Their Hearts Beat True Blue
Hardcore Black Bear alums mark milestones with UMaine
By Kris Ferrazza
Some alumni are wedded to UMaine like a happy couple, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do they part – literally. Take Piet Lammert ’91, for example, who drummed to the “Stein Song” while undergoing brain surgery earlier this year. Or Roberta Wyer Morrill ’58, who wants her funeral to include a special Black Bear surprise. As the UMaine Alumni Association turns 150, grads reflected on their association with the Orono institution. They told tales of parties, pandemic plans, and panty raids. Some remembered house mothers and homesickness, while others recalled fraternity functions and physics finals. Through it all, one thing is clear: regardless of the era, the lore is legendary and lasts a lifetime.
The paths of these grads are vastly different: Meg Villarreal ‘61 traveled the world in television broadcasting and befriended Mr. Rogers. Arthur Conro ’60 had athletic success overseas and once beat a horse in a 50-yard dash. Morrill refused a research opportunity to avoid the Boston Strangler. And Lammert is part of a five-generation legacy family with history preserved in a treasured scrapbook.
ROBERTA WYER MORRILL ’58
Roberta Morrill, ’89, of Windham, is a zoology major turned educator. She vividly recalled her Orono days, from the speeches given by her housemother at Balentine Hall to the color of her dreaded physics book. A chat with her advisor junior year changed her future.
“She said I think you should be taking some teaching courses,” Morrill said. “I thought, OK, but I’ll never be a teacher.”
Well, become a teacher she did.
“I gave it a try … for 25 years” she said dryly.
Memorable moments from her years at UMaine include doing room checks as a senior resident after curfew, collecting bugs for entomology class, a fondness for the Maine Hello, and fraternity socials.
“Back in the Dark Ages when I was there, any woman caught with an alcoholic beverage would be expelled,” she said. Lights out was at 10 p.m., and housemothers oversaw the dormitories and fraternity houses. Women could not wear trousers, except to football games. They wore wool skirts and hand- laundered their sweaters and socks, drying them on racks in their rooms. As a senior resident, she made bedtime rounds. One night she found a sweet freshman girl not in bed, but in the restroom, sick and reeking of liquor.
“She said,;Please don’t ell Dean Edie. I don’t want to have to go home and work in Woolworth’s, Morrill said. She gave the girl one warning, and did not tell Dean of Women Edith Wilson, who was a friend.
Despite the threat of Dean Edie, there were hijinks between the girls and boys. Morrill remembered her proper housemother reminding the girls, “If the boys arrive and shout, ‘panty raid,’ the women of Balentine do NOT open their windows” and toss out their undergarments. But sure enough, the boys did show up a short time later and indeed, some windows did open, Morrill said. But was anything tossed out? That’s where her memory gets fuzzy, she mischievously insisted.
She also shared a sweet tradition where girls who got “pinned”; and were going steady were serenaded by fraternity brothers who sang “the sweetheart song.” She has been to wedding receptions where fraternity brothers still sing it to the happy couple.
Freshman orientation lasted nearly a week in those days, with dances and cookouts as the newbies were welcomed to campus. First-year students wore freshman beanies on their heads to identify themselves and were expected to give “The Maine Hello”; from orientation through Family and Friends Weekend. If
they didn’t greet others in passing, they might have to carry the books of an All Maine Woman like herself or be forced to sing the “Stein Song”. “I’m so glad I went when I did. We studied but we had good, clean fun”, she said. Fraternity parties were fancy affairs, with party favors including UMaine mugs, letter openers and more.
“Your date took you to meet the housemother,” Morrill said, explaining introductions and pleasantries were exchanged. “And Maine women did not go down to the basement where the bar was, or upstairs. We stayed on the first floor.”
But it wasn’t all fun and games. Morrill also remembered the rigor of academics, especially physics.
“It was a hard-covered blue book, and I carried that book everywhere I went” she said. “I tried and tried to understand it. ” It was an uphill battle, despite getting help from a grad student, and she had to pass to graduate on time. When the final scores came out, she was relieved.
“Well, I passed, but not by much,”she said.
