"We met the very first quarter CSUSB opened in fall 1965--he was a junior transfer from University of Redlands as a poli-sci major...I just graduated from Redlands High School, with a Natural Sciences undeclared major--so Gerry Sherba, Dean of Nat Sci was my advisor and was terrific.

We both had meetings with then Dean of Students, Bob Fisk to see what we could do to get student activities going. We had both been active in our respective high schools in various leadership roles.

Richard was selected as AS Chairman to start the student involvement and asked for volunteers to work on other areas of development: namely, Constitution Committee, Election Committee including mascot, colors and officers, Social Chairman (get some activities going) and Publicity Chairman (my first role) to disperse information and developed the "Communiqué" as an interim newsletter until the Pawprint was started later on. Therefore we worked together on getting many things started: biggest challenge of course was getting students involved and excited about the campus given that the student body was 100% commuter and avg age was 26.

Our first date was to a music concert as part of my GS Art class, but not until very late in the year....we never had any classes together, different majors and friends. At the end of the day it was the extra-curricular activities that made our experiences so long lasting.

We were married in March 1968 and President & Mrs. John Pfau and Vice-President & Mrs. Sherba attended our wedding. We were so pleased that they could all join in our celebration and each had wonderful best wishes.

Since then we now have three grown sons who, at some time in their college careers have attended CSUSB along with their three wives who also graduated from CSUSB...two of our daughters-in law marched down the aisle together for graduation.... All six have gone on to own successful businesses as well as become business executives, teachers and a school psychologist. Two of our sons have master's degrees: One his MBA from CSUSB and the other two masters degrees from Azusa Pacific. We are very proud of their professional endeavors along with the fact that they all six are terrific parents to our five grand-children ages one through 13.

Interestingly enough our sons all met their wives while attending CSUSB, though two didn't remain to graduate from there: one from Cal Poly Pomona in Civil Engineering and the other Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in International Finance.

Our biggest message to our sons has always been "when you go to college" not "if you go to college"--they learned young to set goals and pursue them, just like Richard and I did as students way back in the early days. While marriage wasn't one of our goals entering the new campus it certainly was as terrific surprise and we enjoyed being a small part of the beginning of what is today a wonderful educational institution!" -Linda Luetcke Bennecke, B.A. sociology 1969, and Richard Bennecke, B.A., political science 1967.