Reflections from Rita Gehrenbeck
Rita plans to attend the reunion and her email address is ritargehre@aol.com.

Macalester had an everlasting effect on Dick—it greatly shaped who he was and what he did with his life. Some of the things that stimulated Dick were a challenging curriculum (he had a double major:  physics and math), playing football as a freshman, chairing Religion in Life Week, being president of the Macalester Christian Association, singing in the Mac choir and the Little Choir, and studying and living with families for a summer in Yugoslavia with SPAN (Student Project for Amity among Nations), to name a few. I believe the biggest influence were the professors and fellow national and international students. Dick was always interested in peace issues from an early age; his mother, Alice Maulsby Gehrenbeck ’22, was from a Quaker background and his parents’ interest in the UN and World Federalism helped to make him a global thinker. People like Dean Dupre, Dr. Adams, Dr. Turck, classmates and international students and visitors continued stimulating that world view and challenged him very positively.

After graduation from Mac, Dick entered graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and it was during that year—after much prayer, study, and discussions with many people—that Dick came to believe that war was not an answer to the world’s problems and so registered as a conscientious objector. After a great deal of effort, he was granted this CO status by his draft board. I believe Macalester had a great deal to do with that decision. It was them that Dick found acceptable alternative service by becoming a short term Presbyterian mission teacher at Gerard Institute in Sidon, Lebanon, for three years. After his first year in Sidon, he returned to White Bear Lake where we were married in August 1958, and then we returned to Sidon together for two years where I also taught at the Sidon Girls School. (Presently both schools are combined and thriving and growing, even under the difficult situation in the Middle East today.)

Upon our return from Lebanon, Dick entered graduate school at the University of Minnesota and after receiving an M.A. in nuclear physics, we moved to Parkville, Mo., where Dick began teaching physics and astronomy at Park College. This position was recommended by fellow Mac-ite, Young Pai ’53, who was teaching at Park at the time. It was here that our three children were born:  Anne Reynolds in 1963, Nancy Maulsby in 1965, and David Lindgren in 1969. Anne ’85 and her husband David Gehrenbeck-Shim are clinical psychologists and practice in Boston; they have two daughters Grace 14 and Rita 10. Nancy ’87 and her husband Steve Gehrenbeck-Miller ’88 live in Minneapolis where Steve is a public school music teacher and Nancy works part-time at the Seward Co-op, expecting their third child (after Nathan 5 and Julia 2 ½) and beginning a nursing program at St. Catherine’s!! David broke the chain and attended Swarthmore College where he met his wife Laura; David is a Foreign Service officer with the State Department and has had posts in Armenia, Australia, and is now back in Washington, D.C. They have three children, Ella 9, Lily 6 and Emmett 1.

Dick returned to graduate school at the University of Minnesota in 1969 where we lived in married student housing. After he finished his Ph.D., we moved to Providence, Rhode Island where Dick began teaching physics and astronomy and history of science at Rhode Island College. These were wonderful years with our children growing up in the lovely and friendly neighborhood where we were very active in our Presbyterian church, and Dick was an Elder, played the guitar for the young people, organized an inner-city Cub Scout troop in our church, was active in college activities and advising students. We returned to Minnesota each summer to visit family. We did some international traveling as our children became older. We returned to Yugoslavia with other SPAN members for a reunion in 1988. In 1990 our son David was spending his junior year in Moscow as he was a Russian major; Dick and I were able to visit him for two weeks. Dick was on Sabbatical at that time, so after that he went on to Germany where he finished the semester working on a history of science project and article. We returned to Germany the summer of 1990 with Dad Gehrenbeck, brother David ’53 and wife Helen to do some genealogical digging.

Dick had many interests. He loved to read, garden, do carpentry (he did many major reconstruction projects on our old home in Providence), play music, ride his bike and in general spread his message of peace in a very personal way.

It was at Rhode Island College on November 29, 1993, after riding his bicycle there, that he died very suddenly of a heart attack, suffering from a condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which we did not know that he had. It was a crushing shock and painful sorrow and it still is, and something that one is hardly able to comprehend, especially when it happened so unexpectedly. Dick truly was a great human being, son, brother, husband, father, grandfather and friend, and I know that Macalester helped to make him into that wonderful person. I continued to teach in Providence, and seven years after Dick’s death, I moved back to Minnesota.