-op adviser didn’t appreciate my humor. I still think it was Academy Award material!

Nothing to spit at

Judy Siegel Folkmanis ’63

In the early ’60s, during my third year at Antioch, I worked at the Tufts Dental School in Boston as a “research assistant” in a laboratory. My job was to assist staff with their daily activities–the main goal being to reduce or eliminate the formation of dental caries. Our basic research tool was saliva and it was required that all personnel produce enough for our day’s work. I find myself reminiscing about the ol’ days, when I arrived at work to find all my cohorts chewing on a wad of paraffin, and spitting into a calibrated test tube. We were paid for what we each manufactured, but I quickly learned that 2 cents per milliliter would NOT pay my bills.

Hold that order

Robin Rice Lichtig ’64

Learned that I most definitely could cross “waitress” off my “prospective careers” list.

Five Antiochians working at Convair Astronautics (“home of the Atlas Missile”), San Diego, CA, in 1960. L to R: John Creamer ’60, Peter Bowman ’62, Paul Hoover ’62, Joyce Ellmer ’60, Richard Goodman ’60.

Good action

David Roger Allen ’66

I was fired from my Fall 1964 Co-op job at the Yale University Psychiatric Institute because I defended a mental patient who was being abused by a student psychiatrist there. I learned it is a very GOOD thing to be fired from a very BAD job controlled by very bad people.

Ongoing challenge

Kenneth Tiven ’66

In 1965 I learned that the 500 miles from Hazard, KY, to Washington, DC, felt more like a 200-year distance.

I was a writer at the Commerce Department documenting President Johnson’s Great Society efforts in Appalachia. Months in Eastern Kentucky taught the socio-economic disparities in America in a way that no college class or textbook could properly explain.

The poverty in housing, education, and health mirrored the destruction of the environment by the coal industry making an indelible impression. The America promised in the Declaration of Independence remains elusive to this day.

Seven media Co-op jobs (including Record editor), the Army as a journalist, with concurrent newspaper jobs made Graduate School into a finishing school. The math says I never stopped being an Antiochian. In 54 years I managed 15 USA jobs and another 15 major global projects establishing media companies. The jobs were just longer; the sense of moving from challenge to challenge remained the same.

Head Start

Candace George Thompson ’67

My most challenging Co-op job was with the newly launched Head Start program, part of President Johnson’s War on Poverty campaign. I knocked on doors in a small town near YSO, attempting to recruit potential candidates in an area populated by recent immigrants from Appalachia. When the program started I worked as the teacher’s helper. The skills I learned proved to be helpful after I graduated in 1967 and joined the Peace Corps. I was stationed in the middle of the Llanos in Venezuela in a new community opened by the government.

Called Lecheritos, the community consisted of four short streets of cinder-block houses. No stores, no school, no transportation. A school was just beginning to be built. What a perfect opportunity to use my recruiting skills and introduce myself. I managed to come up with a chalkboard and taught the children the basics of reading, giving them a head start, and for many the only one in their families who could read and write.

Dream job

Susan Parman ’68

On October 3, 1962, I arrived at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, to begin a three-month program as a “normal volunteer” as part of Antioch College’s work-study program. I had just turned 17. I was recruited by Alan Hobson to be a subject in sleep/dream experiments. I returned, in the next Co-op cycle, for six months, and was incorporated into the research family. Hobson would go on to be a leading researcher on the neurophysiology of REM sleep at Harvard. I majored in Psychology with an emphasis on neurophysiology and then went to Rice University for a PhD in Anthropology.

Susan (Cook) Brook ’62 working on Co-op at the Chicago Natural History Museum in March, 1959. Here she is shown repairing a Chinese rubbing.

Accentuate the positive

Tom LaMers ’68

By 1963 there were only a handful of engineering students but many engineering job openings so I “shot the moon” selecting an upper-class placement at Letourneau heavy equipment in Peoria, IL. I flew home to LA for divbreak. Three days before the start I learned the Letourneau job had fallen through, Co-op would find something else. Indeed, it was very “else”, a sweatshop novelty manufacturer in Newburg, NY. Arrived the night before and checked out the factory. Very grim, an old mill mostly shuttered. In the morning the secretary seemed to know nothing about the job but connected me to the plant engineer, Walt Westlake ’39. He graciously offered to rent a room in his home. After the first day, he gave an aerial tour of the Hudson River Valley in his Piper Cub, taking off in the dark from his backyard airstrip lighted by kerosene lanterns. Wonderful start!

My job was to improve the factory production lines which built artificial Christmas trees and bicycle seats. Many workers were recent arrivals from the deep south with extreme regional accents. It took a week to learn each other’s languages but we had a good time.

Steven Eckroad ’65 working as a laboratory technician in Cambridge, MA, at Arthur D. Little, Inc., an organization that conducted research for industry (today a multinational management consulting firm).

