Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | winter 2004

WINTER 2004
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Cover Story:
Bridges: Designing, Building, Preserving

Feature Story:
>>Celebrating 125 Years

Departments:
Getting Started
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view photo gallery
from 125th anniversary Homecoming 2003 tailgate

DEAR FRIENDS:

I can’t describe the feeling I have as I walk across the Iowa State campus. It’s so familiar to me that it’s like seeing a classmate from long ago. As a child, I trudged up the hill to Music Hall for eight years of piano lessons; I skated on Lake LaVerne every winter; during Alumni Days in June, I explored the Memorial Union with other children of “demon alums,” as my mother classified herself.

The trees on central campus remind me of Professor Budd of Botany who traveled the world to bring examples here so that his students could learn from the real thing. I grew up next door to the Budd house in downtown Ames knowing that it had sheltered George Washington Carver as a botany student long before.

My Iowa State roots go back to the very beginning of this school. My grandfather, J.B. Hungerford, was born in Pennsylvania to a large Irish family that came at the time of the potato famine. His brother Edgar was in Iowa State’s first class, and J.B. in the class of 1877. They loved Iowa State. I think those men felt that it had saved their lives. The Morrill Act was a wonderful thing for those immigrant families or any families. My grandfather, a newspaper publisher in Carroll, served on Iowa State’s Board of Trustees for many years. His proudest moment, he said, was the opening of Beardshear Hall.

My father grew up in Northfield, Minn. He wanted to be an engineer and chose Iowa State, supporting himself by working at the college heating plant. He graduated in 1912. After several years with the Iowa Highway Commission, he joined the Iowa State civil engineering faculty to teach land surveying. He taught until his death in 1950. Believing that engineering students needed experience “in the wilds” before graduation, he established Camp Marston on the rugged shores of Rainy Lake on the Minnesota/Ontario border. We spent every summer there when I was a child, and I’ve returned to the borderland as often as possible ever since.

My mother, Josephine Hungerford, came to Iowa State and graduated in economics in 1911. She loved every minute of it. All of my siblings – Bob, Parry and Katherine – and I have degrees from Iowa State, as do three of our spouses. Parry’s son graduated in 1977. I returned as an instructor in the household equipment department while my husband, William Schlick, finished in forestry. His father was on the engineering faculty and my brother Parry served as university treasurer from 1958 until 1964.

I lived at home as a student, except for one quarter each year on campus. As a freshman in the Theta Delta Chi fraternity house (the Navy had taken over the women’s dorms), I was awakened by sirens early on the morning of D-Day. That was an exciting time!

I have so many memories of this place: being kissed under the campanile, feeling sad when I walk through Gold Star Hall. I love Christian Petersen’s fountain in front of the Union. And I love all of the trees – I wish I could name every one. This is a wonderful place. It always makes me feel at home.

Fondly,

Mary Dodds Schlick
1947 Household Equipment
Mt. Hood, Oregon

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