Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | fall 2004

FALL 2004
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Cover Story:
Surviving Stroke

Feature:
37 things to do on an ISU football weekend

Feature:
A new tradition

125th Anniversary Celebration:
A letter from Kristi Kielhorn
Excited about Cy

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GETTING STARTED

A NEW VIEW

I’m not real big on change. I say, when everything is going well, why mess it up? So in my world view (“change is bad”), learning that I had to move my office again did not make me a happy camper. I used to have a terrific space on the second floor of the Memorial Union. Two summers ago, I had to leave that office and move to first floor. I was not thrilled with the idea, but everything turned out OK. Just when I was getting the new office totally broken in, I was told the entire Alumni Association was moving – this time across campus.

So this summer, everyone started boxing up all the T-shirts and yearbooks and pompoms, getting ready to move to Fisher-Nickell, a small building on Richardson Court that had been a residence hall up until last spring.

Some of the staff started packing as soon as
we received the moving schedule (over-achievers!) Personally, I was in denial about the move all summer. I was the last one to start packing, figuring
I could do it in a day.

I finally started packing the weekend before I was scheduled to move. By this time, most of the staff had already moved into Fisher-Nickell, and our old Memorial Union offices were starting to echo with the lack of furniture and people. The transition was strange – one morning I went into the workroom to make a photo copy and the copier was gone. How rude! Anyway, the volume of stuff I had to pack far exceeded my expectations. Where does all this stuff come from? I really should have thrown more away, but mostly I just stuffed everything into boxes and marked the boxes “205,” my new office number.

Moving day – July 13 – was pretty crazy. Of course it was 90 degrees that day and very humid. The guys doing the move had their work cut out for them. Mostly, I stood around. Occasionally I got in the way. I really tried to be helpful. In the afternoon, a photographer from Inside Iowa State came over to document our move, and he wanted to know if he could take a picture of me carrying a box. It was sort of embarrassing. I mean, here all these guys have been moving us for more than a week, struggling with heavy furniture, up the stairs, in the heat, and I show up in my white capris and backless tennies, carrying like three little boxes from my car, and I get my picture taken.

In the middle of the photo session, I walked into my office, followed by photographer Bob Elbert. I’m sure the chaotic scene made for great pictures: sweaty guys trying to cram a too-big piece of furniture into the room next to mine; two guys hauling a metal shelf into my office, with the shelves loudly falling off of it; other random people and objects everywhere; me carrying a box. Right at that moment, I chose to tell the guy standing next to my desk, “I’ve decided I want those shelves to go THERE,” and he just looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language or had two heads or something, and that’s when I realized
he’s the phone guy.

That’s pretty much the way the day went. But here’s something really nice and touching that also happened the day I moved:

It was in the morning. After the movers had taken away my desk, and the last box was loaded onto the moving van, I left the Memorial Union and walked to Fisher-Nickell. Sitting in the front lobby, waiting for my furniture to follow me over, I sorted through the mail that had already been delivered here. In the stack was a letter from Suzanne Gebel, a 1988 alumna who lives in Urbandale. The envelope was neatly typed, with a flower-bouquet stamp. I opened it. In the letter, Suzanne told me about coming to Iowa State as a student in 1984 – naïve, lonesome, and anxious about living with 39 other people in a place called Fisher-Nickell. She told the story of friendships, forged in a crowded living space, that have now lasted for 20 years. She told the story of good times the friends have had since graduation – of celebrating marriages and births – and of sadness – when one of the friends committed suicide.

“As we have buried parents and family members, we have leaned on each other for strength,” Suzanne writes. “Most important of all, our friendships – those started at ISU and specifically at Fisher-Nickell – remain a priority for all of us.”

I was touched by the letter. Touched that Suzanne took the time to write and wish us well, and touched by the level of feeling she has for the friends she made in this place. Her old home. Our new one.

So as I sit here, typing on my computer in
my new space, so unlike my old space, I can see green trees and blue skies through my giant picture window, and I’m thinking, maybe change isn’t so bad after all.

About the Writer | Carole Gieseke is the editor of VISIONS magazine.