Friends, Popcorn, and Pranks: Dorm Memories from Iowa Alumni

I lived in Burge for two years. My roomies and hall friends had so much fun. Once, when one roommate was out on a date, we decorated the elevator with a chair, rug, table, magazine, pop, and pictures taped to the walls. Then we waited in front of the doors for her return. We heard her laugh all the way up. She knew her roomies were the ones who did it.

—Jill Baskerville (74BA)

I moved into Burge Hall in 1988 during a rainstorm! I made the most incredible friends that year!

—Jennie Hesseltine Evans

I worked with Burge Hall staff. This is us during move-in week, August 1983.

—Mitch Robinson (85BBA)

After completing my military duty in 1969, including a tour in Vietnam, I enrolled at the University of Iowa using the GI Bill. Since I was already 21, I was fortunate to be assigned to South Quad, a dorm for 21 and older students. My roommate was a dental student from New Mexico, Steve Cassida (73DDS). We became good friends and have spent many happy times together over the years. In fact, 57 years later, we are still good friends and in regular contact with each other.

South Quad later became a military facility and then, sadly, was torn down. I’m grateful for the time spent at Iowa and the friendships made there. This photo is the two of us in front of South Quad, circa 1969, Steve on the left, I’m on the right.

I was a full-time student and resident of Quadrangle dormitory from 1967–71 until I was drafted for the Vietnam War, and I had to enlist in the U.S. Navy in May 1971. This photo of me in my Quadrangle room was run on the front page of The Daily Iowan when I was a freshman.

—Jeff Johnson

Quad first floor! Started in a room with a roommate but switched to a single corner room that opened a couple weeks into the year. Such amazing memories. I was selected as the program director for our floor!

—Marisa Davis (96BA)

I lived in the Hillcrest dorm in 1972. My roommate and I loved popcorn. Prior to microwave popcorn, we had an electric popcorn maker. Every time we made popcorn, we had a specific routine we followed to cover the aroma. If we didn’t, half the floor would be banging on our door, asking us to share.

We’d close the air vent above our door, stuff towels under the door, and my roommate would hang out the window, with the electric popcorn maker, while it cooked. One snowy night a guy was walking by our window, as my roommate hung out the window with the popcorn maker. He gave us a look like “what the heck is going on?” My roommate said, “Haven’t you ever seen someone make popcorn before?”

My roommate and I still laugh at the story.

—Craig O’Brien (74BA)

I chose to go to Iowa after attending my brother Robert Carmichael’s (49BSEE, 50MS) graduation. He’d been sent to the University during WWII to study electrical engineering, then went back after the war to get a degree.

I was late getting my application in, but Robert contacted someone and got me a space in a recreation room in Currier with eleven other girls until a room opened. I then moved to a room with three other girls in an annex ... a big, old house across the street (the year before being demolished). We had a great time there. I remember one of my roommates climbing out the window one night to get us some food, since we couldn’t leave after a certain hour.

Many years later, I learned that the grandmother of my grandson’s wife and her twin sister had been nursing students and worked in the Currier kitchen at the same time I was in the annex, so I no doubt saw her when I had meals there. Small world!

—Jayne Keller (58BA)

In the fall of 1996, I moved into N25, on the first floor of Currier Hall, to begin my college career at the University of Iowa. Little did I know that my roommate, Amy, and my neighbor across the hall, Julie, would one day stand with me at my wedding, vacation with me, and become lifelong friends.

This photo shows the residents of our floor before we headed out to explore Iowa City during one of our first weekends as college students. Many of us are still in touch today.

Twenty-six years later, while touring campus with our twins, I found myself back on the first floor of Currier Hall for a residence hall tour. The student who lived in my old room happened to be there, and we laughed as I told her about all the fun we had on that same floor 26 years earlier. To make the moment even more surreal, she and I have the same first name, AND she was from our hometown!

Our daughter is now a third-generation Hawkeye at Iowa!

—Katie Hewitt (00BA)

I lived on the second floor of Currier Hall and met my husband the first week of school ... 49 years ago!

—Jamie Orton Achrazoglou (88BA, 10MBA)

I remember my RA and these words of wisdom from an older brother: Act like you know what you’re doing ... ESPECIALLY when you don’t! Slater Eighters ruled!

—Lynn Hammers (81BSN, 85MD)

The secretary Cherie Buelow was my mom away from home!

—Abbie Sanderson (04BA)

It was the early '90s, Mayflower with Angie McDonald (94BA) and Karen Kauten (92BBA), then Hillcrest with Chinatsu Sazawa (94MA, 05PhD) and Kathy Miller (94BSE). So many great memories created!

—Jill Kleppe Wojciechowski (93BA)

I moved into Westlawn during my ultrasound training, after my late sis Nan took a traveling nurse job. I was 28, my first and only time in a dorm. My first night there was a noise in the sink and quickly learnt to put the stopper in when not in use. I drive by occasionally, just to remember, the one phone in the hallway, the pizza parties on Friday night in the TV room, and the many x-ray students who were living there.

—Katherine Bamrick (84ULTT)