After being accepted to do research at Mass General, Morrill was headed to Boston to work at the hospital when she heard some shocking news.
“There was a man they called the Boston Strangler, and he was going after women in white uniforms,”
she said, “So that didn’t excite me too much.”
She went to Maine Medical Center instead, doing cancer research there.
“I have no regrets at all about going to Orono. The friendships are still active, and I think I learned something too,” she said.
These days Morrill finds herself attending reunions and funerals, and recently someone sang the Stein Song at the end of a memorial. Deeply touched, she said, “I thought what a wonderful way to end this. So now I have a plan for when my time comes.”
She has asked a singer friend who attended Bates College to do the same at her funeral. Morrill will have printed copies of the lyrics available and has prepared her son and daughter.
“I warned them to be sure they know it,”she said, “because if they don’t, I’m coming back to haunt them.”
ARTHUR “ACE” CONRO ’60
Morrill has been president of the Cumberland County Retired Teachers Association for 15 years and they tell her she can never resign. She isn’t the only alum who has been voted president for life. Arthur “Ace” Conro ’60, of Mattapoisett, MA, is another leader who cannot shake the title. He has served as president of the Class of 1960 for 11 consecutive years. Though he expected to serve four years, after being drafted by classmates, they tell him he is “on forever.”
“When I was on campus 65 years ago, I was not a campus politician, nor was I a social boy,” he said. “I did not belong to a frat, I did not party, I did not even drink (still don’t). I was quite boring.” But he did run track, and that was enough. “I spent my time studying, training for the track team, and competing against evil forces like BC, UMass, Bates, and UConn for the good of our beloved UMaine,” he said. His class entered in the fall of 1956 with 1,000 members. A semester later, one-fifth of the class was gone, including the class president and his roommate. “We were all paranoid about flunking out,” he said. “Back in the ’50s, UMaine had a very tough academic policy.”
So Conro hit the books, worked out and wrote sports articles for the daily Maine Campus. He won five varsity letters in track and was selected to the All-Yankee Conference. Among his other claims to fame? He once beat a horse in a 50-yard dash on campus as a stunt during a fall celebration in 1959 and has
the photo to prove it. He went on to become a high school teacher and coach for 32 years, a college coach, and a track and field official. At age 40, he competed for Team USA at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Sweden in the 4×400 meter relay. His team won the silver medal, he said, but added, “I’d like to have
won.”
Asked by competitors how a guy from UMaine got to that prestigious sporting event, he replied, “I’m here because of my coach Ed Styrna at Maine and all the wonderful teammates who guided and helped me.”
Conro, now 88, said his beloved coach and the university taught him everything he knows. “UMaine did so much for me. I can never do enough to repay it,” Conro said.
MEG VILLARREAL ’61
Meg Thompson Villarreal ’61, of Brunswick, was an English major whose father, aunts, uncles and cousins attended UMaine as a legacy family. But she admits it wasn’t her first choice. “I was trying to rebel,”she recalled. “I wanted to blaze my own trail.”
In the end she did attend, noting, “my four years at Orono were absolutely the best.” Her sons chose not to go to UMaine, but she added with a chuckle, “I’m already working on the grandchildren.”
Villarreal was active in student government, serving in the student senate and also in the Women’s Student Government Association. The WSGA addressed issues of concern to the women on campus and held hearings on rule-breaking.
“It was the ‘Leave it to Beaver’ era,” she said, noting there were curfews and women couldn’t even wear shiny patent leather shoes because they might reflect.
A junior resident, Villarreal noted the job went beyond campus shenanigans. She recalled wrestling with heavy issues with her girls, ranging from homesickness to homosexuality, which was not discussed in those days. Some also had physical and mental health issues. Her 10 p.m. room checks were more than just ensuring everyone was inside the dormitory at bedtime.
“If anyone was going to have a breakdown,” she said, “that was the time.”
She became so accustomed to the friendly atmosphere on campus that it was hard to adapt to life away, especially when she moved to impersonal Los Angeles, CA, after graduation. In fact, she left within a matter of months.
“I hated it,” she said. “After the Maine Hello and all the camaraderie I’d known, it was just despicable.”
