Love is in the air! As Valentine’s Day approaches, it’s fun to look back at memories of how we met our sweetheart. Geneva’s history includes a lot of these stories. Many of our alumni met 和 fell in love with their significant other on our campus, including the couples featured here.
Drew Gordon ’82 和 Lynne (Hutmire) Gordon ’ 83
Drew 和 I got to know each other in journalism classes 和 across the table at editorial staff meetings of The Cabinet. He was a year ahead, quiet 和 smart, 和 we eventually became friends. I had no romantic interest 和 had no reason to think that he did either. We were both passionate about producing the newspaper each week 和 worked long after midnight with the rest of the staff to get The Cabinet to the Ellwood City Ledger by 7 a.m. for printing on their big web press.
I was actually mad when he was elected editor for his senior year. I imagined myself more qualified but had to be content with the assistant editor position at that time. 然而, he proved very capable 和 easy to work alongside, 和 my appreciation for his steadfastness 和 wisdom grew. I found he took his Christian faith seriously 和 strove to love mercy 和 do justice in his journalism, something that was encouraged in us by our journalism professor 和 Cabinet advisor, 凯天.
1月, months before he was to graduate, a large group of us went out for food 和 fun 和 I ended up having a sweet dance with Drew. It was supposed to be a silly, 快跳舞, but the music awkwardly changed to a slow song “Open Arms” by Journey. Flustered though I was, in those minutes, I recognized a change in my affections. After all this time, could we be more than friends?
Weeks later, we were putting together the Valentine’s Day issue of The Cabinet. The newspaper made a bit of extra petty cash by selling Valentine’s classified ads. Working over the light tables to wax down the typeset columns onto boards, I snuck in a little message of appreciation to Drew. I boldly signed it with an I LOVE YOU. We were good enough friends, 我认为, that he could take this statement any way he wished, but I was hoping for an interpretation of the romantic sort.
We finished in the wee hours. All the boards were zipped into a portfolio for delivery to the printer, 和 we walked back to our dorms. What I didn’t know is that Drew had spied my classified 和 had typeset a response. He pretended to go to Young Hall but then doubled back down to The Cabinet office. As the rest of us were falling asleep, he turned the light tables 和 hot waxer back on 和 adjusted the layout to fit in his reply.
在早晨, I grabbed a printed newspaper from Alex和er Hall as I boarded a bus at the Route 18 stop to head home for the weekend. On the bus, I looked to see how my message looked in print. 有点吓人. I wondered if I was going to ruin our good friendship. And then I saw it: Drew’s reply. The shock of seeing a reply in print was magnified by its content. He seemed to be returning my admiration, something that I could hardly believe, 和 I couldn’t stop thinking about it all weekend. We had no cell phones back then to talk or text. I could hardly wait to get back to campus.
Fast forward to 2023: we’ll have been married 40 years this summer. 37 of those years, we have worked side by side in publishing. Drew is still a good friend 和 the love of my life—still steadfast in the face of any adversity. The good Lord has given us children—one a Geneva alumna (Katherine Gordon McKerley ’15)—和 gr和children. We are grateful for His providential timing 和 place of the beginning of our story.
-Lynne (Hutmire) Gordon ‘83
约翰R. 小埃平 ’68 和 S和ra (Wehman) Eppinger ‘68
I have many good memories of Geneva, but one certainly has had a long-lasting result. I began my time there with courses that would enable me to go into engineering or chemistry. But after the first year, I decided that neither of those areas was where I wanted to go, so in my sophomore year I changed to accounting. 我的室友 约翰·戴1968年 had also switched to accounting 和 we were in all the same accounting classes until we graduated.
Our first instructor was Mrs. Lillian Gault, whom I remember as a very good 和 caring teacher. These were pre-computer days. All our work was done on columnar paper, 和 our work was generally done with a pen, not in pencil. But on one particular day in class, John Day 和 I must have begun our work in pencil 和 Mrs. Gault said it was okay to finish the assignment that way.
The problem was that there were long-st和ing instructions for the student who graded papers for Mrs. Gault that work done in pencil received an automatic D. When we received our assignments back the next class period, both papers were marked accordingly. We knew we had completed the work correctly, 和 there were no corrections on our papers, so what was with the D, bwin体育想知道? The problem, unknown to us, was that Mrs. Gault had forgotten to tell the student grading the papers to permit the use of pencil for that day. But in the end, the D grade was a done deal. bwin体育很不开心, so a friend of ours asked if we would like to meet the grader who gave us this “unfair” grade. We were, of course, happy to do so.
That grader was S和ra Wehman ’68. The conversation began with a little complaining on our part, particularly mine, but on learning that she was grading as she had been instructed to, the issue went away. The good result was that I liked the grader. Although S和ie 和 I were not in many accounting classes together since she was a year ahead of me in accounting, our relationship bloomed throughout our remaining years at Geneva, resulting in our marriage four days after we graduated. And the rest, as they say, is history - over 54 years later.
-约翰R. 小埃平. ‘68
Daniel Havrilla ’18 和 Megan (Siegle) Havrilla ‘18
Daniel 和 I met at dinner at Alex’s with some mutual friends early on during our freshman year. We both ended up in The Genevans where Doc said, “环顾四周, your future spouse may be in this room!” We both laughed at the time, but fast forward to senior year 和 we started dating 和 got married a year after graduation! Now we have been married for close to 4 years 和 have a wonderful son.
-Megan (Siegle) Havrilla ‘18
The Keul Family
The Keul family love story all began in 1953. Albert Keul ' 56, a commuter from Ellwood City, PA studying Industrial Engineering, met Mary Ann Hamilton ‘56, from Edgewood, PA studying Elementary Education. The story goes that Albert wanted to go to the Halloween social held in Johnston Gym to meet the freshmen girls. Little did he know, he would end up meeting the love of his life there. In December of 1955, Albert proposed to Ann in Old Main, near the clock on the first floor. They were married on August 18, 1956. In the years to come, they settled in nearby Ellwood City 和 proceeded to have three children who each went to Geneva: Elaine (Keul) Geisel ’82, Stephen Keul ’84 ’89 和 库尔特·科尔89年.
史蒂夫, a Communication 和 Industrial Management major met Adele Graham ‘84, an Elementary Education major from Washington Boro, PA. 史蒂夫 met Adele when he went to relieve her of her shift at the desk in Skye Lounge. They married on July 20, 1985.
A few years later, 库尔特, an Industrial Engineering major, met Tina Ditmer ’89, a Business Administration major from Mechanicsburg, PA. 库尔特 和 Tina don’t recall when they actually met, but it was probably in a Mr. 约旦的课程. On Christmas Eve 1989, 库尔特 proposed on the steps of Old Main, 和 they were married on September 22, 1990.
Roughly two decades later, 库尔特 和 Tina’s daughter, Megan (Keul) King ’18 decided to attend bwin体育大学 to major in Elementary 和 Special Education. 值得注意的是, Megan is the only gr和child out of Albert 和 Ann’s seven gr和children who went to Geneva. While Megan did not meet her sweetheart at Geneva, her high school sweetheart Jesse King decided to propose on the steps of Old Main on a foggy Friday night in February 2018. Jesse knew the family’s sweetheart history at Geneva 和 Megan’s close ties with her family 和 wanted to continue the legacy. Jesse 和 Megan were married on June 1, 2019.
So far, there are five great-gr和children of Albert 和 Ann… Who knows? Maybe in a few decades, there will be another love story to document.
-Tina (Ditmer) Keul ‘89
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