Letters

One of Union's first alumnae

Iread with interest your article on the first women at Union. Although I did not matriculate, I graduated with departmental honors in 1967. My major was sociology and I had a wonderful professor in Sherwood Fox. I was newly married; my husband, John, was a member of the language department teaching German. It was not easy for me. There were just a few majors in sociology and the men were not friendly. But I just went about my studies trying not to be intimidated. I could identify with some of the feelings these women expressed in your magazine. So, even before 1974 Union did have at least one woman working toward graduation.

CAROL W. GRANDIN ’67

That's my former roommate

The summer 2020 article on pages 6 and 7 [“50 years ago: A peaceful protest”] has a photo of Father Jim Murphy [Catholic chaplain] of Union College at that time. In that photo, with his eyeglasses and the top of his head showing just above Father Jim's bullhorn is Walter Burt. It was during that time that Walter and I became friends and decided to room the next year in the triple with fireplace on the top floor of South College. We were sophomores at the time the photo was taken.

DANIEL D. DASHMAN ’72

An early Union union

After Jane and I read your piece in the summer 2020 magazine titled “One of Unions First Unions,” we decided to add a snippet of our own story. When I was a freshman pre-med student at Union in 1969, a senior whom I met in the library asked me if I wanted to “meet a girl.” Jane Kreplick was a first-year nursing student at Skidmore College. After I finally got around to calling her, we met every weekend and I traveled to her home in Lynn, Mass., for Thanksgiving. Our relationship survived Jane’s two clinical years in Manhattan and we married in 1972. She and I both completed our senior years at Union. We even took a class together—demographics with Prof. Robert Wells. Jane got an A and I took the course pass/fail. We pre-meds are very protective of our GPAs. We’ll soon celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. We’re both recently retired. I practiced geriatrics for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Jane taught nursing at Nassau Community College. We have two daughters and four grandchildren. We wrote a book together called The Voice of Experience: Stories About Health Care and The Elderly. We continue to be friends with Dr. Twitty Styles and his wife, Dr. Connie Glasgow.

SAM BRODY ’73 AND JANE KREPLICK BRODY