1969-70 Ryors Hall residents reflect on tumultuous year on campus
Several former residents of Ryors Hall, in reconnecting 50 years after they lived together as first-year Ohio University students, reflected on the 1969-70 academic year, a tumultuous year in the nation and on campus that culminated with the closing of the University.
Here are excerpts of some of their most vivid memories:
Mary Adams: Court Street had a National Guardsman with a rifle about every 20 feet. It was so surreal.That morning, I spoke to my parents. They said the rioting was on the“Today Show.” I told them I was fine, and at that moment someone came screaming and bleeding into the dorm. She had been hit in the forehead with a brick.
Nancy Grimm, BA ’73: Dorm life was very different for me for many reasons. I grew up in a small town and had lived on the same street for my whole life. My dad died when I was 13, and though my mom worked after that, we needed Social Security to survive. My younger brother and I were pretty independent, forced to grow up quickly after Dad was gone. No one in my family had gone to college (I’m not counting the one quarter when an older brother went to Kent) and I had no idea what to expect when I got there.
When I got to the dorm, I was kind of insulted that the college thought I needed to have “hours.” I didn’t have a curfew at home and was trusted to know the appropriate time to come home and to let my mom know where I was going and when to expect me to be back. Here I was several hours from home, choosing my classes, being responsible for attending them and doing homework, etc. and the school thought they needed to tell me when to come in at night! I’ve just about always been a feminist, so it was doubly insulting that the guys had no hours.
Eating in the cafeteria was also a change for me. I had heard people complain about the food and had heard that many people gained a lot of weight from eating there. I had no complaints. Having several choices for each meal was like going to a restaurant for every meal for me. Being able to drink soda (my husband wants me to translate this to “pop”) whenever I wanted it was also unusual for me. Instead of gaining weight, I lost 30 pounds during freshman year. This was partly because I had no snacks between meals. I had no money for pizza or other food uptown. The other health advantage to being on campus was all the walking (!) we did. If you had back-to-back classes, you only had 10 minutes to go from one to the next, and the next might be across campus and up three flights of stairs. I remember climbing the stairs in Super Hall, now gone.
Nancy Grimm, BA ’73, (on right) is seen walking through College Green in this photo from 1970. Photo courtesy of the Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections
Our dorm rooms were meant to house only two students each, but college enrollment was really high our freshman year, and so we were packed in like sardines. I had the top bunk in a triple-decker. I couldn’t sit up up there. I would take a travel alarm up with me and keep it under my pillow because it took a while to get down from there and I didn’t want to wake my roommates letting it ring ’til I could get to it. Unlike what kids have in their dorm rooms now – microwaves, computers, etc. – I basically had my clothes, toiletries, a clock radio, school supplies and books.
I became politically involved shortly after arriving on campus. I was seen as kind of a “hippie” in my hometown, named “flower child” in my high school yearbook. I read Thoreau and believed in the anti-war movement. I loved British music and saw the Beatles in 1966. So, Ohio University was a perfect fit for me. I quickly became associated with the Athens Peace Committee (APC) which met at UCM (United Campus Ministry on College Street). That became my second home in Athens.
On Oct. 15, 1969, there was a Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in Washington, D.C., with 200,000 attending and similar protests across the country, including Athens. I was part of the Athens protest. On Nov. 15 was the huge Vietnam Moratorium in Washington, D.C., where 600,000 attended. According to Wikipedia, it was “widely considered the largest march in the history of the United States at that point.” I was there. I remember boarding a bus in front of Baker Center to ride to D.C. We arrived in the middle of the night and were handed candles, which we carried as we walked through the streets. I remember bits and pieces of that trip: hearing Peter, Paul and Mary while we were gathered on the mall and being tear-gassed when I was walking away from there. I ended up in a gymnasium in a college there and heard Richie Havens and others play. I slept on the floor of a church entryway. The whole experience left a strong impression on me. I will never forget it.
