‘Monmouth Merger’ Couple Makes Gift

MONMOUTH, Ill. – Classmates Bob and Marilyn Schneider Johnson of Oxford, Ohio, are grateful they found each other during their first few days at Monmouth College and for the outstanding education they received.

'MONMOUTH MERGER': 1959 classmates Bob and Marilyn Schneider Johnson are supporting their alma mater now and later.Married soon after their 1959 graduation, the couple that’s been together nearly 65 years is now expressing that gratitude to Monmouth with a pair of gifts.

“When the pandemic started, we had just updated our will and designated a gift for Monmouth College,” said Bob. “We never got around to telling anyone (at the College) about that. But then this fall, we received the donor issue (of Monmouth College Magazine), and right around the same time, we got an email about gift annuities from (Director of Development and Legacy Giving) Gena (Corbin) Alcorn (’88).”

Upon receiving the latter information, Marilyn said of a gift to Monmouth, “Why don’t we do it now instead of later?”

After a call to the College’s Development Office, they were set to make a gift to help students.

“(They) made it very easy for us,” said Bob, who worked with Monmouth development officer Bobbi Swarts Pio ’92. “We transferred the stock and got it all set up. Instead of receiving a stock dividend, we get an income from the gift annuity. We both had such a positive experience at Monmouth, and this allows us to do something good for the College right now.”

Through their separate gifts, the Johnsons are also in the process of setting up a need-based scholarship for a student majoring in English, art or music.

Crazy coincidences

Bob recently retired from Miami University in Oxford, where he held a variety of teaching and administrative positions in a career that began as an English professor in 1964. (He replaced Miami English professor Jeremy McNamara, who left the university that year to begin a 32-year teaching career at Monmouth and whose son authored this story.)

Bob chaired Miami’s English department for more than a decade and also served as associate provost and as dean of graduate school for 10 years. Marilyn held a position at the university for 20 years, serving as faculty personnel coordinator.

During a stint as Miami’s interim provost, Bob attended a conference in Columbus, Ohio, where he met 1966 Monmouth graduate Anthony Perzigian, then the University of Cincinnati’s provost.

“We said to each other that Monmouth College must be a pretty special school to have two of its graduates serving as provosts of large universities in Ohio,” said Bob.

The making of a ‘Monmouth merger’

The Johnsons started at Monmouth in the middle of an academic year, arriving on campus in January 1956 after graduating early from high school.

“There were about 10 of us at that first orientation session,” said Bob. “I pledged Alpha Tau Omega not long after that, and I needed a date for one of our events. Marilyn was the only person I knew.”

“We both had to date for our fraternity and sorority functions, and we kept asking each other to go,” said Marilyn, who joined Alpha Xi Delta. “After a while, we thought ‘Hmmm, we’ll just keep going.’”

“Here at Miami, we call couples like that ‘Miami mergers,’ so we are a Monmouth merger,” said Bob.

That Monmouth merger almost didn’t happen.

“We both had such a positive experience at Monmouth, and this allows us to do something good for the College right now.” – Bob Johnson ’59

“I was originally supposed to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology and study chemical engineering,” said Bob. “But at a college fair, I found out about Monmouth, and I learned that they had a 3:2 program with IIT. I thought that sounded like a good idea. The problem was, I started in the middle of the year, and I couldn’t take the science classes I needed until the fall. So I took some electives. There was a philosophy class with Sam Thompson and an English class. I got interested in the humanities, and I never went back to science.”

While Bob fell under the guidance of his adviser, English professor Allen Morrill, Marilyn was in a different academic discipline.

“I studied home economics and I also took a lot of fine arts classes,” she said. “Martha Hamilton was my person. She was wonderful, teaching classes on art and art history.”

Because Bob completed his degree in less than four years, he hadn’t accumulated enough courses for a proper minor, a requirement at the time. But he’s grateful to College officials for “creating” one for him out of courses he’d completed.

Another graduation requirement was passing a swimming test. Bob was an athlete – for more than 50 years, he held the Fighting Scots record for the longest interception return, going 95 yards (but failing, he said, to reach the end zone). But he was not a swimmer. He expressed gratitude to Monmouth coach Bobby Woll for giving him passing marks.

“Bobby was a very understanding man,” said Bob. “He passed me even though he probably shouldn’t have.”

Since retiring from Miami, the Johnsons have remained in Oxford, where until the pandemic they’ve stayed busy with travel and volunteer activities.