Alumna remembers Missouri Western

     Charlene “Chuck” (Riemen) Bunten ’52 said she had a great college experience at the St. Joseph Junior College but never really thought too much about it after she went on to earn her bachelor’s degree from Baker University.

“I stayed at an arm’s length from Missouri Western and I shouldn’t have,” Bunten said recently. When she saw in 2007 that her high school classmate, Wes Remington, had donated $5 million to the University, “it occurred to me that it was time to give a little. I suddenly realized what an important part the junior college played in my life.”

The next year, she and her husband, Bill, became members of the Missouri Western League for Excellence donor society, and this year, they joined the Clock Tower Society, an honorary society of donors who have made the Missouri Western Foundation a beneficiary of their estate and financial planning. “I need to thank Missouri Western, and I hope that’s what I have done by helping students.”

The week before she graduated from Baker University, she got married and moved to Topeka, Kan., where her husband was in law school. She and Bill, who still live in Topeka, raised three daughters, which meant a lot of volunteering in schools, Girl Scouts, for their church, and for her sorority’s alumni group.

Bunten said she was very excited to see an article in the Missouri Western Magazine a few years back about Dr. Frances Flanagan ’35, who taught at the junior college and Missouri Western and wrote the institution’s history through 1983. Dr. Flanagan had been Bunten’s first-grade teacher, and she was thrilled to reconnect with her. She and her husband visited Dr. Flanagan the last time they were in St. Joseph.

“I’m absolutely amazed by her, and was so glad to have had her as a teacher,” Bunten said. “I just remember her as a big bundle of love.”

Bunten said she was pleased to reconnect with her alma mater, and hopes to visit campus next time she is in St. Joseph. “Junior college was a special place. I really enjoyed my time there.”

JC chemistry leads to romance

On the first day of classes at the St. Joseph Junior College in the fall of 1968, Allen Iske ’72, and Mary Margaret Trapp ’72, showed up at the same time for their first class of the day and took the two open seats next to each other in the front row. The class was chemistry, and yes, there was.

The two started dating during their sophomore year and have been together ever since. They were married in 1973 and have four children.

Both from St. Joseph and on full scholarships at the junior college, Allen planned to major in chemistry from the start of his college career. Mary Margaret started out as an elementary education major, but switched to chemistry by the second semester.

And guess who picked each other for lab partners in subsequent chemistry classes? “You  needed a good, reliable lab partner,” Mary Margaret said. “Allen was very exacting, and I was, too.”

After one year at the downtown campus, Allen remembers helping the chemistry department move lab equipment and building shelves in what was then called the Agenstein Science and Math Building on the new campus. Both he and Mary Margaret were happy that they could now earn a four-year degree in St. Joseph, and they were part of the second graduating class from the four-year Missouri Western College.

“Even though we came from a very small college, we were readily accepted at top graduate schools,” Allen said. “Graduates coming out of Missouri Western could do what they wanted to do.”

Mary Margaret taught physical science one year in the Kansas City area before they were married and she moved to Lincoln, Neb., where Allen was working on his graduate degree. She worked as a chemistry research librarian in the university library until their first child was born.

Some of their best memories of Missouri Western, Allen and Mary Margaret say, were socializing with their friends in the student union (then a trailer) and the great teachers, both in the chemistry department and other academic areas.

“When I think back, I realize how much I owe those people for the great education,” Mary Margaret said.

Allen said the small class sizes led to a lot of personal interaction with the professors, and their classmates have become long-time friends. “We were all motivated and good workers. We took it seriously, but we had a lot of fun.”

Allen enjoyed a career in research, industrial hygiene and pharmaceuticals. He spent almost 22 years working for MoBay and Bayer in the Kansas City area. He joined the faculty at the University of Central Missouri in 2005, and today teaches graduate courses in safety science, toxicology and industrial hygiene.

“I am proud of my career, and I think I represent Missouri Western well. I never pass up an opportunity to praise it,” Allen said.

Faithful, proud and true – Leo and Mary Ann Schmitz

Whether it is a play, dinner or special event at Missouri Western, you can be sure that Leo ’48 and Mary Ann (Wertin) ’68 & ’70 Schmitz will be there to support it. They began their relationship with Missouri Western as students at the St. Joseph Junior College, and they have been loyal supporters ever since.
Leo enrolled in 1946 and remembers the hallways filled with veterans returning home from World War II and going to college on the GI Bill. After graduating from the junior college, he went on to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics education and returned to the area to teach high school students. He was on leave from the school district working on his doctoratal degree in 1965 when Evan Agenstein called to offer him a position at the junior college.
“I liked working with some of the teachers who had taught me,” he said. “It was a nice group and a wonderful way to make a living.”
Mary Ann graduated from high school in 1953, attended Gard Business College for a year and started working at various offices in the community. When the Swift plant closed and she was laid off, her parents told her it was a good time to go to college. “It was a wonderful experience; people didn’t know what they were missing,” Mary Ann said.
She met Leo when he was teaching her calculus class at the junior college. “Someone else was supposed to teach it, but they hired Leo over the summer, so that’s who I got. And I stuck with him,” Mary Ann said with a smile. They were married in 1972.

Mary Ann earned a bachelor’s degree from Missouri Western and taught at area high schools until 1982. Leo taught at the junior college and at Missouri Western until 1995, and continued teaching part time until 2000.
Leo and Mary Ann had two daughters. Mary Beth ’99, is a pharmacist in the Kansas City area. Anne Marie passed away in an automobile accident in 1999 while she was a student at Missouri Western, and Leo and Mary Ann created an endowed scholarship in her memory.

Both Leo and Mary Ann say they have enjoyed watching the University grow and change over the years and are pleased to support it. They are also members of the Missouri Western League for Excellence.
“Missouri Western is extremely valuable to this city,” Leo said.  “It benefits St. Joseph in so many ways.”
“Along with the Pony Express, Missouri Western put us on the map,” added Mary Ann.