Alenka Figa::  Okay. Oh- it goes that way. Yeah.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  My name is Mary Margaret Brown Coffield. I currently live in Columbia, Missouri, and I’m a member of the Grinnell College class of 1973. When I was in high school in Champaign-Urbana, I was not a very happy high school student, and in my junior year, in the fall I was desperately unhappy, and I talked my parents into letting me graduate early.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  And my dad, at the time, was on the Chemistry faculty at the University of Illinois, and he took some real strong leadership in getting me focused on- y’know he got me Barron’s book and I was looking through all these different schools, and as I processed and he advised we came up with a list, and Grinnell was on that list.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  I didn’t get into Vassar, which was my first choice, because they said I needed four years of English, and the other school that was- I short-listed for when it was time to go visiting schools, that I got accepted to, was Goucher College in Baltimore, which was all girls. My mother and I flew out there and visited it, and my dad drove me to Grinnell.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  It was cold, spring day and I stayed in a room on Mears 2nd, and ate pancakes with cherry pie filling on top and I thought that was the greatest. I had a fabulous interview for my admissions and I just knew this was going to be my home for four years. And I felt so liberated when I graduated from high school and all- I was completely focused on being able to get here, and it just happened that my first dorm room was Mears Cottage, 2nd floor, right across the hall from the room I’d spent the night in as a visiting student, which was quite odd.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  And Mears was a pretty cool place, you know. It had a lot of character. And it was, at that time, still generally- there were guys on South Campus and there were girls on North Campus, but it was dorm by dorm. This was, in the fall of ’69 and it was just at a point when the residential structure was really starting to change a lot. So, it was easy to make friends with guys.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  You know, I had, particularly I remember crowds of guy friends in Cleveland, Haines, and Read Hall. Well those were the guy – and Loose was co-ed by floor. Didn’t hang out very much there. The girl dorms were James, Main, Mears on South campus. And so, I particularly remember that feeling of almost social liberation in terms of being able to enjoy relationships with peers, to be in such a non-restrictive environment and to be able to explore so much.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  As time went on, I did get my first play my freshman year. It was a student-directed piece called Katherine. And then I got into a main stage production that spring called The Playroom and sophomore year I was in several things, and I also took technical theater that year, as I was deciding to become a Theater major. And so I was pretty much living and breathing theater at that point.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  But by the middle of- well, actually at the end of my sophomore year my father decided that I needed to try a less expensive school and as an Illinois resident, I decided to choose Illinois State and I went there the first semester of my junior year. They had a professionally designed theater program, and going through that, going from being a big fish in a little pond to a little fish in a much bigger pond, I started to experience those bumps in the road that was gonna happen with being a- that were going to happen with being a Theater major, and decided it probably wasn’t the way I wanted to- to do.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  But, my parents agreed that I could go back to Grinnell, and – I was the eldest of five kids, so they were budgeting, y'know, a lot of college, so, y'know, we had to negotiate – but when I did come back, I used my time very very well. And I at that point became academically much more proficient. I limited my substance use a lot, and I know that my experimenting with hallucinogens had a lot to do with suppressed grades the first two years I was here. It was a time of great exploration.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  I did some political stuff, too. I canvassed for McGovern in Des Moines, but I tended to be more creatively drawn and sometimes overwhelmed and confused by the intensity of the political movements. However, when I was back my junior year, I directed a student-directed thing as an independent project: The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, which was written by Dan Berrigan about their breaking into and burning draft records. And they went on trial for it. It’s not as well-known now as some of the other political trials in that time period, and that was a meaningful expression of my own sense of anti-war sentiment and concern.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  But I had not otherwise been very functional with all the turmoil that was going on. For example, at the end of our freshman year when Cambodia was bombed and there was this movement to close colleges, I was very involved as part of that wave of people who were adding power to the message. My sentiment was in that ballpark but once we closed the College and I went home, it was hard for me to find out what to do with myself. And then, you know, I later actually did regret that I had taken the pass/fail option. Didn’t help my transcript, y’know? And in the long run, had I really contributed something meaningful by doing- y’know? I struggled with those kinds of issues.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  In spite of the fact that I was deeply influenced and still love, to this day, very much, my theater director Sandy Moffett, who’s still in Grinnell, and influenced my work a lot, I think my very favorite teacher at Grinnell College was Brian Harris. He taught German here. He ended up going to Texas when he left Grinnell. At that time he was a young man with a young family and he taught very intensely, and he had a passion for theater, and he taught a comparative literature class of German- European comparative literature. We read a lot of novels, and he also did one on drama. And I think my ability to get into the soul of a script and appreciate the playwright as the artist was guided completely by this guy. And I- he also helped me become a much better writer.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield::  As it happens, when I left Grinnell, after my senior year, I didn’t do theater really. I did some with kids, but mostly I worked with emotionally disturbed children. I went to Vanderbilt Hospital and worked on a psychiatric ward for kids. But, eventually, after a journey of going through to being a Special Ed teacher and a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher, I’ve now become a theater teacher again and for the last ten years I’ve been teaching theater full time in a large high school in Columbia, Missouri.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield & Alenka Figa::  And it’s now that all the stuff that I lived and breathed in theater here has really come to fruition and so often I’m having these moments with my students and I’m a Grinnell College student again, living and breathing those creative processes. And to me, Grinnell College, the four years that I lived it and even that semester away, I was still living, being a Grinnell College student. They were the formative years of my life. There’s absolutely no doubt for me about that.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield & Alenka Figa::  Right. That's great.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield & Alenka Figa::  Thank you. I’m done.
Mary Margaret Brown Coffield & Alenka Figa::  Thank you.
