The first time Denny David met Tony Pham, he got a business card and a request for subsequent information and contact.
But the meeting wasn’t an information session for post-Grinnell professional plans. It wasn’t even in Grinnell, and David and Pham were not yet Grinnell students. They were just out of high school, gathering at an alumni-admitted students event in Seattle, and only had in common a past in their hometown and a future in Iowa.
The summer before his enrollment, Pham organized a get-together for Grinnell-bound Seattle-area students. Four members of the class of 2003 met at Momma’s Mexican Kitchen. They continue to meet today, gathering each year over winter break and during the summer.
“I was excited and concerned,” David said of the very first gathering. Joining Pham and David were E.B. Licata and Pam Margon (who transferred in 2001 to Evergreen State).
Pham first met David and Licata at a Grinnell-sponsored event for admitted students to meet alumni; he contacted the others after calling Grinnell and requesting the names of students residing in two Seattle zip codes. He then invited those students to dinner. In addition to the initial four, Per Janson, Katie Michaelson and Alacia Welch also joined in subsequent dinners, most often held at Cedar’s on Brooklyn, an Indian restaurant in Seattle’s U-district.
“I didn’t know anyone going to Grinnell,” Pham said, “and I thought that it would be nice to have a get-together for all of the first-years to meet each other before we arrived on campus.”
Arriving on campus for the first time is indeed intimidating, and, according to David and Licata, at first so was Pham’s idea. After Pham handed David his business card at the alumni gathering and asked him to report how his upcoming prospie visit went, David said he thought to himself “who the hell is this guy?”
“I thought he was supremely organized and ambitious,” said Licata. “I was impressed and a little worried that everyone at Grinnell might be just like him.”
But the concerns were assuaged. David noted his were also joined by excitement and awe. He said he looked around the room and “was like shit. These people are smart.”
Licata agreed. “It felt like we were the founding members of a Seattle/Grinnell movement in the making, conferring over tacos about what plan of action should be taken, searching for possible hidden connections and speculating about the future in general.”
Licata and David both said the pre-arrival Seattle connections helped smooth their transition to Grinnell and NSO experience. “If I didn’t have the Seattle connection,” Licata said, “I probably would have ended up cold and alone in some corner.”
Pham has worked the last four years to assure this experience is one shared by all Seattle area students: he still invites members from subsequent classes to join the 2003 contingent. “It’s been fun to see new people come into the group as first-years, while the original group has evolved and is now ready for graduation,” he said.
Licata agreed, saying that it’s “refreshing to see the same excitement and anxiety replayed in new faces and to know that I [am] safely past that stage.”
Everyone involved said that every meeting after the first has been safely past any uncomfortable stage. “It’s been nice to see that we’ve been able to have these get-togethers throughout the four years that I’ve been at Grinnell,” Pham said before noting his appreciation that now, as the original group members are all 21 years of age, Mama’s can sometimes be abandoned for ritzy bars.
But location can’t change the comfort and familiarity of gathering with a group of Grinnell students with pasts, presents, and futures in common. “It’s never awkward,” David concluded, “It’s like sitting down to dinner in Quad.”
—Elisa Lenssen