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Family Stories
A potpourri of stories about various family members or events
How Marcia and I Met
Since Marcia's father, Harold Hopkins, hired my father into the St. Cloud State College biology department, it is likely that we met in several ways as kids. First, there were departmental outings, mostly during the summer at city parks, and I remember attending at least one of these, although I don't recall meeting any particular girls. Second, as our family had sweetcorn for sale, in addition to selling to grocery stores, we would also sometimes deliver some to friends and colleagues of my dad. My parents recounted, and so did Harold, that we did indeed drop off corn at Marcia's home. I may, or may not, have been along.
Whether we met earlier or not, we certainly met in a chemistry class. The room was in the west wing of Technical High School and the teacher was Mr. (Gary) Anfenson. I was a sophomore taking the junior-level class since I was a year ahead in science (and mathematics). Marcia was a senior. She often shared that she took it because she happened to see some cute boys taking it during her junior year. She didn't know that they didn’t get replaced by a new batch in my year. Anyone who has been a student knows how classes are at the beginning of a term: students may shift seats once or twice in the first days, but then settle into a standard arrangement (if not already assigned a seat by the teacher). As it turned out, Marcia happened to sit near me.
Some days into the class, though, our teacher arranged us alphabetically, and Marcia sat behind me since Hopkins follows Hibbard. As time went on in the semester, Marcia slowly made the connection between my sister, Becky, and me. Becky and Marcia were both in the same homeroom because their last names both started with H. We also started talking together more, and sometimes did labs together. I believe that after Christmas, we started doing all of our labs together. (Later, we were joined by Craig Kephart, who had recently moved to St. Cloud from the east (PA?). The three of us had fun together in labs.) Soon after I had my birthday in January, I took my driver's license examination and passed it. Marcia knew that I was going to take it that day, and the next day she asked me about the result. That was when I started realizing that she cared about me.
Becky was a participant at Jacob's Well Coffeehouse, a Christian outreach center held at the Salvation Army just south of Tomlyano's Pizza on 7th Avenue. Upstairs was Christian entertainment, usually singing and sharing, while downstairs was a ping pong table, a pool table, popcorn, and other snacks. While partly trying to be evangelical and partly trying to be a matchmaker, Becky suggested that maybe Marcia and I might want to check this out on some Friday night.
I don't know if Becky also mentioned this to Marcia or not, but I eventually got up the courage to tell Marcia about the place and asked her if she would like to check it out. One day in the early or middle part of February, we picked a Friday that worked for both of us. First, we walked around downtown for a bit, and then we checked out Jacob's Well. We went downstairs. This was the first of many times coming here and going on other outings. We also made it upstairs consistently within a month. One thing led to another, and we were married about four years later.
Al at Jacob's Well – Feb 1974
Marcia and I involved in a skit upstairs at Jacob's Well
Published 2021-02-14. Revised 2025-07-05.
If you find any error(s) in the text, please let me know. Thanks. Contact me with errors or comments using hibbardac@gmail. [Back to the top] [About the author, Al]
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