Our first date at Gettysburg was in December 1984. We went to a Phi Kappa Psi Christmas house party. We went on a few dates after that, but then Steve went away for a J-Term trip to Egypt and Israel. Then he graduated, I graduated the following year, and we started dating again after we ran into each other at the October reunion in 1987. We have been married since 1990 and live in Alexandria, Virginia. We have two grown children; our son and his wife just had a beautiful baby boy.
The broad range of classes that were required helped to develop our writing and critical thinking skills. We also both worked at the Bullet Hole—Steve was the accounting manager, and I was a shift supervisor. In fact, that is how we met. Working there gave both of us real-world experience managing people and with customer service.
Steve benefited from his relationship with Edward “Ed” McManness, former director of the College Union Building, who mentored the student team that managed the Bullet Hole. Steve also credits Art and Art History Prof. Emeritus Jim Agard, who led his J-Term experience in the Middle East and provided many fascinating insights into the art and architecture of the region. I loved my political science classes and particularly enjoyed and was challenged by Political Science Prof. Emeritus Kenneth Mott’s P’07 Supreme Court classes and Prof. Christine Sylvester’s classes on politics in the Third World.
Gettysburg College was a special and integral part of our lives, and that is the main driver of our engagement with the College. It provided us with rich academic and social opportunities, and we hold that time in our lives close to our hearts. We currently provide unrestricted support to the College, in addition to supporting the Civil War Institute through the Brian C. Pohanka Fellows Endowment. The Pohanka Fellows program was started by Steve’s family in 2011 in honor of his cousin, who was a Civil War historian and preservationist, and it funds internships for Gettysburg College students at national parks across the country.
The valuable and lasting friendships we made at Gettysburg have been a gift over these many years. We regularly plan time with our friends from college, and it is such a rich part of our lives. We believe that alumni can be most impactful by supporting the activities of the College that most resonate with them and the ongoing, timeless value of a liberal arts education.