Jackie Weissman::  Ms. Jackie Weissman. Actually, my full name is Jacqueline Lee Weissman, and I currently live in Portland, Oregon, and I am a member of the Grinnell College class of 1992.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  My name is Andrew Altschul, and I currently live in Portland, Oregon, and I am also a member of the Grinnell College class of 1992.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Okay. Andrew and I are married, and we met at Grinnell.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Sophomore year.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Sophomore year, and I was nineteen and Andrew was eighteen, and I transferred into Grinnell from SUNY, Albany. I’m from Long Island, New York, and… go ahead.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  So I was going, I forget, I think it was lunch or dinner.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Dinner.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Dinner. Back- in Quad, which I know no longer exists now.
Andrew Altschul::  And back then, you know, I don’t know how they do things now, but usually there’d be like, a group of people from your floor that would head off to dinner or something together, and I kind of missed my group. But, I had a friend who I had known who was living in Main, which is where Quad was, and I thought "Oh," y'know, "Maybe she’ll still be there and I can like, find someone to go to dinner with." So, I went up to her room and y’know, was like, “Hey, you go to dinner yet?” and she said she was going to dinner with some people she had just met who were in a play with her, which was Jackie.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Right, so yeah. This is- this person was Jen Mattern who’s a friend and class of ’92, as well, and I was in a play with her called Uncommon Women… I can’t- what’s the…
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Was it Uncommon Women?
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Well, yeah, but that’s not the full – Oh! "Uncommon Women and Others", and it- by Wendy Wasserstein, and it was really fun. It was an all-women cast, and I got to meet a lot of people through, ‘cause I had transferred so, I got to meet a lot of people in the play from that, and Jen was a friend. And so we went to dinner, actually also with my friend Veronica, too, and- who had also transferred, and.. then-
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Who I really wanted to go out with instead of you. No, just kidding.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Right! Huh, well, she’s not here.
Jackie Weissman::  So, but- So then we, yeah, so we met and it turns out, well, Andrew’s also from New York, so Andrew and I just sort of hit it off 'cause we all met in Jen’s room, and I had transferred from SUNY at Albany which is a state university in New York and Andrew was sort of, like intrigued that somebody from there would come to Grinnell because they’re very different schools. They’re just really opposite, in a lot of ways. And, actually that’s why I came to Grinnell. Because I was looking for that.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  It’s also one of these state schools where, lots of people from New York went there. So, I knew a lot of people that went there. And it was one of those, y’know, “Where are you from? Who do you know?” and it turned out that…
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Right. It turned out that my roommate at State Uni- at SUNY, Andrew went to high school with, and she went on a, like- so Andrew knew her fairly... well. And she had gone on a trip to France in high school and Andrew was there, and so I had seen pictures of Andrew while I was at Gr- SUNY before I even knew who he was.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Which I claim is why she transferred.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Right.
Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  That's awesome.
Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  And I've also seen- so I also knew some friends of Andrew’s that were at Albany from – his friends from high school. But I- it was before I even knew who he was. So again, we realized we had all this stuff in common and mostly, what we bonded about, which is a little inappropriate, but is that we both really didn’t like her, a lot. She was not a very nice person. And so…
Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  So we had a lot of war stories about her.
Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  That’s right. And so, yeah.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  And a- I mean, also, there wasn’t- well, there were a group of people from New York that lived- that came to Grinnell but it was- I don’t know. You just- it was just like, we met, we were familiar with each other because we sort of had a short-hand because we were both from New York and we were in the middle of Iowa. And then, Andrew kept coming to my – I lived in Norris, in a single – and you would- kept coming to my room for... just random- just to say hi.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  And it took you a few months to catch on.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Realize that you liked me.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman & Tamara Grbusic::  But the weird is- so the weird thing though, and it is this sort of…
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman & Tamara Grbusic::  And Andrew lived on South Campus so that was like, a big deal because he had to cross the field.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman & Tamara Grbusic::  It was a long walk.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman & Tamara Grbusic::  In the cold.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman & Tamara Grbusic::  Right, and this was before Harris Center, so all the activities were actually on South Campus so it was a stretch to go up there.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman & Tamara Grbusic::  Oh.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman & Tamara Grbusic::  And I just didn’t compute like, "Oh, that that’s a big deal." But...
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  But, it should be preserved, because the weird thing is, it’s not just that she saw pictures of me before, but-
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Right.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  So, we both are from New York but we’re from different suburbs
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Oh, yes!
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  So, Jackie grew up in Long Island, and I grew up- which is south of the city, and I grew up in an area called Rockland County which is about 20 miles north of New York City. But, we both- our families are from Brooklyn and we, growing up, we both spent our weekends –
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  In the same area.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  In Brooklyn.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  In the same area.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  And my family’s bar is literally around the corner from her Aunt’s house.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  It was meant to be.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  It was. It was sort of like fate, but that's weird. I don’t know if I believe in that.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  But when we were dating in college, and her cousins are a little younger.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  They are. They’re like six years younger.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  And so, they would be going to get their high school bus on the corner and they would see my dad opening up this bar. And they like, wave at each other 'cause by this point we were like, you know, the families that met each other.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  Yeah.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  It was.. it’s kind of freaky.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  It is kind of freaky, and, so yeah. And then, should we keep talking about …? I don't know. Yeah! So...
