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169 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K T R E I C H L E R TREICHLER PAULA ANTONIA THEN AND NOW 4 B.A. Philosophy 4 Ph.D., Psycholinguistics, University of Rochester 4 PhD., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign FAMI LY 4 Husband, Cary Nelson ‘67 4 Samoyed dogs, Laika (17) and Luna (3) ADDRESS 4 808 South Lynn St. Champaign, IL 61820 CONTACT ptreich@gmail.com I WA S B O R N in 1943 in a Dayton hospital where only one obstetrician was spared from the war effort and he delivered many of us fromYellow Springs. My parents, Paul and Jessie Treichler, came to Antioch in 1934. I grew up embedded in and shaped by Antioch and Yellow Springs, and have spent nearly all of my adult life in academic settings.My father came to Antioch from Yale Drama School to build a theater department at Antioch. First based in the old Opera House on Dayton Street, the theater program from the beginning drew cast, crew, and audience from the Antioch campus and the village of Yellow Springs. In the 1940s, he hired Arthur Lithgow (Antioch ’38) and Meredith Dallas (Dal) as fac- ulty, and for many years, this trium- virate led the theater department. We, their offspring, were pals— and reliable little actors as well, ap- pearing in various dramatic and musical productions, and in many Shakespeare plays as pages, sprites, or babes about to be murdered. In the early 1950s, the theater moved into the Foundry building on Corry Street; in collaboration with Yellow Springs designers, Read Viemeister and Budd Steinhilber, my father de- signed the main stage and seating structures to be fully flexible from one production to the next (the fi- nal was at least quasi-flexible). In the 1960s, the design and construction of an outdoor amphitheatre fulfilled a longtime desire of his. My mother was born in Iowa and grew up in Montana; she worked all her life. At the college, she first served as assistant to several of Antioch’s presidents beginning with Algo Henderson and then as director of public relations and development. This position was no walk in the park: as today, few Antioch alumni were wealthy, the endowment was miniscule, and media coverage was rarely flattering. Civil rights actions at Antioch in the 1960s evoked a typical media remark (though with an atypical rejoinder): • DaytonTV anchor DonWayne: There they go again, causing trouble over there. • Sidekick Phil Donahue: I don’t know, Don, I think they’re up to some pretty interesting things at Antioch. We were big fans of Phil Donahue. DonWayne was not alone, of course; most of the Miami Valley (even though they went to plays) saw Antioch as weird, Communist, and or “causing trouble.”When we were in Mallorca in 1953–54, during the Army–McCarthy hearings, the U.S. Navy arrived in Palma and one night a contingent showed up at my parents’ regular bar. My mother was thrilled and as always (to my judg- mental 11-year old mind) mortifying as she reached out to strangers: —Hello, I’m Jessie Treichler, it’s so wonderful to hear American voices! —How d’you do, Ma’am. I’m Bobby Miller, from a little Ohio town you never heard of called Xenia. —Oh, this is marvelous! Paul, Paula, he’s from Xenia! We’re from Yellow Springs! —Oh my god-I-gotta-go-gotta-get- back-to-the-ship-oh Christ-gotta-go- gotta-go. My mother was an exceptional administrator, also anAntioch faculty member and a legendary student advisor and mentor, and through- out her life an accomplished writer: one of her stories was published in Best Short Stories of 1943 , right after James Thurber, and a story called “Homecoming” appeared in The Antioch Review . Later she wrote pieces about college life for magazines like Mademoiselle , and a biography of Horace Mann in an Encyclopedia Britannica series for young adults. When I was two,we moved four miles out of town to the Birch House (aka Glen Helen House),which Hugh Taylor Birch had left to Antioch to be the home of the college presi- A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z