Bob Devine ’67 on Co-op editing films made by Jewel Graham’s Antioch Program for Interracial Education (APIE).

Stop the presses

Andrew Hewes ’69

I was a copy boy at the St. Louis PostDispatch for my first Co-op in the fall of 1963. At that time, there were four weekday editions.

At 1 PM on November 22, the midday edition was printing downstairs. The frantic business of meeting the mid-day deadline was gone, and people were casually wandering about. The teletype dinged, which was unusual because the Copy Room machine was only for incoming transmissions from Post-Dispatch reporters in other cities. I glanced at the text and yelled “Stop the presses!” to the City Editor halfway across the room. He picked up his house phone and yelled “Stop the presses!”, then came running over to look at the teletype himself.

The President had been shot and had just arrived at Parkland Hospital. I looked out a window at the street. Newspaper trucks were leaving the building. I yelled that information to the City Editor. He yelled into his phone, “Get all those trucks back here. Now!” That day’s in-house editorial cartoon had been a Jack-in-thebox popping up in front of a cowboy with twin six-shooters spraying bullets at a smiling John F. (Jack) Kennedy. I yelled, “I know where the Editors are having lunch. I’ll get them.” They had heard the news and were returning to the office, perhaps thinking about the now inappropriate editorial cartoon. They cleverly changed it to a solid black rectangle.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

Gary Wishniewsky ’69

In early Fall 1967 I was on an AEA Coop arranged by Cathy Eberhart ’68, as a big brother to a group of 8–12 year old children at the Evangelisches Johannesstift in West Berlin. On a day off I made my third trip under the wall on the S-Bahn to East Berlin to the Pergamon Museum. This time passport control kept me waiting over four hours, staring with hostility, telling me to sit down and stop asking for my visa. After finally getting through to visit the Museum and then returning to the Stift, I told the director about it. He said because it was dangerous for me to know, he had not told me that his staff were smuggling food, money, and documents to East Berliners trying to escape. Passport control officers suspected this but had not caught anyone. When an American with the Stift address came through, they were convinced I was a smuggler and kept me waiting to see if I would act nervous or guilty. I felt like the spy who came in from the cold!

Bud Hogarty, Co-op faculty, in 1968.

1970s

Play ball!

John Draper ’71

I was on my final Co-op Spring/Summer of 1970 in NYC, working for the New York Shakespeare Festival. As a promo, we played softball in Central Park against Governor Rockefeller’s campaign staff.

Earth Day

Galen Gilbert ’71

In 1970 I was working at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland as a math and science tutor. I helped students study college arithmetic and biology. I also organized the first Earth Day there and arranged for the professors to talk about environmental issues that day.

When I later applied to law school, I described my activities on that Co-op. When I arrived in Boston I could not afford to start law school at Northeastern University; I needed to work for a year, and went to the law school office to see about rolling over my acceptance. When I gave my name to the receptionist, out of her office came the registrar, who recognized my name from my application. She took me to lunch to meet me. She gave me information about a job that I could have.

Joan Evans (later Joan Chappelle) and Elaine Comegys (right) in 1973.

Finding a path

Catherine Jordan ’72

I Co-oped at the Manchester Child and Family Services of New Hampshire in 1968. I was interested in exploring social work as a possible career. I started out in the basement retrieving files from dusty cartons and soon worked my way up to transporting babies from hospitals to foster care parents and eventually placed two infants in adoption. I did the site visits, interviewed the prospective parents and their families, worked with the mothers to sign the adoption papers, and prepared documents for the court proceedings, all under the supervision of a licensed social worker. The sexual mores were hardly enlightened in 1968. Birth control and abortion were illegal, the BC pill was just coming into popular use. Unwanted pregnancy was a huge embarrassment and young women often left town to hide their “shame.” Our agency worked with a program in Maine where girls were given a new identity and treated as if they had a disease until they were “cured” upon delivery. I found these conditions to be byzantine and decided that my path would lead me up-stream to prevent unwanted pregnancy, STDs, sexual exploitation, and gender stereotypes instead of dealing with the aftermath of uninformed or unconscious choices. This Co-op experience was enormously valuable to me in guiding my future careers.

A shocking experience

Ron Sklar ’74

In 1972 I had a Co-op job at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. One of my tasks on this job was caring for an electric eel named Volta. It was an enlightening experience. One day after coming into work, I saw Volta lying on the floor next to his tank. He was motionless but alive. Then I had to figure out a way to place the electric eel back in the tank. When I called up the local zoo the only advice they could give me was to be well-grounded and use rubber gloves. Fully insulated, I carefully placed Volta on a towel and moved him back into his tank. Over the next week I really got a charge out of seeing Volta improve day by day. The experience enlightened me greatly in my work as a physician and showed how important it is to remain current in your medical knowledge. I also learned how to move in a positive direction when all the negatives are around you.

Linda Bond ’74 working on a construction project in 1972.

