The legend of my MU hallow

Tracey Bice ruined me.

I tell that story all the time. It involves some really late nights in a newsroom, a Legend of Sleepy Hollow character, and the greatest copy editor I’ve ever known.

I got to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that story and a whole bunch of others this weekend at Marquette University.

Back in the day, I wrote a sports column for the Marquette Tribune, a college newspaper that published four times a week. One night, as I toiled away in the basement of Johnston Hall, I wrote a piece that referenced Ichabod Crane. I had no idea how to spell Ichabod Crane, and we didn’t have Google back then. I felt pretty proud of the reference though, so I typed the name out phonetically.

“Tracey will fix it,” I told myself as I sent the column in and headed out.

Sure enough, when the paper came out the next day, Ichabod Crane was spelled perfectly.

Tracey fixed everything for everybody. I’m a little more meticulous in my writing now, but it sure was nice having such a skilled editor cleaning up after me in those early days.

I know I thanked her then, and I got another chance to thank her Saturday at our 40th College Reunion.

She’s still a cool kid with perfect grammar and an admirable unflappability.

I loved my four years at Marquette, and particularly in Johnston Hall. I earned a degree, made lifelong friends, began a career, developed some necessary social skills, explored my faith, and dated the guy who became my husband.

He and I both look back on our campus years with grateful nostalgia. Maybe, it’s a little like that place Washington Irving described:

“The place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie.”

In any case, it was fun to Ring Out Ahoya with my old Marquette boy-a.