Courtesy of Eleanor Morrell

Eleanor Morrell met her husband Richard (Dick) Morrell ’50 during a formal dance at Westbrook Junior College, now the University of New England, in 1947. Two years after he graduated from Bowdoin, the couple moved to Brunswick, where Eleanor still lives 73 years later—two years after Dick’s passing.

“You see, [Westbrook Junior] was a dancing school. The Bowdoin guys would, if they heard about it, come down and we’d have a dance in the evening,” Morrell said. “And that’s how I met Dick.”

However, Morrell’s date to the social was not her future husband. Instead, she danced that night with his roommate and stopped to chat with Dick Morrell and his date during a break in the music. The next day, she received a call from him, asking if he could see her in the afternoon.

Morrell attended her first Ivies weekend the following spring, despite having previously come to Bowdoin for other occasions. She described how sleeping arrangements were made to accommodate the women who visited as dates for Ivy Day, as it used to be called.

“Ivy weekend was really lots of fun. We would come and they would empty out the fraternities, and they would go stay in the dorms,” Morrell said. “Then they’d put us up in the fraternities around with a chaperone. Of course, women stayed upstairs to be sure everything was secure and so we behaved.”

Morrell said many students would go to the beach before the Ivy Dance at night. The Morrells traveled to Bailey Island to celebrate at a friend’s family cottage.

“So on that weekend, he would invite some of his fraternity friends down just for the day, and then we’d go back and get all dressed up for a formal dance, and that was lots of fun,” Morrell said. “I still hear from some of those friends. I enjoyed the whole thing.”

While Morrell reminisced about visiting Bowdoin for Ivies, she would also spend time at the College during the weekends for house parties and other events. She recalled nights spent hopping between different fraternities on campus.

“It was just a nice, friendly place. I went to a few house parties before I met Dick. But I enjoyed them more when I knew Dick,” Morrell said. “What you would do is go to a fraternity in the evening. Then, you would walk across the campus and go to the next fraternity and visit with your friends.”

Morrell noted that she has observed a large shift in campus culture since the closure of the fraternities.

“When we first moved here, the fraternities were there, and that made a big difference, because the College patrol was all around—everybody was outside making a lot of noise and that sort of thing. And we were part of that at one point, so I didn’t mind it,” Morrell said.

Now, living a few doors away from Reed House, Morrell barely hears parties on the weekends or remembers that students live so close. She also expressed how much the town has changed in her years living in Brunswick. Growing up in New Britain, Conn., next to the industrial city of Hartford, Morrell was skeptical about moving to Brunswick.

“I love it here, but I must admit, coming from a big manufacturing city, I was a little concerned about coming to a little country town up here in Maine. [I asked,] ‘Well, what am I going to do up there?’ [My husband] said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll take you to Boston once a month,’” Morrell said.

While Dick Morrell might not have always upheld his end of the bargain, Eleanor Morrell became involved in Brunswick and never looked back.

“I was delighted I didn’t bring my children up in Connecticut. And they … come back [to Brunswick] in the summer. This has been perfect, and they’ve all loved it,” Morrell said.