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Then we got married.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Then we got married. I feel like this is like Harry Met Sally.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  It is like... You know, you knew like you knew –
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  A good melon. No, and then we... Then we got together over Winter Break and we met in New York and, yeah.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  We dated throughout college and...
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Uh-huh, and now we’ve been married 17 years, which is crazy. So, we…
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  And we didn’t get married until like-
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Yeah.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  -five or six years after college.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Yeah, yeah. We- I move- Andrew went to law school in University of Michigan and I moved there with him after graduation, for a year. Then I went to a film school in Chicago and Andrew and I would talk on the phone, pretty much every night. My phone bill was really high. And then we decided, not in a very romantic way, but that we should get married. And so we got married, and you moved to Chicago and that’s it.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  That’s it.
Jackie Weissman::  Yeah. And then we decided, when we lived in Chicago, that it was.. what? We couldn’t afford to buy a house there and I had graduated from film school and Andrew was working like, in a big firm in Chicago and he was working a lot and we just didn’t want to live in Chicago anymore. Wanted to live somewhere more affordable, where we could be close to outdoors and enjoy the outdoors quickly, and in a more- well, anyway. We wanted to live in a liberal city and whatever. So, we looked at like, Utne Reader’s ten most livable cities- most liberal cities, actually, and we were choosing between Burlington, Vermont and Portland, Oregon. And then Andrew – what happened? We went to a wedding, of a friend of mine from High School, in Seattle and so we decided to just take that as a time to explore Portland.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Now, when we moved out there we knew a couple people from Grinnell. Another couple that had gotten married, also who had met freshman year, who were friends of ours.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  But they’re divorced now.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  They’re divorced now, so it doesn’t always work as happily as we did, if that calms you down a little.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  They're still our friends.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  But, ironically, now in Portland, sort of- and you weren’t there, you transferred sophomore year, but my freshman year, of the group I hung around with, four or five of us, there was probably a group of like six or seven of us, four or five of us live in Portland. Totally random, but…
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  Oh.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  Well, I think they moved out there because, Kristen was… y'know.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  That Grinnell pull.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  Yeah, the Gr-
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  But we were the first of our- Well, this other couple in Portland was probably – beat us by a month.
Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic & Jackie Weissman::  They were there first.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  But we were the, y'know, first of the- sort of all the Grinnell friends to get married and we were still young. We were 25 when we got married, which I consider young.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  That’s young.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  We met when we were 19 so it’s still a ways out. But, it was like a big Grinnell reunion. That was the fun thing about it, and I feel like a lot of our friends felt inspired to ultimately get married because it wasn’t some weird, stuffy ceremony thing that you saw on TV.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  It was in my dad’s backyard.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  We just sort of like, wanted to have a party with our friends, and let’s all get together. And for many years, and we’ve missed a few, but we continue to, for- every year we get together with the same group of friends of Grinnell.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  Not every year.
Andrew Altschul & Jackie Weissman::  No, we did for like, every year for four years, five years. Then it was every other year. We don’t always do it but a bunch of us are here now, which was part of the reason to come back to reunion.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  And what’s great now is that, well, all of our kids are here too and a lot- I haven’t met a lot of the kids before and it’s really sweet to see them all. They’re just like in a pack and they kinda just... it’s so-
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  They look like college kids. Jackie: They- No, mini College kids. Yeah, they're just really- it’s really sweet and it’s really poignant and it’s really nice to be back here with everybody, sort of. It’s like, full circle, and...Andrew:  Yeah. But even though we’ve been- I mean, for us it’s easy to say Grinnell’s been a huge part of our lives ‘cause we met here, but-Jackie:  It’s our friends.Andrew:  It’s our whole community, even the friends that aren’t in Portland. Our closest friends in life are still the friends we met here and it’s amazing how you can not see them for a year or two and then, whether you’re in Mac Field or, anywhere else, it’s just the same, and it’s like you’re 20 again which is...Jackie:  Nice.Andrew:  Very inspiring.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul:: They- No, mini College kids. Yeah, they're just really- it’s really sweet and it’s really poignant and it’s really nice to be back here with everybody, sort of. It’s like, full circle, and...
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Yeah. But even though we’ve been- I mean, for us it’s easy to say Grinnell’s been a huge part of our lives ‘cause we met here, but-
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  It’s our friends.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  It’s our whole community, even the friends that aren’t in Portland. Our closest friends in life are still the friends we met here and it’s amazing how you can not see them for a year or two and then, whether you’re in Mac Field or, anywhere else, it’s just the same, and it’s like you’re 20 again which is...
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Nice.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul::  Very inspiring.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic::  And then also that said, I mean, like, there have been Grinnellians who we didn’t know at Grinnell who we’ve since become friendly with, or, it was sort of like, like we’re saying. If you’re in a new place then you meet a Grinnell person, there’s kind of like a short-hand. Or, even, there’s like Grinnell people that I’ve met who graduated like, way ahead of me and I met them someplace and there is, like, kind of a short-hand with them and this really nice bond. And it’s just interesting ‘cause it’s like, I don’t… y’know, it’s sort of just a…
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic::  Anyone crazy enough to live in the middle of Iowa for four years, and enjoy it.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic::  Yeah or like, they’re just like, good people, like salt of the Earth kind of people and it’s just a really special place to me and to Andrew, too. So...
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic::  Thanks for letting us share.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic::  Thanks so much.
Jackie Weissman & Andrew Altschul & Tamara Grbusic::  Thank you! Yeah.