Haphazard but valuable

Barbara Esbin ’75

My Co-ops were fairly haphazard, and none led to discovering what I wanted to do in life, but each was valuable. I traveled in Europe for my next two Co-op quarters after working at the Boston Children’s Museum—spending the first with fellow Antiochian Emily Yozell ’75. We went to France, England, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and then onto Italy and Yugoslavia. After we split up, I spent most of my second quarter on the island of Skyros, learning about Greek island culture (the best experience of my life at that point).

Later, I found another Co-op job clerking in Boston at a “Reference Lab,” processing blood tests, etc., for local hospitals and doctors. Every once in while a human limb showed up for testing. The low point in my Co-ops was working as a maid in a motel with a giant black plaster bear outside.

In my third year, I returned to Greece on a year-long AEA program but was cut short after a second Greek military junta. Living under martial law was an eye-opening experience that I do not recommend. I returned home after the academic portion of the program ended and got a Co-op job as a teacher’s aide in a “free school” run by the Toronto, Canada, public school system.

Eyes wide open by the Bay

Hal Josephson ’75

On Jan. 4th, 1973 I flew from JFK to SFO, my first time west of Yellow Springs, OH. My third Co-op job was a photojournalist internship at San Francisco PBS-TV affiliate KQED. My role was to take news-stills that were shown behind the on-air newsreader for Newsroom, the 6 PM local news show. San Francisco at the time was still reveling in the tie-dye T-shirt glow of the ’60s— it was an energizing, incredible time to be living in SF and truly an eye-opening experience. My Co-op time in the Bay Area was radically different from anything I’ve ever experienced growing up at the Jersey Shore in Atlantic City. I can honestly say that my Antioch Co-op time there changed the course of my life. Post-graduation I moved West to live in the Rockies and work in community TV. After nine years in Aspen and Boulder, CO, I moved to live and work in SF from 1985–2004. My only son lives in SF now and I will always think of SF as my Left Coast home away from home where I now live in New Zealand.

Navajo radio

Joel Hariton ’76

In the fall of 1973 I had a Co-op job at KTDB, a Navajo-owned and operated public radio station on the Ramah Navajo reservation. As a WYSO-trained radio engineer, I helped operate KTDB and taught Navajo students how to get an FCC radio license so they could as well.

One radio program I produced was mostly the Medicine Man coming in, providing advice, and performing chants to help specific remote listeners ease an illness. It was a remarkable way to use broadcast radio as a oneway communication, pre-internet.

I developed a relationship with the Medicine Man, Mr. Chatto, and he liked that I was training his son, Chavez, to become a radio operator. Once Chavez asked me to give him a ride home to their hogan. We drove on miles of dirt roads and when I approached their home, the Medicine Man came out of his hogan and approached the car. I rolled down my window and said, “Yah teh hey” (hello). He smiled and put his hand on top of my head. Three times he raised his hand to the ceiling of the car and placed his hand on my head again. I thought he was giving me some sort of blessing, until he said, “Yeah, enough room for a cowboy hat,” and laughed.

Sam Henio, a student taught by Joel Hariton, at tribal radio station KTDB on the Ramah Navajo Indian Reservation, a non-contiguous section of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.

Begging for change

Steve Law ’77

“How to survive in poverty conditions...” My Co-op for Eastern Farm Workers Association was billed as paying $5 a week plus room and board. I never saw the $5. During the winter of 197273, the struggling organization ran low on funds. Living in a converted garage on Long Island, we had no money to pay the heating bill, so we had to step up our daily “bucket drives”—standing outside the Safeway or 16A with can in hand, begging for spare change “to help the farmworkers.”

Luckily I brought my down bag on this Co-op or I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night. For food, we survived on school/church canned

Unidentified student on Co-op in Washington, DC, in 1978.

1980s

Love the footwork

Jeanne Badman ’80

My best Co-op was Foot Messenger for American Film Producers in NYC in the summer of 1979. The office was in Times Square. The job was delivering video and 16mm commercial reels to TV stations and production studios all over midtown Manhattan. Skills gained were how NOT to dress for work, how NOT to respond to harassment (in the office and on the street), how NOT to get mowed down by bike messengers, how NOT to take the wrong train, and how to definitely LOVE NY. Fun times included walking through the set of Fame every day, finding shortcuts through hotel lobbies and courtyards, standing up on the Cyclone at Coney Island, and discovering The Cloisters. I’d do it again today.

Hot topic

Karen Erickson ’81

I worked on the Greenhouse Project at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA, in 1979. It was early days of understanding greenhouse gases. The lab was on a gorgeous beach; I was in a windowless lab testing CO2 levels of air samples. One day I drove the PhD who ran the lab to the airport. He was going to a presidential conference on climate change. I asked why would the president care about climate? He said the U.S. wants to understand how world temperature rises will benefit or hurt the U.S., Russia, China, Europe, India. If increasing the average world temperature benefits the U.S., then we would promote policies that accelerate that outcome, like forcing countries who receive financial aid from the U.S. to build fossil fuel power plants. It was a stunning moment, a revelation.

