Learning Lives
Whether or not Marie Willey makes it back for her 10-year reunion in June, it's safe to say her Class of '85 mates will remember her. She holds the distinction as the oldest person ever to graduate from Colby, having done so at the age of 70, more than 40 years after her husband, Paul '42, and almost 20 years after her daughter, Paula '67. But what would be just a peculiar footnote in most people's lives is a typical episode in Willey's, which has enough plot twists and surprises to satisfy a serpentine novel.
Born to immigrant Italian parents in Chicago, she grew up anxious to assimmilate into American culture and attend college, Willey says. But the Depression prevented her from pursuing college so she enrolled in night school and took advanced Spanish. She befriended several South American students attending the University of Chicago, taught herself shorthand in Spanish and within a year was fluent.
She joined the Foreign Service as a bilingual secretary and was selected by the Institute of Inter-American Affairs to serve in Lima, Peru, where she met and married her husband, an airline pilot and a native of Waterville.
They moved from Lima to Waterville, back to Peru, back to Maine again, to Peru a third time, and back to Waterville. "I was beginning to realize that I needed something besides having a family and a wonderful husband and taking care of children, so I managed an insurance office and used some of my skills," she said.
Five years later Paul was recalled by Braniff Airlines to a job in Florida and the Willeys moved to Miami. "I decided I had to go back to college," Willey said. It took her 10 years, attending classes at local community colleges when she could, but in 1970 she earned an associate's degree. When she and Paul retired in 1981 they returned to Waterville, built a home, and she applied at Colby. "I wanted to enrich my life," she said. "I wanted to learn philosophy and languages and literature."
After much arm-twisting, she says, she was able to persuade Colby to waive its residential requirement and accept her as a special student. "I guess they weren't in the habit of teaching senior citizens," Willey recalled, laughing.
Three years later she stood in line with students 50 years her junior to accept her Colby diploma. Her three children-all college graduates-were especially impressed by her election to Phi Beta Kappa, "because I was the only one in the family to get it," Willey said.
Her Colby experience was enriching and rewarding, Willey says, and it demonstrated that "you never stop learning." She says she's thankful that professors nurtured her thirst for knowledge and took her seriously as a student.
"I had a wonderful relationship with my professors, especially [Emeritus Professor of English] Colin McKay," Willey said. "He was the only one who was close to my age. We used to sit in the faculty lounge exchanging sayings in Italian dialect. He would say things that my grandmother used to say."
Courses with Professor of Classics Peter Westervelt, she recalls, "opened up a whole new world. Those classes were just wonderful."
She recalls debating a young male student in [Dana Professor of Philosophy] Yeager Hudson's class. "It was like a tennis match, back and forth. Mr. Hudson enjoyed that, I think."
After graduation, the Willeys moved to Florida and she was determined to put her education to good purpose. "Otherwise," she said, "I was going to be a very smart lady in the cemetery."
She has taught Spanish in adult education programs for the past nine years. She also took up painting, reproducing master works such as Bottacelli's "Madonna of the Roses" and original still lifes which are exhibited in local galleries.
Today, at age 79, Willey is as active as ever. She attends studio classes and continues to develop new talents. Her only regret, she says, is that she waited so long to pursue her dreams. "If I had it to do over I'd be in academia," she said. "I wish I had more lives."
The Seventies Class Notes/Table of Contents/The Eighties Class Notes