alumni
y r o m e MLANE
Class of ‘65 Alumna Recalls Life at All-Girls Webber College
w by MARY TOOTHMAN
WHEN ALICE BACH arrived at Webber College in Babson Park from Chicago in the early 1960s, she experienced culture shock. “There was only one store, and it was a grocery store with a post office on the side and nothing else. You went past the college, you saw the store and you were out of the city. Coming from a suburb of Chicago, as I did, it was a real shock. And then, when I found out that the closest stores were in Lakeland, Florida, and we had no vehicles to get there at the time ... I was glad I had got everything before I left home and not waited to buy down here.” Asked if it was maybe a treat to hang out at the soda shop for fun, the former Alice Bach, now Alice Collins, realized she perhaps may not have made her point clear. “What soda shop?” she asked. “When I say there was nothing, I mean there was NOTHING. There was no gas station. There were no restaurants. There was no soda shop.” While the school was not known for its expansive recreational activities, it was indeed a quality learning place for students who attended for that purpose. To a very young Alice, now 74, students she met when she first arrived
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at Webber seemed “awfully prim and proper.” “I mean, there they were in pigtails. It was not like anything I had ever experienced. And there was just absolutely nothing to do. Eventually, though, you just had to give everybody a chance. “After all, it was known as a private, exclusive college.” It did not hurt any when Alice’s father bought her a 1962 Chevy Impala convertible. She and her friends had transportation at last, and the freedom that the Chevy provided. The ability to come and go (during allowed time periods) was treasured. Webber housing arrangements during Alice’s time on campus included strict curfews and a woman who watched over the girls lived in the dorm. In contrast, there was something very liberating about cruising around in Alice’s convertible — and the girls caught right on. “We all became very close,” she says. “I guess what also changed my mind about being in Babson Park was the
other girls in the college and all their life stories.” A certain man caught her eye, also, and that helped quite a bit. “I met my first husband in the second year, so that made it a little bit more interesting.” Her first husband was “a local boy,” and the couple settled into a home they bought in Babson Park. After they divorced, there was an adjustment. “They always said, ‘Marry a rich boy, and you’ll never want for anything. He will take care of you.’ Well, his parents were wealthy; and they did take care of me. But that did not last.” Eventually, Alice married a second time, to Roger Collins. The couple still lives in Babson Park. “We have been married for 47 years,” she says. “That is longer than I’ve been single.” Over the years, since her Webber days, staying in touch with friends proved more difficult than Alice anticipated. “I kept up with the girls for a while after college, even went to visit one in North Carolina. But life got so busy with our families that we really did not have time to socialize together, and with the distance between all of us.” Most students can name one or two teachers who really had an impact on
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