Interview with Marjorie Harkins Buchanan Kiewit, class of 1943
By Julia Stringfellow
June 17, 2006
1. Could you please state your name?
My name is Marjorie Harkins Buchanan Kiewit.
2. Could you state the year you graduate from Lawrence and what your major was?
1943, and it was either Language or History.
3. Why did you decide to attend Lawrence?
I decided to attend Lawrence because our minister’s son had come up here and invited me up for a weekend and I had a wonderful time. Then he told me that Lawrence had a scholarship contests. So a group of us from the high school came up and we all took a test and I took one in English literature and won first prize which was $150. The high school gave me a prize which was also $150, I guess just for being me. When I applied at Lawrence they gave me a job waiting on tables in the freshman girls’ dorm. And when I saw the uniforms we had to wear and they were long-sleeved. Friday night was visitors’ night and all the boys would come over from Brokaw. It was so embarrassing, but all of the girls who were waiting on tables were darling of course. I was in with a good group.
My sophomore year my father was back in the military, but my brother came up here and so my mother moved up to Appleton. I lived at home then for the rest of the three years. It was a long walk everyday back and forth. Btu I think that’s why I didn’t belong to clubs and also I met the man I was going to marry my second night here at Lawrence. He was over at Hamar House, the Union, waiting to pick up a freshman girl. My roommate and I, no one had asked us to the dance, it was only for freshman .So we went over to the Union and that was that. He then went on to MIT and didn’t want me to date, so between walking back and forth everyday and not dating, I had a lot of time to study. And I did study, I concentrated on study and so I did well.
And this is a funny little story I wanted to tell you. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa Summa Cum Laude. Well, from the time I graduated until 1972 no one cared and it was as though it had never happened. But my husband died in 1964 and by that time several of my daughters were married and the other two were moving to college so I decided to go back to school. And I looked at various schools and looked at Harvard, George Washington, University of Wisconsin and University of Chicago. And when I was at the University of Chicago talking to them and they said, “If you like ideas, you will like it here.” So I liked ideas! The trouble is, I was going to visit my daughter, one of my daughters who is now in Australia with her husband who is teaching. And I had made plans for a trip there so I couldn’t take the exams to get into graduate school. I said, “The only trouble is, I won’t be here at the time of the exams.” And she said, “Don’t worry about it, if we want you, we will take you.” Well, one of the main reasons they took me, finally, was because of my good grades at Lawrence. They appreciated Lawrence’s standards, and it was a good school, and so I had a fellowship for three years. Oh, it was wonderful, I got my PhD there. I like that little history because when people ask what you plan to do, I never really had the opportunity to plan anything because things happen. You just sort of follow the path.
The second thing with Lawrence is that my second husband died when we took a trip to China, when it had just opened up. We lived by this man who had a center at Stanford. Peter died 6 months after that, and I was waiting, I was trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life. I was about 57 or 58. And this man who headed the Center said, “Why don’t you come out to Stanford? We can give you an office and you can do anything you want.” So I did. They had the first contingent for the Center of Chinese scholars, There were four of them, one of them was a young man studying American education. And because I couldn’t sit around in an office, I had never done it so I couldn’t do it, I took this man in and showed him schools. I heard this young man ended up being president of Beijing University.
But this also is very funny, someone at Lawrence wrote to me and said, “I’d like to come out and see you. Now can you tell me what you did to get out here?” And I wrote back and said, “I can’t tell you what I did because I didn’t do anything to get out there. It just all happened.” So that’s the story of my life.
4. While you were here at Lawrence, was there a particular teacher who had a really strong influence, who helped you?
There were a number of those. Mr. Dushane who taught Intellectual History, very good. Mr. Troyer, Renaissance English was very good. They were all good, extremely sympathetic and nice. They were friends. And Mr. Weston who taught Latin and Greek and I had had four years of Latin in high school, so I arrived ready for the fifth year, sixth year, and he also taught Greek, so I took a couple of years of that. And he was just so kindly; tall, aristocratic looking, nice man, and I really enjoyed those classes.
And Mr. Bober who taught Economics and was called to Washington D.C. during the war and the man who replaced him, I don’t’ know if he was from Serbia or someplace, and I remember so well, because the boys in the class, I didn’t feel they respected him with that accent. So I went in to see him after class, and I said, “You’ve got to be tougher with these boys! They’re not nice!” And he said, “Oh, Miss Harkins, you’re like an angel on the top of a Christmas tree!” It was just all, it was a great experience. I worked hard, Lawrence basically paid for my education, and then my brother who was killed in World War II was here for two years, another brother who was in the Naval Unit, but anyhow, he came back here. My sister’s husband-to-be came back, so everyone in the family eventually, basically just because I had gone to Lawrence.