Healthy space

Theresa Fitzmaurice ’81

My Co-op experiences were great!!! About five months at NIH in DC and one year at the Aerospace Corp in LA. Worked with knowledgeable students and professionals. Both cities were also great.

Naturopathic path

Amy Rothenberg ’82

I left Yellow Springs on a warm summer day in 1979, hitchhiked to Portland, OR, and landed in front of a lively, downtown café, the Green Goddess. I saw a sign: “Three naturopathic medical students looking for a 4th housemate. $75/month.” As I walked across the Morrison Bridge to the house, I wondered what naturopathic medicine was. Around the dinner table, I learned about a profession which held

tenets that resonated deeply: treat the whole person, identify and treat the underlying cause of illness, and stimulate the body’s innate healing capacity. I was blown away by the elegance of the philosophy, and the possibility of its impact on both individual and public health. After my six-month Co-op at the medical school working in a research lab, I returned to campus, completed my medical school/naturopathic school prerequisites and headed back to PDX. I have loved my 35-year career as a licensed naturopathic physician, working in the clinical setting, writing, teaching, and advocating for integrative medicine approaches. I am ever pleased to see conventional medicine continuing to shift toward preventive care and lifestyle medicine to address the ongoing epidemics of chronic disease, polypharmacy, and the prescription cascade.

Books for days

Barbara (Dole) Acosta ’84

One of my favorite Co-op jobs was working for the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress in about 1983. Our job was to respond to inquiries to Congress members from their constituents. You never knew what might come up. I recall, in particular, that someone wrote asking if people with disabilities had the right to receive full service at self-service gas stations. Another constituent asked about the health benefits of owning a pet (reduced stress, lower blood pressure, etc.). One day one of my colleagues, a permanent employee, approached me. “I’ve noticed how hard you work,” she said. “Please knock it off. You’re making the rest of us look bad!” After that, I would take every opportunity to go into the main library in the Thomas Jefferson building looking for a

book to help with my “research.” The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of items, including over 500 miles of books (now more like 838 miles). If one is a member of the public, you can’t just wander around looking for a book. You have to go up to the reference desk, ask a librarian to find the publication you’re looking for, and have them bring it out to you to peruse within the premises. No borrowing allowed. But as a CRS employee/intern, I had free reign to hang out as long as I wanted back in the stacks, or to bring books back to my cubicle to read at my leisure.

Battling apartheid

Joel Pomerantz ’84

I helped lead a summer orientation (International Institute for Education, 1982) for 67 incoming Black South African students. They were accepted into various U.S. colleges during apartheid on the condition that they’d go home afterwards to become community leaders. Reagan’s ambassador to South Africa gave a presentation and was startled to have the students grill him knowledgeably over policy, for hours. He was slick but couldn’t finess it. The first “entertainment” was a movie which depicted the brutality of racism in the U.S. This caused uproar among the students who found such a “welcome” insensitive. The orientation director—a Black American man—had chosen it because he wanted to show “we understand.” We don’t.

Our student participants weren’t passive about race issues, community, or politics. At the final dinner, I got a standing ovation for speaking in the “click language,” Xhosa. A couple of the sophisticated and outspoken student radicals were badly placed (conservative Baptist colleges in cornfield towns, for example) and dropped out. Mostly, though, the program was a success and was repeated the next year and then again for 12 years. Halfway

through that timespan, apartheid fell, no doubt partly due to this program.

James Robinson ’85 on Co-op at the Reagan Bush Campaign headquarters.

It’s all about the hiking

Mary Beth McJunkin Schwartz ’85

The late, great Bud Hogarty set me up on my first Co-op in Yellowstone National Park. The actual job was cleaning public areas, the assignment was writing a paper on observations of tourist behavior, but really, it was all about the hiking. Best. Co-op. Ever.

Mary Beth McJunkin Schwartz ’85 in Yellowstone

The convention that wasn’t

Judith A. Fisher ’89

When I was doing my first Co-op at the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Chicago, I was basically hired to get a national convention of DSA members to a get-together in Chicago at a big hotel or convention center. I still recall when I made the call to actually cancel the whole thing! Kind of ironic.

DIY on four tracks

Steve Moriarty ’89

I attended Antioch College largely because of the Co-op program... and the hammer and sickle I saw graffitied on the wall of the “Presidents” dorm building during my initial visit. Music and social change in my blood, I formed a band with three dorm-mates within six weeks of beginning classes in 1985. We hatched a plan to move to Ann Arbor, MI, and create a home studio in which to write, rehearse, and record our original music.

