Alenka Figa::  Okay.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  My name is Gregory L. Vranicar, 19- class of 1972. I currently live in Overland Park, Kansas, which is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, and I work in Kansas City, Missouri.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Fine. Great!
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Do you know anymore, or...?
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Oh, no!
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  You gonna stay here with me?
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Yep!
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Okay. I’ll just give you a little bit of background about me, what I do now, and then I kind of wanna... I’m prompted by the question, “What was your favorite place at Grinnell?” I’m going to talk about a couple places that I really liked.
Greg Vranicar::  I currently work in the non-profit fund development area for the Catholic Dioceses in Kansas City, St. Joseph. That’s a real rarity among Grinnellians- not so much that I work for a non-profit but that I work for the Catholic Church. There aren’t that many Catholics that come to Grinnell. There are very few Catholics that leave Grinnell still being Catholic, which, when I left Grinnell, I had lost my rhythm of going to Catholic mass, but I picked that back up once I moved to Kansas City after law school.
Greg Vranicar::  Which- I went to law school at University of Iowa right after being at Grinnell, so law school from ’72 to ’75. Served in the Air Force for three years, practiced litigation, corporate law in Kansas City downtown from 1978 through 1994, and because I was serving on a number of non-profit boards, I left law practice to do non-profit fund development work because that was calling me even though it was a major change in income, a major diminishment of income right when my kids were possibly at their greatest need of income.
Greg Vranicar::  They were 8 and 10 at that time, so they later went to Jesuit universities, St. Louis University and Regis University which are just about as expensive as Grinnell, so we had to get scholarships for them because of our need as a family. We qualified for scholarships and now my wife and I are generous donors not only to her university, University of Kansas and Grinnell, but also our sons’ universities because we believe it’s really good that they got scholarships.
Greg Vranicar::  The question I want to address from your topics... and this is not a hard- it’s kind of a hard choice for me because I honestly don’t know exactly what to talk about, but I was a student leader at Grinnell in the administration of student government that Andy Loewi was the President of Student Government, and he’s kind of an icon. If you look in the archives you’ll find a lot of Andy Loewi references, L-O-E-W-I.
Greg Vranicar::  Andy tragically died of cancer about five and half years ago. So, our last reunion we were mourning Andy’s death. I was his- in his executive committee of four people. I was student ombudsman and my favorite place is what I want to talk about, because in a way it was a place that gave me refuge from the politics of being a student government leader and allowed me to maintain my academic standing while I was still involved actively in student government. And that was Burling Library.
Greg Vranicar::  I literally closed Burling Library at its closing hour at midnight probably at least fifty percent if not seventy percent of the days that it closed. I was always disappointed that it didn’t open earlier on Sunday and stay later on Saturday, when it- I think it always closed at 6 o’clock when we were in school on Saturday night. Often on Saturday night, because I was so involved in student government and I usually dated when I was at Grinnell but, y’know, I could go to dinner and if I could’ve gotten back to the library I would’ve come back on Saturday night.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  The Library then did not have the... the extra top on it that it has now, sort of the-
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  The box?
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  The box. But, it did have the south side which looks out on the curved street of what used to be highway- maybe it’s still Highway Six.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  It's Highway 6.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Which, when I was a child and visiting my grandparents in Iowa City, we used to drive, before I-80, on Highway Six from Western Iowa all the way to Iowa City where my grandparents lived, where my grandfather was a professor.
Greg Vranicar::  And we got to watch Burling Library being built, so maybe that’s why it has a special place in my heart, 'cause... And in some ways, seeing the campus from the vantage point of Highway 6, the big curve, was... I remembered that as... doing that as a child and then when I was getting ready to choose a college I could remember Grinnell College. Also my grandfather, who was a dental professor at Iowa, highly recommended Grinnell because he had a lot of science students who were very good students here, went to the dental college at Iowa and became very good dentists that he helped train in the dental school.
Greg Vranicar::  But, let’s talk a little bit about the Library, which... For me, I guess, the reasons I liked it: one, it was relatively when... quiet most of the time, and sometimes that quiet got disrupted by somebody coming and talking at a table, even sometimes me coming and talking at a table with a friend, trying to do it in hushed voice so that others wouldn’t be disturbed in their studies in the south, what was then very open area of tables with a few carrels, but I don’t think as many ca-
Greg Vranicar::  I haven’t been there this visit, but I think there are more carrels that are kind of sound insulated in themselves so sound doesn’t travel as much in that south area as it did when I was there, 'cause it was pretty much open, long tables. You could plop down at a long table. There might be two or three other students on the table. If I came to talk with one of those students or if someone else came to talk with one of those students at the same table, it sometimes interrupted my studies. But, that was OK. It was also a social outlet to see the same people who routinely went to the library and with whom I became close friends.
