"Get Off The Quad."
One clear, bold phrase defined Risa's confidence and humor; we can still hear, and feel, her voice, her presence, her humanity, and love for those of us lucky enough to share her life, and laughter.
(Risa Goldberger Gregory, center in red pants; Carol Jacobson Villano, right in yellow top, Risa’s college roommate; and me, in an “Immigrants” tee-shirt, on the Main Academic Podium—the main Quad— at SUNY Albany, where we graduated in 1971, 55 years ago. Risa, a source of life, love and laughter for all of us, died earlier this year. Her 77th birthday would have been this week, as well as her 50th Wedding Anniversary. Photo by Linden Gregory.)
There was so much more to Risa “Bessie” Goldberger Gregory than met the eye.
Gentle eyes of blue, five foot-two, Risa’s diminutive presence, her quick smile and contagious laugh, and her natural cuteness often disarmed people who met her, but didn’t really know her.
Her petite persona belied the steely determination behind each one of those 62 inches, just like they did in such historical figures as Joan of Arc, who was the same height; Golda Meir, two inches shorter than Risa; or, former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright, a towering 4 feet, 10 inches tall.
Risa would have loved the comparisons with women of valor in history, since she loved history. In fact, we became fast and lasting friends when we first met during our Freshman year of college at SUNY Albany, in Dr. Warren Roberts’ Western Civilization honors class, and learned we were both from Long Island, an incubator for much more than buffoons like Joey Buttafuoco, ghouls like the Gilgo Beach killer, or fabulist frauds like Georgie Porgie Santos.
We were mesmerized by the remarkable Dr. Roberts, who masterfully made world history into a Netflix series, some 12 years before any cable networks were invented. Risa Bessie and I hung on his every word, especially when Dr. Roberts explained his well-documented theory of the influence of sex upon history. After all, it was 1968.
I knew next-to-nothing about sex at that time, and chuckled quietly as Professor Roberts regaled us with tales of royal debauchery. Risa, on the other hand, whose sex eduction may not have been any more advanced than mine, laughed hilariously, and the rest of the class laughed with her, because….well, that’s just what you did when Risa laughed, and her smile flashed and her bright eyes twinkled. No one could be left behind.
Risa could talk about Warren Roberts and history in depth, or she could talk about clothing and make-up and music and art and feelings, with the best of us. Not shy, she was unafraid to challenge anything or anyone. If you met Anna Goldberger, her mother, to whom Risa was devoted for decades, you would understand her in-your-face fearlessness. Putting it all together, made Risa one of the first real Renaissance women from Freeport, LI, but she’d be the first one to roll her eyes and say “Oh, please,” if you called her that. Warren Roberts, a master of accomplished modesty, would be proud.
It was Junior Year of college, the Fall of 1969, when Risa and I, and my soon-to-be life-long love & partner Carol Jacobson, all became Resident Assistants or RA’s—24-hour on-call dorm counselors who received free room, board and tuition, for providing a little local, and loco, parental guidance to students in our dorms. Risa took to the job immediately, quickly interpreting RA to mean “Risa’s Authority.”
I got my earliest hint of “Risa’s Authority,” when I first visited the RA Suite which Risa and Carol shared in Eastman Tower, a 22-floor dormitory on State Quad. Carol’s side of the room was orderly and neat, but covered in dust—a condition which has lustily, and dustily, continued through our 54 years of marriage. Risa’s room-side, on the other hand, was a dust-free zone, where everything sparkled, for fear of running into the wrath of Risa, if as much as an errant speck of dust challenged her hegemony over her high-rise heaven.
The ability to make dust jump out of her way (“You’re not the boss of me!”) was a harbinger of Risa’s leadership ability to make college freshman move from where they were not supposed to be. With the end of curfew and limitations on conjugal college student visitations coming to an end on our watch—it was, after all, 1969, the year of Woodstock—a new form of unquestioned authority needed to be found, especially in times of fire drills, emergencies or rowdy crowds that got too loud.
The RA’s met; we explored other options; we searched for solutions; we discussed acceptable alternatives into the early-yawning hours. Suddenly, the sound of pulled fire alarms ricocheted around the Quad. Scantily clad students began pouring out of their dorms into the Quad, heeding the call of the sirens in the night to “PARTY.” Chaos threatened to consume us, until one sharp, clear, no-nonsense voice echoed throughout the Edward Durell Stone designed cement canyons of the State University’s Quad:
“GET OFF THE QUAD,” Risa Bessie bellowed. “GET OFF THE QUAD!”
Students stopped in their tracks. Where did that command come from? There was no giant stomping over the Quad? No Big Brother loud-speaker. Was it a premonition of the ferocious voice forcing its’ way out of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley in the not-yet made sci-fi horror movie “Alien?”
“GET OFF THE QUAD,” Risa roared again, quickly taking control of what could have been an out-of-control circumstance.
“GET OFF THE QUAD,” Risa boomed once more into the darkness of the night, searing that life-saving directive into our memories for all of eternity.
Fast forward more than 50 years later, when parts of Risa’s memory began to leave her, that quintessential Risa quote—”GET OFF THE QUAD'“—could still cut through the fog of this night, and evoke her beautiful smile and contagious laugh, bringing us back into the same slice of time, back to our college years, back to our oldest and best friends, when we were sure that what we had would live forever.