It was the dawning of the famous acronym, DIY. The do-it-yourself movement in music, art, film and I dare say, education. During the course of a six-month (double-double) Co-op, we played a dozen shows around Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Kent State, wrote a dozen songs in the cellar of a sublet frat house, and recorded an album on four tracks. We selfreleased a “DIY” cassette and proudly had gifts for our families and friends at Christmas that year. It was a bold and grand undertaking for four scrappy 19-year-old kids and we had the time of our lives. The music of our “Antioch band,” Big Brown House, is considered by critics and fans to be relevant today. The songs can be found on streaming platform Spotify. Kudos and love to the young men: Adrian Garver ’89 (bassist), Ben London ’89 (guitarist), Roger Garufi ’88 (singer); three of Antioch’s finest products.

Co-op faculty Jackie Teepen and Scott Minar in 1990.

1990s

Walking on air

Felicia Chappelle ’91

The M Street Metro was how I got to NPR headquarters before they moved to North Capitol Street. I was there. I sat in the studio with a team of professionals who broadcast All Things Considered every weekday. I was a hustling, ambitious, undertrained radio news hopeful. From the morning meeting to decide what stories made the lineup to the moment then-producer Marika Partridge opened up the live mic, I was the solo intern, side-byside with greatness learning the work of news radio. My Co-op advisor, Rich Abrams, was in complete disbelief and

I noticed him following me through DuPont Circle on my way in one morning. He confronted me at the door to the secure facility and plainly said he was there to research if I had falsified my job assignment so we toured the empty office. I was a good 90 minutes ahead of Cokie Roberts, Renee Montagne, Robert Siegel, Ira Glass (my cubicle neighbor), and many talented others. I had to be. Thank you Antioch College. Thank you Foundry Theater Department Faculty chair Denny Partridge and departed Professor Steve Friedman. I got the job!

Sam Lucas ’92 Crown Point Press, San Francisco, CA.

Theatrical release

Nicola Baltimore ’92

I think the Co-op experience that impacted me the most was when I went to Chicago in 1990 to work for the League of Chicago Theatres and the Chicago Theatre Foundation. I was born in a big city but grew up in suburban Ohio. I had never navigated the big city on my own. My mom gave me one of those books for tourists that showed train and bus routes and popular tourist locations, and it was helpful. But I was shy, and I realized that everything kind of looked the same at first and I was going to just have to ask. I had to walk up to a stranger and not only tell them where I lived but ask them how to get there. That was horrifying, but it worked.

My job was in the theater industry, so everyone was outgoing and crazy, and to top it off, the organizations I worked for were experiencing a huge controversy with possible misappropriation of funds by the executive director, so the phones were on fire and I was charged with screening out the media. Any shyness I had was gone by the end of that summer after asking half the people where I should go and telling the other half of the people where to go!

No pay, no housing, no problem

Meredith Bull Buhalis ’92

I arrived in New Orleans with a letter promising a place to live, two meals a day, and a job teaching in an alternative public school. It turned out there was no place to live and only volunteer work at the school. Using my prior Co-op skills, I rented an apartment that was previously a hair salon with two other Antioch students, headed straight for the French Quarter, and landed a job bartending within the week. I spent the next three months learning all about New Orleans through the many characters in the Quarter, Mardi Gras, the families, students, and teachers from the school, and the many adventures that only Antioch students seem to find.

Sheepish inspiration

Melaina Eller ’93

One quarter, I was very late planning my Co-op. I’d always considered myself an urban woman. So when the student assisting in the Co-op office said there was a spot left at the Wolfe Family Sheep Farm, I burst out laughing. But quickly added, “Just because I’m laughing, I’m actually going to do it!” It turned out to be one of my most memorable quarters at Antioch, and ultimately inspired me to become a nurse and to volunteer after graduation as a medical assistant for animals in a local shelter.

Tracey (Martin) Johnson ’93 (left) and Kilma Glenn ’94 on Co-op at Anna Louise Inn, a women’s facility in Cincinnati, OH, providing low-cost housing and health services.

Organizing and orienting

Sol (Mark Solomon) ’94

In the summer of (I think) ’93, my oncampus Co-op was New Student Orientation Coordinator for Fall. I eagerly used FileMaker Pro to keep things organized. That was pretty hi-tech at the time, and I received some kudos from admins just before we kicked off. PR Director Holly Knight enhanced the printed finished products. Dean of Faculty Gene Rice (a quiet, suit-wearing guy) wanted to meet with me—and then blew my mind by changing the subject to reveal that he was one of the Harvard Divinity School students involved in Leary’s original experiments. The highlight was getting to work with the brilliant Bill Chappelle and Faith Patterson of the then-still-new AACW.

The biggest challenge came during Orientation itself, when the national media showed up to cover the SOPP. Dean of Students Marian Jensen, Associate DOS Elaine Comegys, and damn near everyone else was fully consumed managing the chaos. So, I found myself flying pretty much solo ‘round the clock to make Orientation happen. At one point, I got all stressed out and ‘turfed’ the lawn in front of Antioch Hall in my propane-powered ’79 Chevy Silverado Crew Cab. I learned some stuff that has informed my career as a higher-ed administrator.

