A Campus Visit

In the fall of my senior year of high school, I sat on the floor of the guidance office and flipped through college brochures. Why bother, I thought, knowing full well that as the first female in my family to attend college and with what we could afford, going to one of these schools was only a dream. 

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the Stonehill College catalog. With a stately mansion on the cover, I felt compelled to open it and learn more. I soon remembered that Joe Flewellyn ’73, the son of family friends, had just started his first year at Stonehill. I convinced my parents to drive the three hours from our home in Norwalk, Connecticut, to visit the campus on a Sunday afternoon in October. 

And that’s when this love story begins. 

When we met Joe at O’Hara Hall for a tour, he was coming out of the residence hall with his roommate, Dennis Flynn ’73. After a few minutes of polite conversation standing on the O’Hara steps, my parents, Joe, and I began to walk away in one direction, while Dennis headed the opposite way. As if on cue, Dennis and I both turned, looked over our shoulders and smiled. We later would admit that we both felt something and knew we would see each other again. 

But it was the campus that I fell in love with first during that tour. After being accepted and receiving financial aid and scholarships, I was able to enroll the following fall. 

At Stonehill, I found my voice and developed my leadership skills. As a history major, I took classes with Professor Jim Kenneally, who introduced me to new concepts and ideas while empowering me to be an activist. I served as an officer of the History Honor Society and as part of a core group of women on campus who started a petition for a women’s studies minor at the College. What I didn’t know at the time was that these experiences would lead me, years later, to becoming the first woman hired in one of the divisions at Procter and Gamble and later to lobbying in Washington, D.C., for arthritis funding, a cause that is near and dear to me. 

And while I was learning and growing, so was my relationship with Dennis. After our initial meeting, he and I talked over the phone—I from my family’s rotary phone and Dennis from the pay phone in O’Hara. We began dating soon after I enrolled at Stonehill. After I graduated, we got married, launched our careers—mine in business and Dennis’s as a firefighter, arson investigator and adjunct professor of f ire science—and started a family. 

Last summer, I celebrated my 50th Reunion and our 50th wedding anniversary. When Dennis and I returned to Stonehill for my Pillar Society induction at Reunion, we walked around campus and ended up at O’Hara. We couldn’t stop smiling, and we couldn’t resist re-enacting that first moment when we glanced over our shoulders and felt that first spark. Stonehill changed my life. It was here that I found my voice, my confidence and my purpose. And it was here, on the steps of O’Hara, that I met the person with whom I’d spend my life and create our beloved family—three sons, daughters-in law and seven grandchildren, all thanks to a campus visit.