"Our Wittenberg Moment”

Sometimes it’s a common interest, sometimes looks, AND sometimes it’s a particular smell that brings couples together. For Pamela and Alan Stewart it was a bad aroma that made for a memorable first date leading to a long happy future together:

We met at a meeting during winter term of our senior year at Wittenberg University, recalled Pam, a Spanish major. Our first date was Sunday, March 30, 1969. On that date, a powerful stench permeated from Alan’s car, so we had to drive to our date destination with the windows down on a cold and snowy night.

Alan, a biology major, later discovered that a rotten can of worms he had used for a project the prior term, had been left in his car. And while the stench was a bit of an embarrassment at the time, he says, it was a good early test of Pam’s loyalty and resolve.

It has certainly become something for the couple, married since August 22, 1970, to tell their six children and five grandchildren about. Alan is originally from Fairview Park, Ohio, and Pam from Centerville, Ind.

Even though Alan left on graduation day for a summer job in Yosemite without saying good-bye, subsequent letters and a box of huge Digger pinecones suggested a possible future for our relationship, Pam added.

In the fall, I moved with two Alpha Delta Pi sorority sisters to Philadelphia to teach Spanish, and Alan also moved there to attend the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. We married the next summer.

We have been privileged to attend Wittenberg and see our children graduate from there as well with only one duplicate major among the eight of us, Pam said.

Wittenberg set the standard for academic, social, and spiritual growth throughout our lives. Mentors come from all facets of the university from faculty to staff to all support staff. There is no place like Wittenberg!

Alan ’69 and Pamela Jackson Stewart ‘69