Do you remember climbing over the railing and dangling over the street below because it “saved time”? Looking back, it’s lucky many of us survived UMMC! Photo: Pam Kassing
Photo: Pam Kassing
We were Frisbee Gods …There was something magical going on in Munich that fall semester of 1975, and we all connected to something special. It was right about this time that our little school – University of Maryland – Munich Campus – pulled off something that put us in the Guinness World Book of Records. We threw Frisbees non-stop for 19 days, 14 hours, and 19 minutes! That’s 460 + hours! No Shit!!! A group of students organized it, about 250 students in all participated (half our entire class). We strung Christmas tree lights across the parking lot between the guys’ and girls’ dorms, and away we went! Back and forth, back and forth, rain, snow, hail, and shine! About 50 of us were hardcore. We’d be out there for hours and hours on end. There was one big black Frisbee…and every time I’d throw it, she would cut my finger open and spray blood across the lot. I had an open wound on my right middle finger for 19 days… Sometimes there were 50 people, and sometimes there were only two to keep the continuous string alive. Since my dorm room was on the ground floor, I would set my speakers in the window and play music to accompany the Frisbee throwing. Hey, it’s a DJ thing! Anyway, one morning, it was raining softly, a grey, wet, autumn day, and Dieter and I were handling the Frisbee throwing duties. He had an umbrella and a cup of coffee, and we were just standing about 10 feet apart from each other and flipping it back and forth. I had Jesse Colin Young on the stereo, and he was singing the song Grey Day: “It’s a grey day, and the pine trees are drippin’, in a grey mist I feel like I’m trippin’, in a grey world my reality is slippin’, lost in the fog on such a grey day…” The rain on the umbrella, the soft sounds of the dorms waking up at 8 in the morning, the familiar sound of the whir/slap of the Frisbee – deep in the magic that was that October morn. On October 26th, 1975, the University of Maryland Munich entered the record books, breaking the existing record for continuous Frisbee throwing of 374 hours set by Yale. We continued for another 4 days past that record. BBC broadcasting came out and televised it in the snow! The military newspaper The Stars and Stripes wrote an article and took pictures. I had grown so accustomed to the sound of the Frisbee flipping back and forth that I was the third person to notice when it came to an end. The other two were the participants… It was 19 minutes after 3 or 4 in the morning, and believe it or not, I was studying for a test. Suddenly silence occupied the space outside my dorm window. I put down my book, and walked outside just in time to see one of the two people tasked with keeping it going throw the Frisbee to the ground and say, “That’s it.” The two of them looked at me, and said, “That’s it, man. We’ve done enough.” I wasn’t going to argue. At the time, it seemed like we had been doing it forever. At 19 days, 14 hours, and 19 minutes it felt like we had set the bar so high it would be a long time before anybody could come close to our record. Two years later a college in Ventura, California blasted past our record. So we were only in the Guinness World Book of Records for the 1977 edition. But Hey! For two years we were the Frisbee Gods of the Universe!!! Wayne Vieler
Story from the anthology Eins, Zwei, G’Suffa: Munich Campus Memories
Here are pictures of our end of the Spring semester party. I believe it was like a Field Day with lots of kegs of beer. I found it amazing that the school would buy us all this beer and let us party all afternoon and just have fun. Pam Kassing
A dedication in one of the first yearbooks
Edward Hudgins, Government & Politics instructor 1980-81, “going native… Just seeking good beer around Marienplatz!”
Photo: Pat McCabe
Photo: Pat McCabe
Photo: Pat McCabe
In the fall of ’75 there were more female students than anticipated. An experimental solution was to make the closest stairwell in Bouvier to Perry Hall, (the glass house,) a co-ed stairwell with Sophomore females occupying the suites to the South and Sophomore males occupying the suites toward the North, (where the rest of the stairwells were occupied by male students.)
I had been assigned three different single rooms during orientation week and the first week of classes which then became ‘shared’ with the late arrival of incoming freshmen. They then assigned me an attic room in the co-ed stairwell, assuring me that I would NOT be assigned yet another roommate, and that my 4th time moving my belongings into a new suite would be my last.
The co-ed stairwell was not widely publicized, nor was it a big secret. We just accepted it, and apparently there were no incidents as a result of it. I moved into the adjoining suite to the North for the Spring semester at the request of the two occupants who lost their suitemate over winter break. The stairwell I departed remained co-ed, and once again there were no incidents of misconduct to my knowledge during that semester.
Martin Reddington
Photo: Pat McCabe
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