I was lucky enough to have spent my four years on co-op after freshman year working at The News-Tribune, a six-day-a-week newspaper in Waltham, Mass., a suburb of Boston. I had had interviews at The Boston Globe and The News-Tribune for my first co-op assignment. The Globe offered me a spot (five days a week,...
Category: Right Column
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Life Follows Love and the NU News
(Margie’s writing is in Roman type; Gil’s is in italic ) (MVP) So … (all good non-news stories start with “so,” don’t they?) … so, there was my boyfriend (now husband of 53 years) who was a freshman at Northeastern University’s Burlington campus when, in the early spring of 1965, I received an acceptance letter from Northeastern. That was such a...
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January 29, 1970: Hayakawa Protest Prompts Police Attacks
“Time it was, and what a time it was …” — Paul Simon, “Old Friends” Looking back, it was a period justly recalled as a time of protest, motivated by parallel lines of dissent that met, one in support for civil rights, the other in ending the Vietnam War. Even the soundtrack of the period...
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Riot on Hemenway Street: Boston Police Unleashed
As political events in the spring of 1970 spiraled out of control, I decided to print the Northeastern News daily. I knew the staff was skilled enough and dedicated enough to make it work. My biggest worry was whether we would have enough newsworthy events to fill four pages every 24 hours. It was a...
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NU News: An Experience that Nourished a Lifetime and a Career
I received my acceptance letter from Northeastern University in October 1968. I was congratulated on being accepted to its five-year nursing program starting in September 1969. However, I never intended to be a nurse. My parents, who grew up during the Depression, firmly believed there were two professions for women: teaching or nursing. If I...
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The Accidental Beekeeper
It was the eve of my wedding, May 11, 1979. Friends and relatives were gathering at the house in West Pawlet, Vt., for a pre-nuptial celebration. One of the guests came up to me and said, “I didn’t know you were a beekeeper.” “What are you talking about?” said I. “Well, there is a beehive...
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Still Marching with Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles Mind-Blowing Music Woke a Generation and the World
Bruce was different from the rest of us. Very different. We were mostly working-class kids who, like me, lived at home and commuted to Northeastern, trying to scrape by financially during our freshman year until we got co-op jobs to pay for our next semester. I even labored as a 15- hour-a-week mail boy while...
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Co-op Pushed Me Ahead of My Peers
I was filled with nerves as I walked for the first time through the door of the Courier-Post newsroom in southern New Jersey. It was June 1967. I was just 18 years old and finished with my freshman year of academics at Northeastern University. This was the start of my first “co-op” experience. I would...
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Northeastern News Challenges Vietnam War, Status Quo
It was a thrilling time to be a college student. It was even more thrilling to be the editor of a college newspaper. By 1968, the anti-Vietnam War movement had reached Northeastern University. We on the Northeastern News could feel it. As editor/guru, I found myself surrounded by talent as eager as I was to...
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Sports Editor a Woman? Advancing the Cause Across Sexual Barriers
“The delivery man looked embarrassed as he stood at the entrance to the Northeastern News office. ‘Um, I have some flowers for the uh — sports editor of the NU News,’ he stammered.” So began the press release issued by the university after I was elected the first woman sports editor of the News in...