Tech Reflection: Campus Romance, 1973

Beverly (Dalrymple) Morrow ’73: “I met my husband, Curtis Morrow ’73, during my first year at MIT. He and I dated for a while at the beginning of the school year but decided to go our different ways. Then, in January of 1971, MIT did IAP for the first time. Curtis took a class, but I went home to New York. When Curt’s class was over, he and some friends traveled down to New York, and he and I connected once again. We have been coupled together since then. We could talk about anything—including relativity, math, science, etc.—and that was very appealing to me, and I guess to him as well.

“We got married on June 2, 1973, at St. Paul AME Church in Cambridge [photo at right above]. We decided to get married then since both of our families would already be together for graduation, which took place on June 1. Our class (1973) was the largest Black class at MIT at that time: 54 in total; seven Black women and 47 Black men. When I told our friend Shirley Ann Jackson ’68, PhD ’73 (who became the first Black woman to earn a PhD from MIT) that Curtis and I were getting married, she offered to host our reception at her home—so we did that. A funny tidbit: Curtis’s mother said she wasn’t coming to Cambridge unless we were getting married!

“This past June, we returned to MIT’s campus to celebrate our 50th reunion [photo at left above] and our 50th anniversary. I’m so thankful that we got to attend our 50th reunion. It was great catching up with old friends, some that I hadn’t seen in years. And, of course, we enjoyed having dinner at Legal Sea Foods*—way different from the store with the sawdust on the floor on Mass Ave. Curtis and I used to walk and eat there often; it was cheap. Navigating campus was also a lot different than when we were there. It felt more like a college campus than it did years ago.”

Beverly (Dalrymple) Morrow ’73 worked for Standard Oil of California and then AMOCO before receiving her master’s in chemical engineering from Rutgers University. She later worked for Autodynamics. Curtis Morrow ’73 went on to get his MBA from Stanford Business School. He worked for Continental Bank in Chicago and then for Equitable Life Insurance. The Morrows then went on to open a McDonald’s franchise, which they ran for 33 years.

Now retired, the Morrows have four children, one grandson, and three bonus grandsons.

Tech Reflection is a Slice of MIT series that tells the first-person stories behind MIT photos. Read more reminiscences of campus life.

* Editor’s note: Legal Sea Foods launched its first restaurant in Inman Square in 1968.

Left photo by Ken Richardson; right photo courtesy of Beverly Morrow