Judge ye not

Heather L. Pyle ’94

My worst Co-op experience was in Texas for a family who owned a greenhouse and nursery. They lived in the country and the living conditions were quite rustic (outhouse, bath in the greenhouse, no shower). From the moment I met them, they viewed me as a kid from the city who never had to pee in the woods in her life. Although I was unaccustomed to their lifestyle, I am highly adaptive, but they never took the time to learn about me. What did I learn? Do not judge people unfairly without all the information.

And I get change, too?

Megan Gregory ’96

That in Syrian dialect Arabic asking to buy some walnuts sounds a lot like asking to buy a husband.

Clutch navigating

Alison Stankrauff ’96

Antioch College shaped who I am quite deeply. I treasure that we worked half of the year and we studied half of the year. The experiences that I had during my Co-ops have given me so many things: self reliance, self-confidence, ability to navigate a variety of sorts of places and situations. Co-op also intensified my curiosity about the world and ability to see different perspectives. I treasure so many of my Antioch memories—and Co-op is central to these.

One Co-op that I had was at an intimate partner violence shelter in upstate New York. It was my first Co-op. I had been a victim myself of an abusive relationship in high school and I deeply related to the women in the shelter. I lived in the shelter along with the residents and I also worked in the office in the daytime. I managed the logistics of the home and took the women to court appointments, job interviews, grocery shopping, etc. It was also at this Co-op that I learned how to drive. There was a little old beat-up car owned by the organization. The women actually helped me learn how to drive this clutchbased car in what was very hilly terrain.

Sudden realization

Josh Fredman ’98

I found myself standing, hiding really, in the small library in the consulting firm’s office where I Co-oped in 1996. I had a horrible sinking feeling that I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Couldn’t wait to get away from these atrocious people and stop doing this horrid job. I soon realized how grateful I was to have that experience on Co-op so I didn’t have to figure it out the hard way after I graduated, thinking that job was something I wanted to do with my life.

2000s

Learning how to fall

Karla Schroeder Zimski ’00

I was in NYC in 1998-99 and my housing fell through. After a couple weeks of couch hopping, I called my Co-op advisor from a pay phone saying I was homeless. The response was, “Well, this is not what we had hoped for.” To make a long story short, it all worked out. I ended up extending my Co-op another term. Once I returned to campus, I was asked to speak to some first years about what NOT to do on Co-op, and how to survive.

War and peace

Alex Stadtner ’00

I remember being buried under burlap sacks in the back of a pickup truck. The driver told me to hunker down and hide as they drove past a military checkpoint into a war zone—Chiapas, Mexico, 1996. It was all fun and games until I found myself terrified of being poked with a pitchfork or discovered as a Zapatista sympathizer. The next three months as a Peace Worker in the jungle were among the most peaceful in my life. Ironic, because for the locals they were literally at war and their world was being turned upside down. But for me, 19 and on Co-op, it was bliss being away from technology so deep in the jungle winning some victory for humanity. Fond memories of a lifetime adventure I will never forget.

An inspiring dinner

Rani Deighe Crowe ’01

I was at Pegasus Players Theater Company in Chicago in Spring of 2000. I was invited to a small dinner party at the Artistic Director’s home to celebrate a play they had recently done, The State of Mississippi Versus Emmett Till. I sat across from Mamie Till Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, for the whole dinner. I often think about how fortunate I was to meet such an incredible human being.

Kristen Weberg ’01 (second from right) and Liz MacDonald ’04 (right) on Co-op at the John Bryan Center in Yellow Springs, OH.

If you can think it, you can do it

Matt Walker ’04

I was like 19 or 20 when I decided that, whatever it takes, I need to go to New York and India. So I applied to Antioch, got in, and then did four months of Independent Study Abroad in India, and then for another four months Co-op, I was at a graduate school in Southern India doing like hardcore music and anthropology studies all day, every day. My Co-op after that was in New York where I wrote one heavy metal song every day but before that, my first real Co-op was at Dixon Place Theater. I eventually transitioned into the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and I still work there and I’ve been working there since 2006. I’ve really been able to succeed in the museum world as an audiovisual person. It’s been a way to engage a lot of my different talents: I had that background in audiovisual, and just all my knowledge from India Studies. I have a proficiency in Hindi through Antioch, and I’ve been able to perform at the Asian Art Museum on Sitar too, taking Antioch Studies even to the next level.

Once a journalist, always a journalist

Kim-Jenna Jurriaans ’08

My most memorable Co-op by far was editing The Record during the time of the struggle for the independence of Antioch. It was that experience I think more so than other Co-ops that I’ve had, and I’ve been to DC and New York. But it was editing The Record that really cemented my relationship with the campus community, with the Alumni community, with the community of Yellow Springs. And that really helped me strengthen my skills as somebody who always wanted to be a journalist.

