Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Mike Onorato.  He grew up in East Rutherford, New Jersey.  He went to Catholic schools and graduated from St. Mary High School in 1974.  His father was a mechanic.  His mother attempted a singing career early on in her life, but she moved into sales when Mike was around ten years old.  Mike has one younger brother, who was a “renegade,” went to public schools and moved to Texas.  Mike lived in Mimosa Hall his freshman year eventually moving off campus and making lifelong friends along the way.  Mike graduated from Glassboro State College in 1978 with a history major and teaching certification for secondary education, but he never pursued a teaching career. After several entry level office jobs, he took a job at American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T).  He started as a clerk and after a year moved into management.  He did much work on system development, data analysis and metric performance before retiring as an Associate Director of Collections in 2020, after 36 years of service.

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When I graduated from high school, it was a time of hope for me and my peers.  We were just about past the Vietnam War, and Nixon had resigned.  It seemed like we were turning the corner to a better future after a very stressful period in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  I first heard of Glassboro State because of the Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin summit in 1967.  It was intriguing to me for several reasons.  First, as a state college, it was affordable.  Second, the location was perfect for me.  It was far enough away from my parents that I would not feel pressure to commute, and yet, it was also close enough I could return home from time to time.  Third, Glassboro State had a better academic reputation than some other schools I considered.  I began my time at GSC as a psychology major, but I really should have not declared that so early.  After a year, I changed to history, a subject that I had always loved.  While I liked my history classes, I had a more mixed experience in my education classes and during my student teaching experiences.  I did apply for some jobs teaching high school social studies, but the closest that I got to a job was one that would have also required me to take on a heavy coaching load, which I thought was beyond my ability or interests.  So, I moved on from teaching.  I do think that I might have really enjoyed teaching at the college level.  In the end, however, I really enjoyed my eventual career with AT&T.

I got involved with the Student History Association in 1976 as a result of the International Symposium on Terrorism, which was organized by Marius Livingston.  I volunteered, and I enjoyed my time.  However, my goal was to inject as much fun as possible into the SHA meetings.  The drinking age was 18 at the time, so things were different than today.  We had keg parties in the dorm, and our SHA meetings were always “wine and cheese” sessions.  I helped organize trips to Philadelphia and to Washington.  We also got involved with the Student Government Association (SGA).  I got Bob Cordero involved with both SHA and then the SGA.  We also got history folks involved in the group that planned the concerts at the College.  One example of my trying to make the SHA events as appealing and as fun for as many students as possible was my organizing a presentation for the entire campus on the assassination on John F. Kennedy.  For this presentation, I recruited a speaker on the various conspiracy theories and acquired a copy of the Zapruder film.  This was not that easy to do in the 1970s.  The film was not readily available, and most of us had never seen it before that presentation.

I remember several faculty members in the Department of History.  Robert Harper stood out to me.  I remember him being big on the history of New Jersey.  Aaron Bender was another great faculty member.  He made class engaging and exciting.  He wasn’t boring at all.  Robert Hewsen was another memorable professor.  He had great knowledge of his subject matter, and he made Russian history fascinating.  I took all of his classes.  I still remember one of Hewsen’s final exam questions, which was simply: “Tell me everything that you know about Russian history to 1917.”  I think I filled six blue books.  I took two classes with Gary Hunter.  He not only opened my eyes on African American history, but he was also a really good person, very approachable.

I made lifelong friends at Glassboro State.  I cherish those relationships and still keep in touch with them.  I did a lot of growing up at Glassboro.  I had a very restricted environment in the Catholic schools, and GSC was very open in comparison.  I learned to adapt, and that important skill was valuable to me later.  I also gained the ability to be better organized and to think critically.  As a result of my experiences with the SHA and in various classes, I also greatly improved as a public speaker while at GSC. 

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University. 

Register for the Reunion on October 20^th:  alumni.rowan.edu/historyreunion2023.

Link to Project 100 on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/

Link to Facebook group:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/251485937221524. 

Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.