Back in Athens, the APC continued their activities throughout that school year. I don’t remember a lot of details, but I know there was something called “Pinkville” in the middle of the winter. It was a gathering of cardboard “shacks” set up on the College Green near the war memorial and some of us would spend the night there. I think it was to honor those who were doing something similar in Washington. When the weather warmed up in the spring, there were more protests. I remember attending masses for peace held on the green. Tom Jackson, an Episcopal priest, was a central figure; he was associated with the UCM. I remember asking the GA who was teaching my English class to move class out onto the green. She refused, and I walked out of class. Although some people may have considered these activities “fun,” I was dead serious about them. I had a National Defense Student Loan for which I had to sign an oath of allegiance to the country. I was afraid that my involvement in protests could be considered opposed to that and my college funding would be at risk. I was willing to risk it. We had heard that files were being kept about us by the FBI.
When I was uptown in Athens, I knew the time by hearing the chimes from Cutler Hall and by checking the clock by the bank at the corner of Court and Washington. I read The Post, of course, but I also regularly checked Koon’s Music Store window for the latest headlines. Mr. Koon had a shop on Court Street just north of the College Bookstore. Throughout the day he would listen to the news on radio, write up headlines on a piece of paper and tape it to his front window. I stopped by there regularly, and it was there that I first found out about the shootings at Kent State. There was a crowd of us and the news was such a shock.
The time between that day and the closing of OU are kind of a blur for me. I remember tear gas, soldiers on Court Street and hints that protests might become violent. When it was announced that the school was closing, I heard that the reason was that there were rumors of vigilante groups forming among the local citizens. I spent the night at UCM and heard about the closing there. By the time I got back to the dorm in the morning, my roommate had already called her parents who had called my family, and someone was on the way to take us home. I wasn’t ready to leave! It was a very bad time for me. Seven OU students were banned, by the court, I believe, from Athens County. I don’t know for how long. I knew most of them through the Athens Peace Committee.
I moved off campus during my sophomore year, something you could do if you could prove financial hardship. I stayed in Athens for five years after I graduated, working for four years at Little Professor Book Center and then for a year at OU. My husband, Mike Greenfield, and I met at Ohio University during our senior year, and his band played at the reception for my first marriage. We’ve compared memories about OU, and we think we may have been on the same bus to Washington, D.C., in 1969 and slept in the same church entryway. We both still love Athens and go back often.
Roberta “Birti” Hardie, BSED ’73: As to the school closing, I had already left to spend the weekend at another university until I got the 3 a.m. phone call from my very upset roomies, so I went down to OU in my mother’s Falcon.I heard about the curfew as I hit Lancaster, so I slept in my car and was put in the middle of a National Guard convoy. A Jeep and then two armed soldiers escorted me to my room. I drove three others home. How we fit all our stuff in that Falcon, I don’t know.
I remember lying out at “Ryors beach” and the guys from Sargent pelting us with water balloons, which started a green-wide water balloon fight. All good clean fun!
Mostly I remember us facing our first year of college together, forging friendships that have lasted a lifetime and a connection from that tumultuous first year that has prompted this very special gathering.
Jan (Cunningham) Hodson, BSHEC, ’73, MSHCS, ’96: In September 1969, we were 17 and 18 years old. We were from New York, Maryland, New Jersey and Ohio. Several of us had attended high school together, so we at least knew our roommate. But most of us met each other for the very first time that autumn in 1969 on the first floor of Ryors Hall.
The best part about living in Ryors Hall that academic year was that it was all women and all freshmen. It was like one big pajama party. We left our doors open all the time and wandered in and out of each other’s rooms.
The dorm was not air-conditioned, and it really didn’t need to be. We opened the windows and put fans in them. In the winter, we set milk or drinks on the windowsill to get cold. There were no fridges, no TVs and no computers in our rooms. Some girls had typewriters. They were popular because the rest of us had to borrow from them.
To watch TV, we went to the TV lounge on the first floor off the lobby. Males were permitted to be in that room. Some of us recall sitting there on Dec. 1, 1969, watching the televised draft lottery with our male friends. It was chilling watching as their birthdays were announced one at a time to determine their destiny. On campus, it wasn’t unusual to see guys wearing Army jackets. They were older and many had just gotten back from Vietnam.
