In 1967, 46 years ago, the chair of the Quinnipiac College’s English Department gave Mary Ellen Duffley away to Robert “Bob” Cowser in New Haven, Conn.
Today, Duffley is better known on campus as English and Modern Foreign Language Instructor, Dr. Mary Cowser. Of course, her husband is English and Modern Foreign Language Adjunct Instructor, Dr. Robert Cowser.
The couple had met only six months before they married, when Bob Cowser began working at Quinnipiac, a nearby university in Hamden, as an English professor. Mary Cowser had already been working at the university for five years when Bob Cowser came along.
To some six months may be a short amount of time, but not to others.
“It depends on how you look at it. We were both…older,” Mary Cowser said.
Mary Cowser grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, over 1,000 miles away from Bob Cowser, who grew up on a farm in Hopkins County, Texas. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Medical Technology in 1958 from Marquette, a competitive, private university in Milwaukee, Wis. She then went back home to Cleveland, where she worked in a hospital lab for two years before being offered a teaching position in Connecticut.
While teaching medical technology classes, Mary Cowser began taking English classes on the side at the University of Connecticut for the pure pleasure of it. When one of her professors, the same one who would eventually give her away at her wedding, told her she should be doing graduate level English, she decided to complete her Masters in English. She then switched to the English department and began teaching the subject she loved. Teaching had never been her goal, however.
“I always enjoyed English. It was always my best and favorite class, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get a job doing anything but teaching and I thought I didn’t want to teach. Proves how wrong you can be when you’re young,” Mary Cowser said.
Mary Cowser now advises students to be open-minded when choosing a career.
“Give yourself a chance to find out all the possibilities,” Mary Cowser said.
Bob Cowser graduated with his Bachelor’s degree in English at Texas A&M University in Commerce and with his Master’s degree at the University of North Texas. After teaching high school in Big Sandy, Texas for a short duration, he went on to receive his PhD at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.
He moved to Connecticut in 1966 for a change of scenery.
“I wanted the experience of teaching and living in a different part of the United States. I had been in Texas and Oklahoma for the entire time,” Bob Cowser said.
After getting married, the couple did not stay in New Haven for very long. They moved to Martin in 1970.
“I was not teaching then because I had a 2-year-old. … New Haven was in upheaval … [due to] the Black Panther Society. One of their leaders had been arrested and charged for murder and was being tried in the city of New Haven. There was so much high feeling and anger over the whole situation that the city police shut down the Yale Medical Center [as well as other buildings], and I was pregnant to deliver a baby and couldn’t go to the hospital I was supposed to go to. … It was a very uncomfortable place to be living,” Mary Cowser said.
Therefore, when a job opened up for Bob Cowser at the UTM, he took it.
“The students at the college where we had been teaching went on strike, shut down the college. So [Bob] was ready to get out of New England,” Mary Cowser said.
The couple had four children within five years: Mary, Bob, Jim and Ruth. When Mary Cowser was pregnant with their fourth and last child in 1973, she began her long career at UTM teaching part-time.
Later during the seventies, Mary Cowser served as an adviser for the Volunteer Service Bureau, a program at UTM. She assigned students to tutor kids at the local schools, visit people in the hospitals and even to transcribe the stories of the elderly at the nursing homes (a printed copy was later given to those who told the stories).
“Students found it so satisfying. They weren’t paid anything by anybody, but they felt that it was such a useful thing to do with their time,” said Mary Cowser.
For a short amount of time on the side, Bob Cowser taught at the Northwest Correctional Complex, where he instructed prisoners in composition and Southern literature. He felt that this, too, was a worthwhile program sponsored by the university.
Bob Cowser is also a published poet and writer of a few short stories, essays and plays. He often writes about nature, but he also writes short memoirs and historical essays about what he remembers from his childhood. He has several published online on the website, Texas Escapes.
“I began writing when I was past 50, which is kind of unusual. … My son collected [some of my poems] in 1990 in [a book called] Backtrailing,” said Bob Cowser.
Bob Cowser advises students to explore the arts and to give those subjects a chance no matter what their major is.
The couple’s children are each located in different parts of the United States: New York, New Jersey, Missouri and Florida. One child, Bob Cowser, Jr, is a published author of four books, including Dream Season and Backtrailing, Bob Cowser’s collection of poems.
They now have 10 grandchildren. The oldest is 14 and the youngest three are 8. The couple loves to travel, especially by train, to visit them, but lately they do not do so as often, because of health issues.
However, they do keep teaching. Bob Cowser has now been teaching for 59 years along with his wife, who has been doing so for 53 years. Although, now they are both only part-time English professors, they expressed their desire to teach for as long as they are able to continue doing so.
“We both have been very blessed,” Mary Cowser said.
Go to the photo gallery “Couple spends lifetime together doing what they love” at www.thepacer.net to view more photos of Mary Cowser and Bob Cowser.
