A remembrance by Margie Paulson Templeton
Sylvia was one of those Carleton girls who “do it all.” She was active in many organizations including Algol, Toastmistress, YWCA, and Dolphins. She did this while majoring in biology.
Sylvia and I spent the summer after freshman year as counselors at Camp Lake Hillaway. The camp was owned by Helen Dalton (Dalty) and Kay Cram. Dalty brought her horses to Carleton for the school year and taught riding. In the summer the horses went to camp. Many Carleton girls were hired as counselors. Sylvia and I both worked on the waterfront as well as having responsibility for the girls in one cabin. Sylvia taught swimming and canoeing while I taught sailing. One doesn’t get rich as a camp counselor, but we had a good time!
Sylvia went on to the U of Minnesota for a PhD in biology. She married her thesis advisor, Norman Kerr. She started her teaching career at Augsburg and then taught at Hamline for 29 years. She died of cancer in 2011.
A remembrance by Kate Wulle
Sylvia was truly focused when she came to Carleton from Mt Prospect, IL. Unlike a lot of us, she not only was a Biology major, but she got her graduate degree(s) in Biology and taught Biology at Hamline University in St Paul for 31 years until she retired in 2002. While she was at Carleton she was active for most of the four years with WRA, Toastmistresses, and Dolphins. She was one of the three editors of the 1961-62 Algol along with Dee Hager and Judith Yegian.
She married Norman Kerr and had two children, David and Kathleen. Norman died before our 2003 reunion. She had three grandchildren whom she was busy enjoying during her retirement. She also taught for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and did other volunteer activities with community groups.
Although we were both Biology majors and I too worked on the Algol that year, I really didn’t know Sylvia all that well. Part of that was due to the fact that we were never living in the same dorm. However, Sylvia played an extremely important part in shaping my entire life. As a Biology major, I wasn’t the fastest paramecium in the dish, and a C+ average, even from Carleton, was not enough to get me into a grad school with a good Marine Biology program in the US. Sylvia came into our Olin lab one day all excited. She had been looking at schools in the Placement Office and said, “I found a fabulous graduate school that has a Marine Biology emphasis and teaches in English! It’s the American University of Beirut! In Lebanon. Let’s apply!” It sounded like a great idea and I thought it would be terrific to have someone to share the transition to a totally new culture. So I sent off my application. Several weeks later I received a letter from AUB telling me that not only had I been accepted, but that I would receive a Teaching Assistantship! I couldn’t wait to find Sylvia to see if she had received the same good news. When I found her, her response was: “That’s great! I never applied”!
The three years that I spent in Lebanon gave me a focus that I had lacked at Carleton. I already knew I wasn’t really Biologist material, but there I found out where my talents really lay. I wish I could have thanked Sylvia for the important part she played in helping me find myself. I will miss her in 2013.
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