Also in fall of ’69, the NY Mets played the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. There were many girls from New York who lived in Ryors, and the TV lounge was filled with cheering girls every afternoon during the series.
Former Ryors Hall residents Kathy Drummer, BSED ’73, (left) and Jan (Cunningham) Hodson, BSHEC ’73, MSHCS ’96, (center) are pictured outside of Ryors Hall in the winter of 1971, sporting the typical attire worn by women – no matter the season – at the time.
We wore short skirts and sweaters to class with knee socks,pantyhose or tights.And we wore those short skirts even in the winter cold! We carried our books in our arms or carried a large bag; there were no backpacks. The hippie look was just starting to take hold in the fall and by spring was more popular. We rolled our hair on huge rollers to get that straight look. Smoking was rare on our floor section, but it was permitted in the dorm.
Classes were held Monday through Saturday at noon. I never heard anyone really complain about Saturday classes. We were at college, and we expected it to be far different from high school.We tried to take our studies seriously. There were quiet hours on the floor at certain times so we could study.
Men weren’t allowed in the dorm except in the lobby and TV room. When you had a date, he called up from the lobby to let you know he was there – or, in our case, he came to the side door of Ryors and yelled into the windows! Every once in a while, maybe once a quarter, there were Sunday afternoon Open Houses when men were allowed to visit. There were rules for the Open Houses: Your door had to be open, and you had to have at least one foot on the floor. No one was allowed to be on the beds. It made for some crazy contortions. We really cleaned our rooms before those Open Houses.
There were “hours” for we freshmen women that year. We were the only students on campus who had a curfew. We didn’t protest this decision, but we found ways around it.The dorm doors were locked by a certain hour, and we couldn’t get into the building after those hours. If caught, we were punished. If we planned to be gone overnight, we had to write down where we would be, put it in an envelope and give it to the resident director. The envelopes were kept in her office just off the lobby in case we were needed for an emergency, in which case the envelope would be opened so we could be found. We found ways to sneak into the dorm. The far right room in the side yard was a favorite room to crawl into. Our friends in that room had positioned a desk by the window, left the window open and there was a regular line of us climbing in through that window late at night!
We ate in Boyd Cafeteria. Many of us loved the food, especially the soft-serve ice cream machine, which we blamed for the weight some of us gained that year. It was a huge room, with a pink, Parisian décor, filled with tables. There was one serving line. There was only one meal plan: You ate what was offered!
In the spring of ’70, the sounds of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” could be heard on the green as stereos sat near windows and piped the music to the outdoors. We were indeed experiencing troubled water. The Hocking River flowed right behind Ryors Hall and that spring, as it often did, it overflowed its banks flooding the area behind the dorm.
There was increased campus activism that year as students everywhere protested the war in Vietnam. It seemed that the College Green was alive every night with crowds of students and many speakers. It was the first time in my life where I understood the phrase “you could cut the tension with a knife.” Every day felt tense as if something were about to explode. And indeed, it did explode in mid-May. When President Sowle went on the radio in the early hours of that morning and told us all that we had to move off campus that next day, it was a scramble! Think of it. No cellphones, no Internet. Out-of-state students called home and frantically made plans to find a way home. Parents began driving toward campus. It was crazy. I walked up to Alden Library to pick up my paycheck that morning. I could smell the tear gas from the night before and saw the National Guardsmen along the sidewalks. I wasn’t permitted to go inside Alden. On the campus side of the building, a staff member stood at a table and handed out student paychecks.
We were given a choice of taking a pass-fail grade for the classes that spring, or professors could decide on a way for us to fulfill the credit. I recall taking a final exam in zoology held in Morton Hall sometime after school closed.
The following fall quarter was strange. Things resumed quietly as if nothing had ever happened.
Renee (Mayo) Jackson, BSED ’73: I remember taking a friend back to Kent State, and as we were leaving, we saw the National Guard going into Kent. We drove back to find OU in an uproar. We had gone off campus, and as we parked the car on the South Green, we were told some frat brothers had chase down a black girl on the West Green. We were all to meet on the South Green for a meeting.
