Mary P. Durham '22 brings her memories to her 76th reunion

Mary Porter Durham '22 will journey from her Court Street home in Ithaca for her 76th Reunion at Cornell this weekend. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

By Paul Cody

The year Mary Porter Durham was born, Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams and William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Debs for the U.S. presidency. During her first semester at Cornell, the armistice was signed ending the First World War, and by the time she graduated with a degree in English, the Bolsheviks would be in firm control of Russia, the League of Nations had already held its first meeting and Hitler's "Beer Hall Putsch" was still a year away.

This week, the 98-year-old Durham returns to Cornell for Reunion -- the 76th reunion of her Class of '22. And though her journey will cover a great expanse of time, she will be traveling to campus from less than a mile away -- from her home on Court Street in downtown Ithaca.

"I grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y., near New York City," Durham said, "and planned to go to Mount Holyoke College. But senior year of high school, I took an exam and won a scholarship to Cornell."

As a student, she lived in Sage Hall and remembers that soldiers who were living in Cascadilla Hall would march in their uniforms to Barton, which the students called Drill Hall.

"A.D. White died that year," Durham remembered, "and there were dignitaries coming in from all over for his funeral."

"It was wonderful living with the women in Sage," Durham said. "We had strict rules, which the men didn't have, about having to be in our rooms by 10 or 10:30 p.m., but we created a good situation for ourselves by making up games and having fun with each other."

She remembers Professor E.B. Titchener, who taught psychology wearing an academic gown (his Oxford master's gown), and Professor Martin Sampson, who taught Conrad and Henry James, "who were almost contemporary writers then," she said. "We had wonderful professors. You wouldn't ever miss a class. You wanted to be there."

After graduation, Durham married G. Eugene Durham, Class of '20, a Methodist minister. They stayed in Ithaca, where her husband was head of Cornell University Christian Association, the campus ministry, which later became Cornell United Religious Work.

After 20 years in that position, and the birth of their three children, the Durhams moved to the campus ministry at Northwestern University, followed by six years at a church in Palmyra, N.Y. "In 1964," Durham said, "we retired to Ithaca, a city we always loved and where we felt very much at home."

Eugene Durham died in 1986, and in 1990, Mary Porter Durham raised funds to provide for a chaplain, in her husband's memory, at the Cayuga Medical Center. "Everybody liked my husband, and when I wrote to our friends asking them to help out, they really came across," Durham said.

"I have no regrets about anything," she said. "My life has been very rich, not with money but with so many wonderful friends and opportunities. What I've had has always been sufficient. When I meet someone new, I look for them to do their best, and I always try to get the best part of them."

Durham taught English as a second language and helped counsel young people. "I tried to find out what someone wanted to do and then tried to find ways to help him or her develop it.

"A few years ago I rented an upstairs apartment in my home to an unmarried couple," she said. "My daughter was surprised I did that. But they were trying to discover if they would be able to be together. Today they're married and they have two beautiful children. Life can be surprising.

"I remember as a girl," Durham said, "swimming from the rocks off Long Island Sound, a long, long time ago. The boys had the YMCA, which we didn't have. But we girls did fine. We wanted to swim. So we just hopped off the rocks, into the water."