In August of 1969, Ron and Ann Morrison Smith arrived at Colorado College. Ann lived in the women’s dormitory — Loomis Hall. Curfew was at 10 p.m. sharp, and to call home, she added her name to the bottom of the hall’s singular phone.
Ron lived in the men’s dormitory on the east side of campus, then called Slocum, now South Hall. Ron’s hall had no curfew, and in their free time, the boys in Slocum often got themselves into mischief. In the spring, they climbed onto the roof and lobbed water balloons down at passersby with slingshots.
It was sophomore year, living in Mathias, when Ann and Ron’s friends introduced them to one another.
In class, the two studied different subjects – Ann liked organic chemistry and sciences, and Ron, though he grew up flying planes and intended to study aeronautical engineering, liked the economics courses. After class, they strolled down Tejon St. with their friends, stopping for pizza and ice cream at Giuseppe’s.
On the weekends, they played croquet on the soccer fields, enjoyed a “beverage of choice always on tap,” Ron said, and traded their blue jeans for frivolous Englishman costumes, which would become known as the first-ever Rocky Mountain Croquet Association. They skated at the arena and were adamant supporters of Super Fan, the biggest student band on campus that played pop and marching band music at football games. The music group was known for its “mechanical pencil” dance formation. The dozen-member band formed two rows, and one person, carrying a broomstick, slid out in between the rows, acting as the pencils’ lead. The school applauded, Ron said.
One “nice fall day,” after a Rastall’s lunch, Ann and Ron split off just the two of them. They biked to Garden of the Gods: their first date.
“When we met, it wasn’t like we were looking for a mate… We just hit it off,” Ron said. But, “by Christmas time, we thought we would probably get married.”
And by December of 1974, they did.
Ann and Ron’s story at Colorado College is not unique. So many students here wind up marrying someone they met on campus that the college ranked No. 38 on a 2015 list of campuses where students tend to meet their life partners.
Thirty years after Ann and Ron met, it happened again with their own son, Alex, who married a woman named Emilie, whom he met as a student at CC.
“When our son and daughter-in-law called us in their junior year and sent us a picture with a […] flashing a ring on her finger […] we freaked out,” Ann said.
The young couple graduated from CC on a June morning and married in Shove Chapel that evening.
Ann, Ron, Alex and Emilie are not the only lifelong couples whose relationships took root at Colorado College.
There are at least 1,271 reported couples in a living alumni pool of 29,853, dating back to the class of 1953, according to Associate Vice President for Engagement Cindy Hyman and her data team. That is 8.7% of the alumni body that winds up marrying a classmate. This data, however, ignores couples that did not report their status.
For comparison, at Colorado School of Mines, 1,364 couples have reported marriage in a living alumni pool of 41,000 from records that date back to 1875. The percentage of alumni marriages at Colorado School of Mines stands around 0.03%, collected over a longer period of time.
Dan and Beth Cooper, class of ‘66, also met in their first year at CC. In the beginning, they operated in the same social circles, but “were nothing but classmates,” Dan said. “Do I even have a chance?” he recalls thinking.
It took three years for their paths to intersect again at a Beta-Theta beer bust at Austin Bluffs. Dan described Beth as “the most beautiful girl in the senior class” to his pledge sons, now more commonly referred to as littles. Beth thought he was cute.
“He put his arm around me at the beer bust. He drove me home with others, and he said he would call me later,” she said.
Later, he did call—they brought his miniature 8-by-14 inch grill out to Manitou Lake and cooked together for one of many, what they called, “woodsies” picnics. That year, they danced and studied together. “Our senior year was spent mostly together,” Beth said.
They got married seven months after graduation, packed up their dorm room, and moved to West Berlin, where Dan accepted a position as an Air Force officer. Over a decade later, they had their son Clay, who graduated from Colorado College in 1996.
Heidi and Mike Trevithick ’90 met as first-years living on the first floor of Loomis Hall. At first, “we were just best friends,” Heidi said.
They quickly formed a group of five close-knit friends. Outside of class, their group piled into Mike’s “itty bitty” Datsun and drove to the movie theater and around Colorado Springs. In the evenings, they ate onion rings, bacon-cheese burgers and malts while playing pool at Benji’s. They caught up on the newest of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in each other’s dorm rooms at night.
Mike was a speech and debate student with strong, well-formed opinions. Heidi also liked speech, but was a more “innocent and sweet” type.
At CC, “it wasn’t just ‘go out and get a job that’s going to get you millions of dollars.’ It was helping the community […] focusing on the people around you,” Heidi said. “We’ve taught our kids to do that same thing.”
Twenty-three years later, their son started his first year at Colorado College, living in Loomis, just like his parents.
Andy and Lincoln, class of ‘23, met on one of the first block breaks while riding the bus to Boulder. While Andy explored the area with a friend, Lincoln visited his high school girlfriend.
“Then, I really did not think about it again,” Andy said
But two years later, Andy spotted Lincoln’s Golden State Warriors jersey at a party. Raised in Los Angeles, she was compelled to investigate. “[Talking with Andy] was really easy. It was flowing,” Lincoln said. “And then, the next week, she came back.”
Andy liked his outgoing and extroverted qualities that brought her out of her shell. They connected over shared politics and appreciation for the environment. “Connection with one another and the community, and […] the earth […] things like that make us want to stay together, be together, and are what drew us to CC,” Lincoln said.
Throughout my research on marriages among CC alumni, I have heard numerous alumni couples recall this place as a small “utopia” for their relationships. As they recall, it was certainly base one. But, while handfuls of couples have left CC together, I want to be careful of the conclusions I draw.
More so, the alumni remember a community that embraced them and their relationships in all forms: teacher-student, maintenance-student, boyfriends, girlfriends and friendships alike.
“Because you’re in a smaller place, you cross paths more often,” Ann said. “You see each other at the dining hall, and so there is a lot more potential to mix.”
They remember feeling unburdened by responsibilities other than good grades and friends.
“CC provided an environment for us to develop our personal relationship in the absence of stress,” Dan said.
They remember showing up for hockey games, theater productions, parties, Rocky Mountain croquet gatherings, Battle of the Bands and Block break Breaks to the desert, making relationships with peers everywhere on campus, in and outside of the classroom and maybe even on the roof.
“CC was always a family,” Heidi said. “Even today you could probably name somebody that was there from three years on either side [of me] and at least I will have heard of that person […] know that name.”
Although Heidi still worries that tuition reaching six digits will limit the student diversity and perspective that she loved.
When they graduate, they look back fondly on their memories here.
“[CC is a] small school with a smaller community. It’s a lot easier to interact with everyone,” Lincoln said. “I’m missing that sense of community,” Andy added.
Rastall’s is not sneaking some love potion into the mashed potatoes, and social mixers are not more magical than at Colorado School of Mines. But certain qualities come naturally to the Colorado College student body, institution, curriculum and alumni that have helped foster thousands of relationships spanning over decades, over lifetimes.
As Ron says: “It just started there.”