Jenny Bender, Sharon Bryan, Karen Coon, Susan Scovil, Mary Jo Kealy, Cat Weber, BS ’80 (health education), Faye Blumenthal, Patty Pavel Lentz, Lexie Caswell, and Susan Ota, BS ’77, MS ’83 (biology and physical education) at Kathy McManus's, BS ’79 (journalism), house for a spaghetti dinner filled with dancing and fun.
Lexie Caswell, BS ’80 (anthropology); Sharon Bryan, BA ’78 (English), MA ’84 (curriculum and instruction); Mary Jo Kealy; Jenny Bender; Patty Pavel Lentz, BA ’80 (history); and Karen Coon, BA ’78 (elementary education), met on the fourth floor of Carson Hall in 1975. What followed is a friendship spanning five decades and every corner of the US. From drives down I-5 in the 1970s to cross-country flights in the 2020s, the “D-Wing Ladies” have maintained their bond for 50 years.
Fate in Carson Hall
Lexie Caswell recalls how the friendships that have shaped a lifetime all started because of the chance of being neighbors.
“I was right next door to Karen and Patty, and I had a record player and I would just blast Led Zeppelin and stuff like that,” Caswell remembers. “They would hear me through the wall, and they finally came over and said, ‘Listen, if you're listening to that good of music, you just got to come and hang with us.’ And then we'd be sitting out in the hallway, and we would hear Sharon laugh at the end of the hall. And Sharon has the most infectious laugh . . . and then we just had to . . . get to know this person.”
Bryan introduced Caswell, Coon, and Lentz to her friends Kealy and Bender, and from there, the group became inseparable. Despite their diverse backgrounds, there was an instant connection between the six women.
The "D-Wing Ladies" and their friends share pizza in the hallway of Carson Hall.
Bryan was from Milwaukie, Oregon, while Kealy and Bender were friends that lived on the same street in Wilmington, Delaware—doing a university exchange across the country. Lentz and Coon hailed from Hawai’i. The group enjoyed meals together in the Carson Dining Hall, dancing in their dorm rooms, and reading Shakespeare in the hallway.
“[One of us] would try to study and somebody would put on a record, and we’d all get out in the hall and dance with one another. We were line dancing before line dancing was a thing,” said Bryan.
The group adventured beyond campus, as well, taking road trips to the Oregon Coast and other regional destinations. Both Bryan and Caswell said one of their favorite memories was when the group took a road trip down to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
“We all piled in this car. We drove down to Ashland. We stayed at the worst, cheapest hotel you can imagine, and we went to, I think, three Shakespeare plays . . . and we just had a blast,” Caswell said.
“Mary Jo and I had taken a Shakespeare class that spring, and we decided to drag everybody down to Ashland. We saw As You Like It. It was a lot of fun, singing in the car and [enjoying] good food. We snuck most of the people in,” Bryan recalled fondly.
Preparing to leave Bryan's house in Milwaukie, Oregon, for a hiking weekend on Mt. Hood, their Resident Assistant Nancy DeLano, BS ’76 (leisure studies & services), captured a photo before the adventure.
Keeping the connection
The next year, Kealy and Bender returned to school in Delaware but visited Eugene in the summer to reunite with the “D-Wing Ladies.” The group also traveled to Hawai’i to visit Lentz and Coon’s family homes.
“Patty showed us around . . . and Karen knew so much about volcanoes . . . We learned so much,” said Caswell. “That first group trip almost set a precedent that we can do this again and again and again.”
After Caswell, Bryan, Lentz, and Coon graduated from the University of Oregon, the group didn’t reunite in full until 2016, but they maintained their individual connections and stayed in touch with regular phone calls and written letters. Bender went on to attend medical school and Kealy earned a PhD in economics, with Kealy in Madison, Wisconsin and Bender in Washington, DC. Bryan visited both friends during this time.
Bryan and Caswell picnic at Fern Ridge Reservoir with their friends.
Lessons in friendship
Maintaining friendships over fifty years and thousands of miles is no easy feat. Though the group became fast friends as undergraduate students, both Bryan and Caswell shared that it has taken time and effort to maintain their bonds post-graduation. Over five decades, the group of alumnae have supported one another through life’s many ups and downs.
“This is the longest connection I've ever had with a group of people, and I treasure it,” Caswell said. “I think deep friendship, and not just with one or two [people], but a broad band of friendships, and to keep nurturing that, is so important . . . The differences between us . . . open your eyes to things you might not normally look at.”
Bender, Kealy, Bryan, Pavel Lentz, Coon, Caswell, and their friend Zora Pesio at their 2016 reunion in Port Ludlow, Washington.
Forever young together
In 2016, all six of the alumnae reunited in Washington, where Bryan currently lives. That gathering, forty years after the group first formed, made Bryan feel like she was back at the UO again.
“When we see each other it’s like no time has passed at all. You still feel 18 and 19 when you see each other, you just don’t look 18 and 19 anymore . . . That’s one of the things you’ll find no matter how old you get. We laugh so much when we’re together,” she said.
Ten years after that Washington reunion, the “D-Wing Ladies” are planning to all get together once again in South Carolina in May 2026.
Roommates Pavel Lentz and Coon danced in their room while a record played. "We did a lot of dancing that year," Bryan said.
Coon, Weber, Pesio, Pavel Lentz, Bender, Bryan, and Ota in one of their Carson Hall rooms.
When they started planning the trip, Bryan said one of the first things she did was pull out the letters that Kealy had sent her over their 50-year correspondence. “It was like getting to know her all over again,” she said.
These days, their communications look more like text messages, but nothing compares to the rare times when all six women can be together in person.
“There aren’t many days that go by that we don’t text each other. A lot of life lived there among us in 50 years. We owe it all to the University of Oregon where we ended up together 50 years ago,” Bryan said.
—By Sarah Bathke, BA ’25 (journalism), UO Alumni Association communications generalist