Alumni, staff return to remember Alliance College

By Ryan Smith

10/08/07 October 07, 2007 10:40 pm

— CAMBRIDGE SPRINGS — When Bob Loop said Alliance College gave him a second chance, he meant it in more ways than one.
The college, he said, gave him a second chance at earning a degree after he’d been drafted into military service and had what was a less-than-successful academic stint at Penn State University.
And over four decades later — nearly 20 years after the college closed — it’s given him and another Alliance graduate, Susan Bogdan-Switlik, a second chance at love.
Both previously married and divorced, they first met at the Alliance College Alumni Association’s bi-annual all-years reunion in 2005 and became a couple. Switlik said her sorority “big sister,” Celeste (Mickie) Mikiewicz, a longtime friend of Loop’s and the association’s president, played matchmaker by giving him a glowing recommendation.
At this year’s reunion, they had the pleasure of sharing that they’re soon-to-be newlyweds.
About 150 alumni, faculty and staff celebrated that news and all things Alliance at the reunion over the weekend at the Riverside Inn in Cambridge Springs. Originally a Titusville native and now a Hurricane Katrina survivor
living in Ocean Springs, Miss., Loop said the first reunion was organized in 2001 to bring people back together and “revisit some of the traditions” of the school.
Founded by the Polish National Alliance in the early 1900s, Alliance College “was a real repository of eastern European history and cultural knowledge,” he said.
He and Mikiewicz said the school offered various degree programs and courses, including undergraduate-level Slavic language and history studies. Also, “literally hundreds of people within a 100-mile radius of here graduated from the tool and die program,” said Loop.
And by all accounts, its basketball team also gained itself quite a reputation over the years — just ask its captain from the Class of 1939.
“I don’t know how to describe it except to say we had a pretty good ball club,” said 89-year-old Benjamin Czajka.
A Mansfield, Ohio resident, Czajka said he’s made it to each reunion. Having grown up around the coal mines of Nemacolin, Czajka enrolled at Alliance in 1937, when the college was still a two-year, all-male general studies institution. “It was my first adventure into a wonderland. Especially in the wintertime, it was a beautiful place,” he said.
“My primary goal was studies, and at that time there was no attraction of the opposite sex to distract you,” he added with a laugh.
Coming back, he said, is one way of staying in touch with his “Polish heritage, and the beauty of the school at that time.”

DID YOU KNOW?
–– The former Alliance College in Cambridge Springs was founded by the Polish National Alliance in 1912 and operated for 75 years, graduating more than 5,000 students in various degree programs. Having closed in 1988, the campus was sold to the state of Pennsylvania in 1990 to be converted into a minimum-security correctional facility for women.
–– Kujiawiaki, Alliance College’s traditional Polish dance troupe, performed at President Lyndon B. Johnson’s staff Christmas party at the White House on Dec. 26, 1966.
–– The Riverside Inn, host to the Alliance College Alumni Association’s bi-annual reunion, itself has a close tie to Alliance’s history: Years ago, the historic inn served as a lush winter-time dormitory for the college’s students.
–– More information: Visit the Alliance College Alumni Association at www.alliancecollege.com

ALLIANCE COLLEGE MEMBERS HONORED
Four of Alliance College’s former longtime faculty and staff members were honored at the college Alumni Association’s bi-annual reunion recently:
n Josephine Haluch, an administrative office worker and coach’s wife;
n Elizabeth Jenkins, a librarian, teacher and professor’s wife;
n Rose Matejczyk, a teacher and professor’s wife; and
n Evelyn Stillwagon, secretary to the college’s president during the 1960s and ‘70s.
Each of the honorees were presented a plaque during the reunion’s banquet.

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