Mara Brewster Munroe::  My name is Mara Brewster Munroe. I live now in Neenah, Wisconsin and I’m a member of the Grinnell Class of 1972. I want to talk today about two people who taught me a lot outside of class.
Mara Brewster Munroe::  That starts, of course, with my roommate. I was from small town Iowa, a town one mile long, five streets wide, and until I was in seventh grade, I did not have a classmate who was not white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. I was assigned as a roommate, Martha Nelson, who had graduated from high school in Washington, DC, and her folks had just moved back to their hometown, New York City. She was Jewish, and I had no clue. I had no clue other than, they don’t eat pork, y’know, really basic things that people knew. When we told my kid brother, who was 8 at the time, my roommate was Jewish, he asked what that meant and when told that she didn’t’ believe in Jesus, it hadn’t dawned on him it was optional.
Mara Brewster Munroe::  So, we all learned a lot from each other. We took her to the farm, kind of things. Not the kind of farm that they take you to on grade school tours but a regular working farm, when she would visit, because of course it was too far for her to go home for shorter breaks, and I visited her in New York City over sophomore year winter break and she took me to all the places. It’s really wonderful to have a native take you around New York City 'cause the citiy's so big and intimidating.
Mara Brewster Munroe::  And we learned a lot from each other. She taught me about things like... summer camp that lasted all summer long and she went on summer in Kibbutz between our junior and senior years and came back talking about that, and she ended up going back to Israel and marrying a fellow that she’d met over that summer and staying there. So it was a major learning experience to live with her.
Mara Brewster Munroe::  The other person is one of my freshman to sophomore year boyfriends... and I grew up in a house where the radio was usually on but to a pop music station and there were records and what have you, but when I got to Grinnell- The very first night, I think there were people making music in Younker Lounge and I saw for the first time, live, a banjo and an autoharp and we were singing different kinds of music. There was a lot of folk music and we would sing. We would sing straight through Peter, Paul and Mary’s album 1700, usually led by Peter van den Honert who became a choral music teacher, I believe.
Mara Brewster Munroe::  And then I started dating a fellow named Dan Frohardt from the class of ’70 and his parents were also Grinnell alums from back in the 40s, and he played the string bass and was in all the classical ensembles and what-have-you, and I learned about classical music. Everything I know about classical music I learned either from him or from other friends later after he’d left, including Mary Kay Kasang who’s here today, who was a vocal music person.
Mara Brewster Munroe::  That- Until then, I knew nothing about classical music and now that’s probably 80% of what I listen to, and I’m very grateful for the introduction - with notes! I mean, essentially, he’d say, “Oh you gotta listen to this,” and he would explain what this was important about. Occasionally, he would try to explain something, singing a little bit of a melody or something and he couldn’t sing worth a doodle. But, he could explain it and it was wonderful to have that introduction to music that I’ve grown to be very fond of.
Sophie Haas::  Wow. That sounds great.