2010s

Healthy outlook

Diana Harvey ’16

I was always passionate about cooking and health but it wasn’t until my third Co-op, as a Nutrition Education intern in the home office of Natural Grocers, that I realized nutrition was the missing piece of the puzzle. I graduated in 2016 with a BS in Biomedical Science. I look forward to continuing my education this fall at Ohio State University with their Master in Dietetics and Nutrition Program. I plan on taking the Dietetics licensing exam upon completion and pursuing nonprofit cooking and nutrition education.

Playing ball in the State Department

Gabe Iglesia ’16

For one of my Co-op jobs, I interned at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC, during the Obama administration. I have a lot of fond memories from my time there, including getting to meet Secretary of State John Kerry in person. He had just returned from negotiations in Europe concerning the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known more simply as the “Iran nuclear deal.” He already had another overseas trip planned very soon— and I think it was my fascination in the Secretary’s overseas engagements that ultimately led me to focus my senior project on the impact of U.S. diplomacy on foreign public opinion. That summer, I also went to the Congressional Baseball Game with my intern friends—an annual charity event where Democratic and Republican members of Congress play against each other. President Barack Obama just happened to stop by, and I remember the crowd going wild during his surprise visit. It may or may not have impacted the morale of the baseball players, but the Democrats ended up beating the Republicans 5 to 2 in that game.

From weekends to interim director

Alexandra Scott ’16

As a young person just out of high school, I had grandiose plans for the places I would go on Co-op—out of state and even out of the country. Things didn’t work out that way, and in retrospect, that was for the best. Not only did I have an amazing time and meet wonderful people at both of my Co-ops, but my Co-op at the YS Arts Council can be directly credited with putting me where I am today.

The Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce offers a copy-print service to local businesses and nonprofits. The YS Arts Council made frequent use of it when I was a Miller Fellow there, so I visited the Chamber office frequently during my Co-op. After I withdrew from Antioch in mid-2014, I stayed in Yellow Springs and began working in town. At some point, the Chamber of Commerce posted an ad in the paper for weekend staff. They were looking for someone to stay in the office, five hours a week on Sundays, to answer questions from visitors and provide information. The YS Chamber’s Executive Director, Karen Wintrow, was familiar with me because of our previous interactions, and I was hired as weekend staff at the YS Chamber. I’m now interim director.

Water world

Maya Canaztuj ’17

I worked as a seasonal hydrologist for the Cleveland Metroparks. I worked for an Environmental Center in Florida as a Naturalist. I worked on a grant from the EPA (alongside Rian Lawrence ’17, Lanique Dawson ’19, Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Science Kim Landsbergen, and former Assistant Professor of Cooperative Education Jessive D’Ambrosio) that focused on using tree branches as water filters. And lastly, I worked as an intern for the City of Dayton in the division of Water Supply and Treatment. These Coop experiences helped me decide what I wanted to learn about and gave me the background I needed to wow my now boss (at Miami Conservancy District) in my interview! When I look back, the Co-ops are what I am most grateful for (besides the amazing friendships I made!). They really shaped me into the hydro-tech I am today.

Spencer Glazer ’17 provided photo documentation on Co-op in Nepal for the nonprofit Laxmi Pratisthan. The organization is working to support the Chepang people, one of the oldest and most impoverished ethnic groups in the Tibetan Burman region whose seminomadic way of life is threatened by increasing urbanization.

Photo by Spencer Glazer ’17

Sweet refinement

Hannah Pricilla Craig ’17

It was a bright spring day, and I bounced out of the subway station on the lower east side of Manhattan for my first day on the job at Creative Time. A performance major and art-excited Midwesterner, I was ecstatic to be in the city, living a New York life. After my first day on the job, I realized that the romanticization of the art world didn’t live up to its expectations—so much of the arts are office tasks and data entry (especially for a 18-year-old intern). After about a week, I think my supervisor got the hint that I was ready for something more… hands on. I was instructed to not come back to the office, but instead report to the current installation site of Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety,” the old Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg. I arrived at the construction site, was given a hard hat, gloves, and a hazmat suit, and was put to work with a concrete mixer slopping sugar-cement onto the sculpture. For the rest of Co-op the sugar refinery was my home—the alcoholic smell of fermenting sugar, damp metal, and rampant gentrification. It was in New York City that I learned how to drive a forklift and rode the subway with a sugar-stained hard hat.

Working for nuclear weapons abolition

Michelle Fuji ’17

My third Co-op was a mixture of immersing myself in place, connecting with my roots, and searching for clues to my future. It was emotionally challenging, but immensely rewarding because I was able to contribute to a cause close to my heart and critical in this day and age.

