Spotlight — Alumni Stories
Cheryl Strayed
(Above) Strayed in 1995 on the Pacific Coast Trail Photo courtesy of Cheryl Strayed
Inexperienced and alone, Cheryl Strayed (B.A. ‘97) hiked nearly 1,300 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. In December of 2014, nearly 20 years later, her experience on the trail was adapted to the big screen and showed worldwide as Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as Strayed. Prior to the film being released, she authored a literary memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Vintage Books, 2013), which landed at the top of the New York Times bestseller list and made first pick for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0.
Strayed states that her world opened up when she came as a student to the University of Minnesota. “I took my first creative writing class with Michael Dennis Browne. Here was a man who wrote books that did for him what books did for me—make my hair stand on end. Paulette Bates Alden was also a huge influence. She was my most important mentor during those years, and she’s still a dear friend,” she says.
-Claire Sykes
Bobby Bell In 1958, during a segregated time of North Carolina when opportunity for African Americans was sparse, Bobby Bell had an unlikely dream and made a promise to his father that he would fulfill it. He wanted to pursue a recreation, park, and leisure studies major because of the difference a few dedicated men made in his life by building parks and pools in segregated communities. “I want to show kids that it doesn’t matter where you come from, what color you are, how old you are, you can do it, man,” he says. Football provided an opportunity for Bell; Minnesota’s Murray Warmath (one of the few major-college coaches then recruiting black players) offered Bell a scholarship. Despite all odds, just making it to Minnesota was “doing it” for Bell. “Very few blacks in Shelby went to college,” he recalls. “But my father always told me it was possible.”
(Below) Bell displays two prized possessions-- his Super Bowl ring and his U of M graduation bobblehead
During Bell’s time at the U of M, he won a 1960 national title in football and the 1962 Rose Bowl, as well as finishing third in the Heisman Trophy voting that year. Going on to become a Hall of Famer for the Kansas City Chiefs, he worked at General Motors and opened a string of restaurants. “I was so busy,” Bell recalls. “But I never forgot that I promised my father that I would finish.”
Only three classes short of his degree, he enrolled online at the University of Minnesota from his Kansas City home and graduated with his bachelor’s degree on May 14th. With a lifetime of achievements despite odds stacked against him, Bell claims that seeing his father in the stands in Minneapolis to watch him play football, “is at the top of my list. It was the dream we had together that he would see his son play just like everybody else. That’s why I love this University. Can you imagine all this coming from where I did? Minnesota gave me the opportunity to have all this happen.”
- Chris Smith & Jason Dailey
Geoff Trenholme Trenholme holds a degree in computer science (B.S. ‘99) from the University of Minnesota, but he has pursued a passion in pie rather than pi-- or to be more exact, bread. It took Geoff two years before he was satisfied with his French baguette recipe, but his customers weren’t complaining. Often lining up outside of his European-style bakery in the Milwaukee area before the doors even open-- but Geoff was convinced he could do better. “I’ve always found food very satisfying,” Trenholme says. “It’s actually a very basic human pleasure to make food for somebody.”
Since opening in 2012, Rocket Baby’s reputation has taken off. The couple recently added a second storefront and also serve around a dozen Milwaukee-area restaurants. They are feeling an unexpected amount of fortune and success, Geoff says, “I expected to make good bread and pastries, but the quality is beyond what I had thought we would achieve, [as is] how well we have been received by customers.To be here, two-plus years into the business, and know that we’ve exceeded our original expectations—it feels really great.”
-Nicole Sweeney Etter & Adam Ryan Morris