We came back to Ryors to change clothes. We got as far as the auditorium before we were hit with tear gas. We ran for our lives to the South Green towers with Vaseline covering our faces! Almost every black person on campus was there. It got very scary because I found myself in the middle of something that could have become a nasty situation.After a short period of time, the National Guard were yelling through a bullhorn for us to come out in single file and return to our dorms because the campus was on lockdown and was closing. We were frightened and decided to lock arms and come out of the building in a circle so we could see every angle.
After walking through the parking lot, Char and I ran all the way back to Ryors where we were greeted by Nickle (Martha McNickle), Jan, Tinker and many others on the first floor who didn’t know where we were or if we were OK. Nickle proceeded to tell us off about how worried everyone had been and then told us to hurry and pack because she heard my parents were on their way to pick me up. She was correct. They pulled in 30 minutes later. School was closed until fall of that year, and I moved to the South Green. It was this situation that I credit with me finding out complete facts before reacting to general situations!
Donna (Murr) Mast, BSC ’73: I remember the curfew (11:00 on weekdays and 1:00 weekends?). I arrived at OU a few days before classes started and had a date with a sophomore on one of those evenings. Of course, the guy didn’t get me home before curfew (I’ll blame it on him), and I had to ring the bell at the front door of the dorm for someone to let me in.Evidently, they had to have a dorm meeting about me which included all of the RAs on how to deal with this situation in the future.Thankfully, they gave me a free pass for this first infraction.After that evening, my roommates and I realized that we had the perfect room with a downstairs window, next to a cement wall where we could hoist ourselves up, so that we could climb in at any time during the night. There were many times that the three of us would be asleep in our room and hear the tapping on the window from someone that would need a way back in the dorm.
Debby Tinker, BSED ’73, is pictured beside a swollen Hocking River, which at the time ran directly behind Ryors Hall.
The flooding of the Hocking River behind our dorm was common.On one of those occasions, we had some form of a hilarious water fight in our hallway, bringing buckets of water onto the first floor.I have pictures of us mopping up our mess, all of us drenched, but still having fun.
That year at Ryors was such a special time in all of our lives.Each of us was having the same experience of living away from home for the first time, having roommates, and getting to know other young women from all parts of the country.No pretense, we were just who we were, acting wacky and doing fun things together.Seeing these women again after 50 years brought back so many memories. And more than that, the realization of the love and strong bond that we had, and still have, for each other.
Marianne Moyer O’Donnell: I remember sitting in our TV lounge when they were doing the lottery draft, seeing the faces of relief on those guys whose birthdayswere high numbers and the faces of disbelief of those whose numbers indicated they’d be drafted. That is the only time I remember a coed crowd like that in the TV room.
I also remember the BBF and the 3.2 beer; the feeling of being on my own for the first time. I have a picture of several of us on the bridge – think it was the fall of our freshman year, we look so young and happy. We certainly were blessed with a wonderful group of women to spend our first year with.
Mellen (Monaghan) Reckman, BSHSS ’73: I came to OU knowing my youngest sister was going to die of a brain tumor, and when she did in January, my bittersweet memory is of you all getting together to pack my suitcase, and Jan and her boyfriend driving me to the Columbus Airport where I spent the night and then flew home to Buffalo. We all had only known each other a few months, and it was such an amazing act of kindness.
Debby “Tink” Tinker, BSED ’73: One of my most vivid memories is from May 1970.I recall walking around with Debbie (then Sweet) Andrews, talking to, and flirting with, and taking pictures of several National Guardsmen lining the downtown streets of Athens. I asked one if their rifles were loaded, and he told me they were. Immediately the young man posted next to him gave him a sideways glance and a sharp, “Shut up!” indicating they weren’t supposed to divulge that information.
At the age of 18, I was too naive to understand the gravity of the situation until the students at Kent State were killed. Only then I realized it very well could have been us. Then, as now, I could not understand why anyone with common sense would send minimally trained young people armed with lethal weapons to maintain order on a college campus involving so many angry, unarmed young people.
We want to hear from other Ohio University graduates! What do you remember from the 1969-70 academic year? What did you take away from that tumultuous year? Share your stories in the comments below.