They danced together in Newing Dining Hall.
He was probably wearing his bell bottoms. She probably had her long, straight hair let down.
And the band was playing songs to the sound of The Rolling Stones and Chicago.
Sept. 26, 1970: That was the night Paul and Linda Edmundson first met on this campus. Almost 40 years later, they still know each other. They’re happily married.
“We were foreigners when we met,” Paul said. “An upstate girl and a downstate boy, you know.”
Paul was from Long Island and Linda from the Syracuse area.
“When she used to speak over the phone, I had a hard time recognizing her,” he said. “The upstate accent, couldn’t handle it.”
The two sophomores had met earlier in the night at the campus pub — back when the drinking age was 18. One of Linda’s friends knew Paul from a class, and the group of students set off for some dancing. But their relationship didn’t kick off until a month later when Linda’s friends were planning her a surprise birthday party. Paul’s job was to get her away from her dorm in Newing College.
It was the days when dorm rooms were decorated with orange bed spreads and a bright green rug in the shape of a foot print, when the rooms were cluttered with vinyl records and big stereo equipment, when the only TVs were in the common areas and the closest contact with a computer was an archaic program-writing class.
It was the days of the Kent State massacre and the Watergate scandal. During Paul and Linda’s freshman year finals were canceled. Yes, school ended early that year. Students and faculty had marched off the campus to Downtown Binghamton in protest of the Vietnam War. The rallying had gotten so intense that the Student Senate and Faculty Senate agreed to end classes and students received the grades they had up to that point.
It was the days of suede boots. When drugs ran rampant. When after students had a little too much to drink or had gotten a little too high, somebody ended up getting tossed into Lake Lieberman — it hadn’t dried out yet — as a prank.
The days when SUNY Binghamton was known as “a hippie school.”
Those days.
“I had a lot more hair then,” Paul said. “Hair down to my shoulders.”
Paul, who was still too young to grow facial hair, idolized John Lennon.
“He used to have round wire rims, so I had to get the same style,” he said.
Meanwhile, Linda wanted to look like George Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, so she grew out her blonde hair.
“The English, long, straight hair, that was the goal,” she said.
Paul took Linda to the movies the night of her birthday. For her present, he gave her the record album “Music From Big Pink,” by The Band.
Paul started asking Linda out more. They went to concerts together when on campus students could watch Grateful Dead, Procol Harum, or Loggins and Messina for just a dollar. The couple also listened to local bands, watched movies and went dancing in the student union or dining halls.
“Binghamton is not really an ivy-covered, romantic-looking campus. Most buildings are modern looking; it doesn’t look romantic,” Linda said. “Romance is where you find it.”
Paul majored in mathematics and Linda majored in history. In the second semester of sophomore year, they took the same history course and sat together in class.
“It was like sharing one soda fountain drink with two straws,” Linda said.
Paul didn’t always balance a college sweetheart and an academic life well.
“I think love life went in front of school work,” he said. “When she went to Europe for a semester, I had my best semester. I had a 4.0 when she wasn’t there.”
Paul and Linda competed together on an intramural volleyball team, named “Lovers and Other Strangers” after the 1970 comedy. Paul coached the team, which had many couples as players, to the championship.
“We made the playoffs every year, so that was fun,” he said. “After every game, we could go to the pub and celebrate.”
The couple graduated together and Paul moved to Syracuse to attend graduate school — and to be near his sweetheart. A year later, they got hitched. They have a daughter, who goes to BU, and a son.
“We just were a couple, just were a team,” Paul said. “We had planned for after college. I guess we were committed to one another and it came through.”
Looking back, the independence of college life probably aided their romance … though independence could be interpreted differently.
Paul had gone to an all-boys high school, so he thought “it was cool having a girlfriend away from home, away from parents,” he said. “Being outside the sphere of my parents, I was happy as a lark.”
For Linda, being a college student meant being “on your own. The whole world is opening up,” she said. “So finding relationships is part of that. Finding your way.”
Differences aside, there’s one thing the college couple will always share: memories of love.
“I still have that album,” Linda said. “Even though I don’t have a turntable.”