Greg Vranicar::  One of my closest friends in the class of ’71, who was a library brat like me, was Tom Merrill, who was a Rhodes Scholar from Grinnell and a History department major, like me. So he got the Rhodes scholarship the year before I graduated and my last archival talk in this setting was about my competition to be a Rhodes Scholar in the class of ’72, and I actually got to be a Nebra–
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  I grew up in Nebraska – to be a Nebraska nominee, one of the two for the Rhodes Scholarship, and then competed with 11 others in our- No, 15 others in our 8 state region and later found out from someone who was not supposed to talk to about this that there were four Rhodes scholarships awarded out of those 16 people and that there was a big debate between the 4th and me. I was like the 5th.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  That's close.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  I was the alternate.
Greg Vranicar::  Had I gone to the Rhodes scholarship, I would’ve been there with Bill Clinton, so I would’ve been a friend of Bill. And a friend of Hilary. Oh, well, then if I had… y’know, depending on how life had played out, maybe become a friend of Hilary. It would’ve changed my life, had that vote gone differently at the Rhodes scholarship. But, it didn’t. But, largely, applying was out of my admiration for Tom Merrill who was always at the Burling Library, and he helped me close it down often.
Greg Vranicar::  He was also a model History major to me, just a year ahead, and we took a lot of the same classes. I know we took Al Jones’ Diplomatic History when I was a sophomore and Tom Merrill was a junior. And then we took Cold War seminar together with Al Jones. Those were hard classes, and I think I got As in both of those classes.
Greg Vranicar::  And really, after my first year when I was a really scared person at Grinnell, with being the only person out of my high school class of 44 that went out of state to school, and thinking that I was in a sea of people a lot more talented and smart- smarter than me, that I wouldn't make it. But, I did and was a Rhodes Scholar candidate and actually was the President’s Medalist of my class, and so I was... I did fine at Grinnell. And largely, it was because I had Burling Library.
Greg Vranicar::  But I wanna talk about one other place and that would be the Forum, which I know by the next time I come back to Grinnell, which will probably be at least a couple years from now, the Forum will probably be gone. And the Forum, I know, is terribly ADA deficient. Americans with Disabilities Act deficient, because I went to law school and I know about the law of that.
Greg Vranicar::  But, for me the F- I’m not disabled so that doesn’t impact me, but for me the Forum provided, much like the library, space to have intimate interaction, particularly in the lounge in the middle part of the forum where you could have coffee or – I- not a big coffee drinker, but coke, or iced tea, or later in the day a non-caffeinated drink and then- and just talk. Or, just sit and read the paper, do something… something that was not interactive. It was just you. Or, in the South lounge, where we had many of the best of the speakers that came to Grinnell were appearing in the South Lounge when I was here.
Greg Vranicar::  My mind- I danced too much last night to remember all the speakers but there were speakers galore, many of them on issues related to race, which I didn’t have any racial diversity in my high school so that was... it opened up my mind to issues of poverty and race which was very critical to my understanding of things now.
Greg Vranicar::  So, coming full circle, I started with what I do now. In raising money as the plan- I’m a planned-giving director for the Dioceses of Kansas City, St. Joseph- in raising money for it I try to encourage people to have a feeling of stewardship, of wanting to give back, and in their... and particularly toward the end of their life wanting to give back. So, doing something in their will or if they have a lot of money in their trust or through an insurance policy or through some other things. There’s a thing called a gift annuity.
Greg Vranicar::  The College, unfortunately, right now doesn’t have a plan-giving director and it’s really missing the boat because planned gifts are where by far the largest giving comes to the College. A 29 million dollar gift is what built the Joe and a 22 million dollar gift built the Bear center, which I haven’t even been able to go see. But, those are the huge examples, even if the College would get... from me, a huge gift would be a 50,000 gift after I’ve educated two children at Jesuit schools, to have enough money left after that to give a major gift like fifty thousand dollars would be great, which I haven’t done.
Greg Vranicar::  My wife has a funny- she went to Kansas University- my wife has a funny saying about Grinnell, that it is the other woman in my life because I’m so devoted to it and I spend a lot of time on it as a volunteer. So, in summary I guess I want to commend the college for having places like the Burling Library and the loun- and the Forum, particularly, I’d say the South lounge and the Middle lounge and the North lounge was great for dancing to people like Buddy Guy and...
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Oh, blues singers from Chicago. I can’t even remem- Buddy Guy is who I remember.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  There’s an alum who gave a really good list of some people who came and performed before.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Yeah, there’s a lot of performances in the North Lounge. There used to be, anyway. You’re class of ’12, so you remember maybe some of that. It’s a computer lab now.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Yeah. There are speakers occasionally in the North lounge. Performances now happen in Gardner or Harris.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  OK. So, there are new spaces.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  In some ways... I’ll shed a tear when the Forum’s gone.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  I think a lot of people will.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Because it’s really a... it really was a formative place in terms of social relationships and a formative place in terms of opening my mind to new thinking and new avenues of seeing how... particularly how social change occurs and how people can be agents of social change.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  That's great.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  That’s what I try to be, now.
Greg Vranicar & Alenka Figa::  Yeah. Thank you.