Dena Dushane called me in, the younger men would come back, and he said, “Marjorie, they want to come to Lawrence, do you think they are capable of doing the work?” I really didn’t know if they had fooled around hi high school. I said, “Of course they are.” The Dean also called my mother in to ask her what she thought. Talk about intimacy with the school! But they’ve always done very well for me. I’ve gone through all of the steps of being active; I was on the Alumni Board for about 12 or 13 years. I was on the Board of Trustees and ended up being the first woman president of the Board, and it’s been a very important part of my life, beginning to end.
5. How did the Second World War impact Lawrence? Were there any changes?
Oh yes, because all of the men went away. I don’t know because I had been committed for so long. I was married here the day before the graduation. And my husband who had gone to MIT was now in the army and he came out here to get married. But then we immediately left for our honeymoon in New York, and one thing that made me very frustrated was the fact that when you graduate Summa Cum Laude, everyone stands up. And there were several people that I wanted to see standing up at the time. But my father came from Alexandria, Louisiana, so my family was there for part of it.
6. Were there any traditions here at Lawrence that you noticed, like senior traditions, or I know that the ROCK was a big part of student traditions?
My younger brother was involved with the ROCK. One night we were living at home to save money and he came in laughing and I said, “What happened?” And he said, “Oh, they went down to Ripon.” I don’t know whether they took the ROCK or they brought it back, but anyhow, it was a group of Betas. And he said he had been driving the car because he lived at home and owned a car. And Vince Jones, who was one of our football players, hit a guy. They were going fast because the Ripon people were after them and they were going around a corner and the car started to sway. Vince Jones got out and got on the running board which they had on cars, and he got on it so the car could get around the corner. So I didn’t think it was very funny myself at the time.
7. When you come back as an alumnae from when you were a student, how has the campus and the people at Lawrence changed since you were a student, and how does it feel like it has stayed the same?
One of the changes was I lived in a small house where the library is now and it was torn down. Our hours were, you had to be in by, I don’t know, something like eight o’clock weeknights. After the first report card, I don’t know what the average was, you could stay out until ten. And I was aiming for that because I had my husband-to-be here, who was a sophomore.
No, there’s another thing, the tradition of freshman girls against sophomore girls. Something, I can’t remember, out at the athletic field, they were guarding some fence and I can remember climbing over that fence. And there were a couple of football players there, and I cut my leg on the wire, and they were there to rescue me and take me into the gym and put iodine or something on my leg. And I never knew what it was all about, it was early in my freshman year.
8. How was the relationship between students, faculty, and the administration?
We all got along; I don’t think there were any problems with the faculty at all. The president was a little more formal, but he left and after that, people were different. He had a meeting, I guess it was when I was a senior, he had the sorority presidents come in, and offered them all a cigarette to have, which made me mad. Number one, I didn’t smoke and number two, I thought he was trying to soften us up. It was President Barrows. I saw a lot of years later he was visiting my brother-in-law who was chairman of the Board and my nephew who was also chairman of the Board, but he told me he was going to Switzerland, there’s a school. He died on the golf course here before he ever got there. They (my children) all have traveled a lot. They did everything I wanted to do and I haven’t been able to.
But you’ve traveled a lot…
Btu I haven’t traveled a lot. My main traveling has been after my second husband died. That was when I was associated with, with which I am still. We’ve gone to Russia four or five times, and I’ve gone to North Korea a couple of times, and China a lot of times, and Australia to visit my daughter, and Antarctica with my son. And with each of my grandchildren we went on trips, a Greek Island cruise, London, Paris. I’ve had a great time, I was 43 or 44 when my husband died, and I lived in a different way, not as a mother and wife, but as a world citizen.
9. What were some other activities that your sorority did while you were involved in it?
They have charities, they work with children, things like that. I can not remember, maybe I just can’t remember. But since I was the president of the sorority my senior year, I should have known what we were doing. We did have a dance once a year with white gloves and things like that, but it was not exactly something fun. I think the important thing was that we supported one another. Once people were in a sorority and they needed help on work or anything, they got it. And I had never heard of sororities ‘til I came up here. A friend of my mother’s in Shorewood, Wisconsin, had a daughter here and she had gotten into the sorority because I didn’t know anything. It was all a mystery and surprise. But I enjoyed it and made good friends.
10. And are you still in contact with these sorority sisters?
Two of my sorority sisters are here, four of us for the class reunion. Two of them are my sorority sisters.
11. We’re almost done. Is there anything else you would like to share or tell about your experience at Lawrence, maybe during the time you were on the Board of Trustees or the Alumni Association?
Well, it’s interesting. Because I think I was the first woman chair, I found it difficult because there are various things. When we passed a ruling that no one could smoke during meetings, I talked to President Warch and my nephew who had been the chairman of the Board of Trustees, and they said, "Well you’re president now, you’ve got the right to tell everybody.” And we did have one trustee who had always smoked throughout all the meetings. And there’s another one who in a committee meeting took out a cigarette and I said, “We don’t smoke in the meetings.” He got up and walked out and never came back. So I think if I had been a man I’d have been seen as more forceful. I think everyone saw me as kind of a change. It’s hard for men to adapt to women in authority.
Okay, well that concludes the interview.