The place was Nagasaki—the city that experienced the second and last atomic bomb attack in history. For the three months, “place” was intimately connected to my work where I volunteered as a Foreign Affairs Aide at Nagasaki University’s Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition. Nagasaki housed all the memories of the atomic bomb attack in its museums, monuments, statues, and most importantly, in its people. My experience working for nuclear weapons abolition would have been completely different had I had not been in this city.

Flexibility finds a way

Soleil Sykes ’18

Two moments stand out from my Coops. The first is that my best friend and Co-op roommate, Meli Ellsworth Osanya ’18, fell in love with her now husband, Perin ’17, during our second year Co-op. It was a long, cold, eventful quarter, but that is the memory that I treasure. The second is when my first Co-op fell through a few weeks before spring break. Type A personality disaster. But, with tremendous effort by the Co-op faculty, I landed at a think tank in Washington, DC, that set me on the path for not only my subsequent Co-ops, but current job as well. The slight chaos of that initial Co-op placement taught me the values of flexibility, community, and belief that the right path appears in unexpected, unplanned places. Which, come to think of it, just about sums up a certain liberal arts college.

Making a difference

Angel Nalubega ’19

My most memorable Co-op experience was when a criminal defense case I worked on during my third Co-op was won and I got to get a big hug and handshake from the client. I felt like I made a big difference.

This is when you plant corn

Noah Yasgur ’19

While theory was explored in the classroom, practice was gained from Coops. At my first one on a farm in Ohio, I asked Guy (the farmer), “If there’s only one thing I remember from this experience, what should it be?” A few minutes later, I was assuring him wholeheartedly that I would never, ever plant corn in this state before an oak leaf is about as big as a squirrel’s ear. An oath to this day that remains unbroken.

Noah Yasgur ’19 on Co-op in Mendocino County with the Solar Living Institute.

2020s

Discovering a purpose

Galen Shewmaker ’20

At Camphill Village Kimberton Hills Intentional Community, we worked harder than I thought physically possible! Six days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, farming, ranching, building, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the special needs people in our community. I was physically exhausted by the work, but spiritually rejuvenated by a healing sense of purpose. We lived with the people we took care of, and we shared the work. We ate the food I helped grow, and used these roads I helped shovel. We had each other, and we had a purpose.

Before Kimberton Hills, I was anxious, depressed, lazy, and self-conscious. But once I was responsible for people other than myself, I could no longer afford the lethargy that comes with that mindset. People depended on us, and we all grew to meet their needs.

I’m back home now, but I’m still free of anxiety, depression, laziness, and I’m full of self-respect and efficacy. I can’t imagine a more substantial opportunity for new students, and I hope you can convince as many people as possible to go grow with them. It changed my life, and I’m so lucky, and I’m so grateful to Beth leading me to the birthplace of the rest of my life.

Kensy Zelaya Sabillon ’21 on Co-op at RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services) in Houston, TX, where she worked to provide legal aid, education, advocacy, and social services for the immigrant community.

Victory party

Ben Zitsman ’20

I sort of blundered my way into quasi managing Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s (Class of ’63!) re-election campaign, and that was great. I arranged for her victory party to be held at this new gastro-pub in NoMA called The Eleanor. I’d read it was named in honor of various famous Eleanors—Roosevelt, Aquitaine, Rigby, etc.—and, in the DCist feature about its opening, my boss was named among the inspirations. I had to book the place. Trouble was, it wasn’t open yet.

But the owner—a guy named Adam Stein—was totally accommodating and just really cool throughout the whole process: He agreed to make the place available to us a couple days before its first scheduled grand opening, gave us unlimited bowling games, (The Eleanor has a duckpin bowling alley in it!) and catered it brilliantly. The night of the party, in the course of talking to him, I found out he was an Antioch alumnus, too—Class of ’04! It was terrific: Three different generations of Antiochians, all hanging out and munching on hors d’oeuvres and watching the returns come in, all brought together by Co-op.

By the numbers

Morgan Hayslip ’21

I would have to say that my favorite Co-op was working at Mills Lawn School as a math tutor. I really enjoyed getting to know the students and helping them with math. It made me wish that I could have had that same experience when I was in 5th and 6th grade. They were amazing kids! I don’t think I have ever met such great children. They were all very well-mannered and behaved. I think that this was a great experience and even if it’s not your major you should still do it. I enjoyed it so much that I have even considered becoming a science teacher if my career of becoming a microbiologist isn’t right for me. But the future is bright and whatever path that crosses mine I think that I will really love doing it.

Break In

Benjamin Timmester ’22

For my second Co-op, I worked with the EMTs and paramedics at the local fire station. On one call, I had to climb through an elderly man’s window to help get him to the hospital for a hyperglycemic emergency. How often do you get to legally break into someone’s house to save their life?

Truth Garett ’20 (at right) on Co-op in March 2019 at the historic Bijou Theatre in Knoxville, TN, with Bam Margera.