Is the College of William and Mary truly a place where people meet and get “William and married”? To get to the bottom of this, some field research was done during Homecoming Weekend, Oct. 19-20, by yours truly. At the end of the day, the results were mixed: out of eight couples that were approached, only three met during their time at the College. These are their stories.
Kathy “Healy” Fitzimmons ’87 and Brian Fitzimmons met in 1995 at a local Catholic faith club back in their hometown in New Jersey. While Kathy graduated from the College, Brian was an alumnus of Saint Bonaventure University.
“You meet your lifelong friends from college, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the soulmate or the person you’re going to be with or anything like that,” Brian said.
In terms of lifelong friends, Megan McGill ’22 and Emma Ackerman ’22 were roommates for all four years at the College and are still best friends with other freshman year hallmates from Jefferson Hall. Both of them met their partners outside of the College: Ackerman met hers through a friend before college, and McGill met hers on the first day of graduate school at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The pair agreed that students should not feel pressured to find their other halves from the get-go.
“Don’t stress out, because you’re so young, and college is supposed to be fun, and it’s going to work out eventually,” Ackerman said.
In fact, the Fitzimmons explained that while they did not go to the same university, they do share a valuable bond through how they both feel towards their alma maters.
“I will say the fact that we both loved our universities; we got it. It wasn’t like ‘What is your problem that you’re so into this,’” Kathy said. “It helped the relationship because, okay, he’s super gung ho. He’s like, she’s super gung ho. He wasn’t like, ‘you’re strange,’ you know?”
Brian added that another pleasant part about meeting someone after college is the ability to become a member of a new community.
“What’s great about going to different colleges is that for me, while not having gone to William and Mary, I like to say I married into it or I was adopted, because I love it down here. I love coming down here. I love the spirit. I love everything about it,” Brian said.
Meanwhile, James Crooks ’94 and Karyn Ferdella met through Bumble about four years ago, long after both finished undergraduate school. After studying finance at the College, Crooks moved from Washington, D.C. to Boston to Westchester County, New York, before settling back down in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island to reopen an old brewery. It was not until then that he found Ferdella. Crooks offered his two cents on the moral of his story.
“Well, I mean, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again, right?” Crooks said.
Ferdella graduated from Brandeis University in ’97 and worked for the Peace Corps in Africa before settling back down in Worcester, Massachusetts, when she met Crooks. She provided her own advice for finding “the one.”
“Everything happens when it’s supposed to happen,” Ferdella said.
Jay Black ’87 and Lori Black also met after graduating from their respective schools, and they are each other’s second marriage. Jay joined a Rotary club, a chapter of service organization Rotary International, in 1991 at the behest of his former high school principal, which is where he met Lori in 2010.
“She came one morning as the guest speaker of one of our members. I was like, ‘Wow, who’s that,’” Jay said.
Of course, a few couples visiting for Homecoming did meet at the College. Carol Anne Swagler ’64 and Peter M. Crow ’64 worked together on The Flat Hat, where Swagler covered women’s sports and Crow edited features, news and editorials. However, Swagler first got married to a good friend of Crow’s, and it took a while for the two to become more than friends.
“We did not get along when we were undergraduates,” Swagler said. “He was in my first wedding, but we got back together — we’d always been friends and had mutual friends — at the 25th reunion. We were both single then.”
Similarly, it took Merry Thomas ’86 and Jon Thomas ’85 three years to start dating after they met at a fraternity party during their freshman and sophomore years, respectively. Merry was in Orchesis Dance Company and Tri Delta Sorority, and Jon was in Radio Club, The Flat Hat and several intramural sports teams. Jon counted about eight other couples he knows who met during their time at the College, thanks to such events and activities.
“We have a lot of friends who actually met their significant others here. Part of that was just because they got out: they were out doing things, they were socializing, they were interacting through intramurals, through parties, through clubs and activities, different things,” Jon said.
After college, the pair had to transition to a long-distance relationship once Merry found a job in New York and Jon took a position in Washington, D.C. Jon visited almost every weekend, until he eventually decided to move in with Merry for good. With this experience in mind, Jon spoke a few words of wisdom to any students nervous about the state of their relationships after graduation.
“If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” Jon said. “It sounds very cliche, but it’s true.”
John Hickman MBA ’92 and Kristy Melker Hickman JD ’94 met while at the College for graduate school. John is originally from the eastern shore of Virginia and went to North Carolina State University for undergraduate school, and Kristy hails from Louisiana and attended Louisiana Tech University. While John decided to go to the College for graduate school to be back on the mid-atlantic shore, Kristy chose to go to law school here after paying a friend a visit.
“My spring break of my junior year, I went to visit him in Richmond, and we came to Colonial Williamsburg as a visit. I had never even been up to this part of the country, and I fell in love with William and Mary,” Kristy said.
The two eventually crossed paths as neighbors, as they both lived in off-campus housing on Indian Springs Road, across from the Muscarelle Museum. It all started when Kristy first caught sight of John’s roommate Ed.
“I kept telling my law school roommates, ‘There’s this really cute guy that lives two doors down. We’ve got to meet these people that live two doors down. He’s really cute,’” Kristy said. “Then we started talking to them when they would walk by, and that’s how we started doing dinners together; we would do a potluck and then I started hanging out with him.”
The two further bonded over the common experience of having another neighbor who was not too happy about having students in the neighborhood. After they started dating, in the two years between John and Kristy’s graduations, Kristy stayed in Williamsburg while John relocated to Atlanta, then Richmond. The two stayed together however, which Kristy attributes to a gut feeling.
“Within the first couple of months you are going to know whether it’s meant to be or not meant to be,” Kristy said.
John reflected on how at the end of the day, relationships from college — whether romantic or platonic — have a special strength. He pointed out that many alumni come back to visit, which can present an opportunity to catch up with past connections.
“My insight is that you have something in common. As a young alumnus, you still come back to Williamsburg probably at least once a year for a football game or a basketball game, to go to Colonial Williamsburg and get a Cheese Shop sandwich for whatever reason,” John said. “So you’re going to sometimes run into each other here anyway, and you’ve got somebody that you’ve got a commonality of where you went to college with. You have traditions that overlap. Even though sometimes there’s that time gap, you may not get married right when you’re graduating, but you keep in touch.”
Fast forwarding to long after John and Kristy got married, their daughter met her husband at the College as well.
Altogether, students of the College may find in these stories a hopeful message on each side of the coin. That is, there is not only a chance of falling in love in Williamsburg, but also of catching cupid’s bow beyond its boundaries. Underclassmen could certainly bump into someone special in Sadler, but single seniors could also absolutely find a beau later down the line.