Friendships continue long after graduation

Alumni often get together with old friends at Homecoming, football tailgates and other organized events, but many informal groups also maintain ties on their own through regular—or occasional—mini-reunions.

Such is the case with seven women who like to call themselves the “Pencader Princesses,” in a nod to the former residence hall complex where they were among the first inhabitants when it opened in 1972. For their most recent reunion, they decided to visit the UD campus one weekend in late February and to stay at the Courtyard Newark Hotel on the Laird Campus.

“We got together last May, but before that, it had been about 10 years since we were all together, and we didn’t want to let that much time go by again,” Robin Rosser, CHEP ’76, says. Once the women learned that the hotel had been built near the site where the Pencader complex formerly stood, she says, they knew their next gathering should be there.

The group also includes Liz Knudsen, CHEP ’75, Janet Wurtzel, BE ’76, Joanne DiGiacoma Chism, CHEP ’75, Marlene Hurtt, CHEP ’76, Jill Chernekoff, CHEP ’77, and Marla Sahl Emery, CHEP ’76.

They spent the weekend visiting Daugherty Hall (known as The Rathskeller in their undergraduate days), marveling at the number of new buildings on The Green (formerly The Mall) and elsewhere on campus and admiring the new residence halls that have replaced the Pencader complex. The motel-style Pencader buildings, which opened in 1972, were demolished beginning in 2005 to allow for construction of the three more modern, spacious and resident-friendly halls.

“The great thing about this group is that, even if it’s been years since we were together, it feels like it was just the other day,” Wurtzel says.