Charles Connor studied history at UW-Madison. He met his wife Susan on his freshman floor in Sellery Hall and landed his first job as an assistant district attorney with the help of a professor’s letter of recommendation.
In town this weekend for the first time in “a while,” Connor barely recognizes his college home.
Arriving Wednesday night, Connor and his wife, Susan, slept poorly at the Campus Inn where his parents once stayed during visits, woken up several times in the night by the shouting of drunken passersby.
“I tossed and turned all evening,” he said. “The combination of the noise and the uncomfortable pillows were really too much for me, which is surprising because I remember sleeping so well [at the Campus Inn] when I stayed there for my freshman orientation.”
The couple, now retired, spent all of Thursday retracing old steps through the halls of Humanities, College Library and up Bascom Hill. It was here that Charles proposed to Susan all those years ago.
“Back then you could see all the way to the Capitol,” Connor, now balder and more stooped than he used to be, said of Bascom’s picturesque view. “I remember seeing the old law school building from up here, much prettier than all of that glass.”
The couple is looking forward to Saturday’s Farmers’ Market, though Charles wants to get there early to “avoid all the children that seem to live here now.”
Unlike her husband, Susan enjoyed the nostalgia, embracing both the old and the new.
“I don’t think the boys back in my day wore shirts without the sleeves, but I wish they had,” she said, as the couple walked past the SERF. “There are just as many full heads of hair, though. I miss that.”
—B.S.