Early in her career she befriended a then-unknown Fred Rogers while working at the Eastern Educational Network in Boston.
“They said, ‘We have someone coming in, but we don’t think anything will come of it,’” she recalled. She went in to work early that day and “Here’s this man with an armful of stuffed animals. It was Fred.”
They talked and had a wonderful conversation. When she learned the network didn’t want him, “We started a furious campaign to hire Fred Rogers, and under duress, we got Fred.”
Villarreal spent 50 years in public television and her career took her around the world, but wherever she
went, she kept her home state and the university close to her heart.
“I was always very proud,” she said.
She credited her professors with inspiring her love of art, music, English and education. “There was a quality of their caring,” she said of the faculty. “They taught me the ability to organize, to talk to people, make presentations, do research and prepare for things.”
She said she finds it interesting the campus is going back to quiet dorms and some of the restrictions from the early days.
“Orono allowed you to experience things in a safe environment,” she said, “and while we may have railed against it at the time, it was for the best. I think it’s come full circle.”
Having retired in 2013, she is class president and remains active in alumni events.
PIET LAMMERT ’91
Lammert, of Belfast, hails from a five-generation legacy family of UMaine graduates. A school counselor for 30 years, he was working as an assistant principal when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2018 at age 49.
In February he underwent Deep Brain Stimulation, a surgery where electrodes are implanted to send
electrical signals to the brain to reduce symptoms. A drummer, he got permission to bring his drumsticks into surgery and drummed along to a recording of the “Stein Song” during the procedure. This gave feedback on his condition to the surgeon in real time. The surgery was a success.
Lammert’s love for UMaine is a family tradition that goes back more than a century. His great-grandfather Walter True Brown ’16 was the first generation of the family to attend UMaine. He was a mechanical engineer who also was diagnosed with Parkinson’s later in life. His daughter, Barbara True Brown ’38, was Lammert’s grandmother.
“She took matters into her own hands,” Lammert said, noting women rarely attended college then. But she went on a full scholarship, having been salutatorian at Morse High School. She kept a scrapbook detailing her college experience. A historical treasure trove, it is filled with dainty dance cards, theater
programs, and ticket stubs.
“You’ll even see where Grandpa George shows up,” Lammert said.
Grandpa George is George Roundy ’38. He was a forestry major turned land surveyor, who met Barbara on campus and they later married, making them the family’s first “bear pair.” She graduated with an English degree and went on to become a homemaker.
“Family lore has it that the cannons down by the steam plant were filled with concrete after George and some fraternity buddies shot ladies’ undergarments out of them following a panty raid,” Lammert grinned.
The couple had Lammert’s mother, Anne Alden Roundy ’64, who was a “bear pair” with his dad, Peter Lammert ’67.
Piet Lammert is the fourth generation, and he married fellow Black Bear Hilary Rackliffe ’91. They had two boys, Aiden ’20 and Devon ’23, who are the fifth generation. COVID-19 struck during their time at UMaine. Devon was in his first year when the pandemic hit in March 2020 and Aiden was set to
graduate. A student-led “Coronamencement” was quickly held in the Memorial Union on campus before everyone left, Lammert said.
For the last five years, Lammert has been bear paired with Julie Mullen DellaMattera ’90, ’00G, ’06 EdD of Belfast, an associate professor of early childhood education with a long history at UMaine.
“I started in ’84 and never left,” she chuckled. The two share a love for all things UMaine and even went to Boston to watch the hockey team play shortly after Lammert’s brain surgery.
So it makes sense that when Dellamattera’s daughter Alli was at UMaine, the professor couldn’t resist trying to pair her girl up with a colleague’s son on campus.
“They were both embarrassed,” she said, but they finally agreed to meet, saying, “Our moms aren’t going to stop so we probably should just do coffee.”
The rest is history. Alli ’18 married fellow Black Bear James O’Neil in 2021.
Although her matchmaking skills worked in that case, pairing her son Emerson up with her favorite
college didn’t go so well.
“Well, he went to the University of Maine System, but we won’t talk about that,” DellaMattera joked.
Emerson went to the University of Southern Maine.