When the University of Wisconsin celebrates the Memorial Union’s 75th anniversary, it will be commemorating a facility that has not only served its student body loyally, but has become one of the focal points for UW alumni’s fondest college memories.
This is where I got my big break …
As a freshman, UW graduate Steve Marmel entered himself in a comedy contest held at Memorial Union. Marmel would go on to finish second in the contest and win $25 and a vinyl jacket that night, but he considers the experience ? and career jumpstart ? the night’s greatest reward.
“It was the most horrible material on the planet,” Marmel said of his routine. “It was my first time onstage, and it was in front of 700 students, most of them drunk, so the comedy worked.”
In 1987, Marmel used comedy to become elected UW student-body president.
“I did a stand up comedy show at the Union that turned into a rally for my political party,” Marmel says. Marmel recalls this as one of his fondest memories of the Union, but things could have easily turned ugly. “In retrospect, that was probably one beer per student away from being a riot.”
Since his first stint at the Union, Marmel has gone on to regularly performing at the Improvisations Comedy Club in Los Angeles, a Comedy Central special and is currently the head writer of “Fairly Oddparents,” a cartoon on Nickelodeon. But it was tough for Marmel to leave life at the Union.
When graduation time rolled around, Marmel did not want to leave and ended up staying an extra semester to keep his office as president in the Union.
“I was like, ‘Let me get this straight. I get to stay in school, get a salary and an office overlooking the lake?'” Marmel said. “‘I think I’ll be hanging out here for awhile.'”
Musicians from Joan Baez to Phish have played at the Union’s Rathskeller, and many artists have started their career there. As a senior in 1998, Brittany Shane was dared by a friend to perform at Open Mike Night. After that, Shane performed many times at the Union and upon graduating moved to San Francisco, where she has made music her career.
After recording three albums and performing all over the county, Shane says the Memorial Union is her favorite place to perform.
“It is one of the most beautiful places you can play a show. Even now I think that that would be the best place to play a show again,” Shane said.
Shane said that the enthusiastic environment is what makes the Union such a great place that harbors so many fond memories for so many people. Shane describes her first night playing at the Union as a starting point for her.
“It was the beginning of a career for me. It was so great to have a place that I could go to share my music with other people,” she said.
Movie lovers brawl
The Union is remembered by many as a place to rendezvous with those who share similar interests. Mike Wilmington spent many hours at the Union working on the grill at the cafeteria, performing in plays at the Wisconsin Union Theater and watching movies at the Memorial Union Play Circle. Wilmington was the chairman of the Memorial Union Film Committee, which discussed and critiqued films and selected the films to be played at the Union’s Play Circle.
One distinct memory of the Union that Wilmington recalls is the day the Film Committee erupted. There were political rifts within the group that led up to Wilmington being ousted as chair of the committee, beginning with a cupful of coffee thrown in one member’s face and ending with Wilmington and another member wrestling on the floor in a full-out brawl in the middle of the Union.
“Oh, everybody there kind of got involved in it,” Wilmington said of the fight. “But it didn’t last for very long. People just sort of separated us.”
After all the hours spent in the Union watching movies and working at the cafeteria, Wilmington has gone on to become the lead film critic for The Chicago Tribune. Wilmington is also an author and teaches at the University of Chicago graduate school, and is once again friends with all those involved in the infamous Film Committee brawl.
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship …
Many remember the Union as a place where they met lifelong friends.
“It was a gathering place where you had the opportunity to meet a broad variety of students,” Sidney Williams said of Memorial Union.
Williams graduated in 1961 after becoming the first African American starting quarterback in the Big Ten.
Williams said his greatest memories of the Union are of the times he had with the friends he met there.
One night while at the Rathskeller, Williams was introduced to Marylon Wahls, an aspiring jazz musician who also attended UW. They talked mostly of music, Williams remembers.
“We developed a great relationship that lasted for many, many years,” Williams said. Years later, both men found themselves in Michigan, where they continued their friendship. Wahls was a judge and had his own jazz group, just as they had talked about the day they met at the Union so many years earlier.
“We reminisced about those days and have some wonderful memories of that place. And this all happened from spending one summer night in the Rathskeller!”
One night at the Union seems to be all it took for these alumni and presumably many others to start careers, friendships or, in some cases, fights. Throughout its history, the Memorial Union has been a place to hang out, to perform and to work, but mostly a place to remember.
“I spent a lot of time when I went to school there in the Union, and I remember it with great fondness,” Wilmington said. “How can you beat a nice lake and a nice sunset?”
In all its 75 years of existence, Memorial Union has stood as a symbol for the times as a student at Madison. Marmel remembers the Union as just that.
“That building, that school, that time in everybody’s life, you get to do things that if you’re 21 you would probably go to jail for, and if you’re under 16 you would get spanked for.”
