Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Laurie Lahey.  Born in Woodbury, she was raised primarily in Mullica Hill, New Jersey.  Her father worked in the valve industry, at first fitting valves and later selling them.  Her mother was an office manager.  She was an only child.  She went to Catholic schools and graduated from Paul VI in 2000.  She graduated from Rowan in 2004 with majors in American Studies, English, and history.   She won multiple awards as a senior, including both the Medallion for Excellence in History and African American Studies.  The national office of Phi Alpha Theta awarded her a prize for a world history paper she wrote on the concept of time and the invention of the clock in China and Europe.  That Fall, she entered the graduate program at Temple in English.  After completing her Master’s in 2005, she entered the doctoral program at George Washington in American Studies.  In 2013, she completed her dissertation, entitled “The Grassy Battleground:  Race, Religion, and the Wide Civil Rights Movement.”  The dissertation originated from a paper she wrote for Historical Methods at Rowan and focused on the civil rights movement in Camden, New Jersey.  Since the Fall of 2013, she has lived in Tampa Bay and served as an Africana Studies faculty member in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida.

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I choose to come to Rowan for two main reasons.  First, I had a really good scholarship.  Second, the Honors program invited me to a special reception. We had a really nice lunch, and I enjoyed the people that I met, as well as the campus.  That it was close to my home was actually not that important to me, but it was nice to see my parents often for dinner.  I did not declare a major at first, but I took a survey of Western Civilization with Patrick McDevitt and loved it.  I then took an honors course with Professor McDevitt on Caribbean history.  It was a truly amazing course.  I remember that we played cricket one day.  I wrote a poem for one assignment, and I submitted a film on Haiti as my final project. He told me that I should be a history major, and I followed his advice. 

In the Spring of 2003, I took Historical Methods with William Carrigan.  We had to write a paper about the civil rights movement in New Jersey.  I thought that this person from Texas had no idea that we had no civil rights movement in New Jersey, but I chose Camden and went to the archives to see what I could find.  I was shocked at what I discovered.  I realized that what I had been led to think about race relations in New Jersey in particular and the North in general was totally wrong.  I became obsessed with the subject from that moment on, and it changed my life.  What I do now is directly related to those moments in the Camden County Historical Society discovering a past that I never knew existed.

I took both halves of African American History with Dr. Gary Hunter.  I loved his classes, and through his encouragement, added a concentration in African American Studies.  I remember how gracious he was to me one day when I had to ask what the term “antebellum” meant.  My friends and I were stunned by his tragic death in May of 2003.  We were so saddened to learn this news, a terrible loss for the University. 

I had so many wonderful history professors, who really took an interest in their students and made their areas of expertise exciting and relevant. I took several courses with Dr. Cory Blake. I especially loved her Women in Islam course. I knew so little about Islam before that course, and it provided a much-needed context for broader world events. I really enjoyed Dr. Janet Lindman’s Senior Seminar and Dr. Melissa Klapper’s Women in American History courses. I wish I had the opportunity to take courses with more of the fantastic history faculty.

Another great aspect of the history program was the activities that took place outside the classroom. Dr. Carrigan approached me about helping me start a history club in my senior year.  He wanted a group to pair with Phi Alpha Theta. This new club would be open to non-honors students and also eligible for greater support from the Student Government Association (SGA), which limited how much honors societies could receive.   Only years later did Dr. Carrigan and I learn that we were not “creating” this club, but re-chartering a club that had started decades earlier.  In fact, both Dr. Carrigan and I thought that the other one came up with the name, “Student History Association.”  In reality, SGA knew about the earlier club and gave us the old name.  I served as President and Senator in my senior year.

Because of what I assume was a loophole with my scholarship, I could take as many classes as I wanted. I usually had seven classes, allowing me to fully explore not only the history curriculum but English, American Studies, and the Honors program. I loved the English courses I took with Drs. Joe Coulombe, Cathy Parrish, and Timothy Viator. I thought Dr. Dianne Ashton’s senior seminar in American Studies was enlightening. The course allowed us to explore rituals and holidays and I wrote a paper about Juneteenth, which I had not heard of previously. Dr. Sonia Spencer in the Languages Department was incredibly helpful during my senior year as I decided what to do after graduation. I took several philosophy courses with Dr. Sharyn Clough and had a great experience working-- as what Dr. Clough generously called “an editorial assistant” -- on her edited collection Siblings Under the Skin: Feminism, Social Justice, and Analytic Philosophy. I doubt I did more than proofreading and formatting, but it was so cool to see how books were created as a student.

One of my favorite experiences at Rowan was joining History Department as a Psi Iota Teaching Fellow during the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 school years. A highlight of that time was taking students to Hollybush for a tour and learning more about the 1967 Summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin. This piece of history had always fascinated me, so much so that when I left New Jersey for graduate school in 2005, I purchased a copy of the Woodbury Times from June 1967 at an antique shop in Mullica Hill, which featured the story. It’s hanging up in my campus office today next to the November 1968 edition of Life magazine that I won at the Phi Alpha Theta banquet auction in 2012.

I am incredibly grateful for my time at Rowan and for the excellent mentors and role models I met there. I learned so much about the world and myself during those years. I will always treasure my college experience.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/