HELLO, my name is Mary Koppel

Hometown: Mansfield, Ohio. Claim to fame? It is where The Shawshank Redemption was filmed, at the old Ohio State Reformatory.

When did you become a member of UMRA? In 2019, after returning from a sojourn in Southern California.

What was your very first job? I was a waitress at Perkins after my junior year in high school and got the job by convincing the manager that I wasn't going to return to high school in the fall. He hired me again after I graduated, as he was certain I wouldn't be going off to college. Neither was true.

What was your occupation when you retired from FT work? My last position at the University was as the associate vice president for public affairs in the former Academic Health Center, working with one of the most talented teams of people in my career.

What was the name of the first record you bought? Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Pictures at an Exhibition. My mother was a piano teacher, and that's the first album she would let me play over and over on the stereo in the den.

If you could learn a new skill, what would you like it to be? I would love to take up ballroom dancing. Unfortunately, that's not a solo activity and my partner of nearly 40 years has absolutely no interest. 

Do you have a favorite place on the U of M campus? I love the 4th floor Terrace of the Campus Club, overlooking Northrop Mall. It provides the quintessential image of a peaceful college campus of substance.

What is a fun fact about you we might not know? In the early 1980s, I spent a year as the female half of a news team in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, where I covered all the topics of interest to that Western Nebraska farming and ranching community. The station received weekly calls complaining, "That girl on TV needs to fix her hair!"