“We left safe places and we had to stretch out into the unknown,” said Margaret Patterson Green ’72. “My only regret about my two years at Union is that it could not have been four.”
Green, a high school teacher and former respiratory therapist and supervisor who lives in Sarasota, Fla., was one of the original women of Union. She and about two dozen others transferred to Union in 1970 during the College’s first year of co-education. Two years later, they became the first-ever female graduates.
As part of the 35th ReUnion Committee for the Class of 1972, Green helped organize the luncheon for her pioneering classmates, to be held in the Upper Class Dining Room at Reamer Campus Center, Friday, June 1, at 11:30 a.m.
Margaret Patterson transferred from the all-female Russell Sage College in nearby Troy to Union College, where her brother, Richard E. Patterson Jr., was a member of the Class of 1970. She was often the only woman in pre-med science courses and said most of the male students and professors were friendly and supportive. By the end of her senior year, she had finished much of her pre-med work and set off to study abroad in Europe with Professor Frederick Klemm.
“Professor Klemm knew that I loved music. And there we were in Vienna, Austria, the city where music was practically born. He arranged for me to sing with the Vienna Conservatory. I was just in heaven to be 21 and singing on the stage with the Vienna Conservatory,” Green recalled.
More than 1,500 alumni are expected for ReUnion 2007, scheduled for May 31-June 3. For more details, visit www.union/edu/ReUnion.