Bill and Ginevra Packer met at Bakersfield College in 1960 while living in the dorms on campus. They reminisced of the time they shared at BC, attending sports events, going on dates along with various activities they took part in. Today they are currently retired and living in Bakersfield after 48 years of marriage.

For most of their lives they were raised in completely different areas. Bill was born in Long Beach, but spent most of his life living in Mojave.

Ginevra’s family was originally from Hawaii, but was forced to evacuate during World War II. So instead of being born in Hawaii like her parents and five sisters, Ginevra was born in Pasadena, California.  Her family moved back to Hawaii when she was around 2 years old. When she was 16, she moved to Modesto, California to live with her two older sisters, who are twins.

After high school, both Ginevra and Bill weren’t quite sure what to do.  Bill knew he wanted to go into pre-med, but thought he should go to a junior college because it was more cost effective.  Ginevra wasn’t sure what to major in. She thought BC would be a good idea to give her time to decide what she wanted to do.  She ended up majoring in business.

When registering for BC, both applied to live in the residence halls on campus. Bill started attending in 1959 and Ginevra started in 1960.

The dorms on campus, Ginevra explained, were built for two, but they squeezed three people in each room.  Students who lived nearby were encouraged to bring as little as possible with them.  “Being from Hawaii, I couldn’t just go home, so I had a whole footlocker with me.”

Bill, a sophomore, was the first guy Ginevra saw when she came to the dorms with her two sisters. “I looked around but there was nobody at the desk, and I thought, ‘what’s going on? What do I do?’ I happened to look up into the little lounge, and there’s this guy sleeping in a chair.

“So I went up to him and I said ‘what’s a man doing in a women’s residence hall?’” Bill explained to her that he was resting in between football practices and that the women’s hall was a quieter place to sleep than the men’s dorms.

Bill remembered resting in the chair, then seeing three women who looked like triplets enter the room. He thought to himself, “oh my God, I’ve died and gone to heaven, triplets checking in.

“That picture is still there [in my memory] they were dressed like triplets, I swear. She says they weren’t, they all had their left foot back and were all tapping in unison,” Bill recalled.

He helped Ginevra check into her room, then saw her later that night at the Icebreaker dance. “He came up to me.” Ginevra remembered, “I was so nervous, just moving in and the new experience of going to college and being left off there with no family. We started talking … then we started dancing, so he was asking me things like, do I smoke, or drink and what religion I was.  I told him I had three religions because growing up I had three different denominations. It so happened that one of those, the Congregatio, was the same one he grew up with. It just kind of blossomed from there.”

“I didn’t let her too far out of my sight after that,” Bill said. “Being a sophomore I made sure she knew where to go and what to do, I sort of guided her around.”

There were a lot of activities to take part in during their time at BC, most of their dates, Bill said, were centered around campus.

They would go for walks on campus at night. Bill spoke of certain spots around campus that couples would go to make out.  Students would go to places like the administration area, a bench out in the middle of the quad, and some went by the outdoor theater. “Everybody had their little niche on campus. The guys knew not to go certain places because there might be a couple making out. In those days, it was just making out.”

Bill was involved with sports and band while Ginevra was involved with Student Government, joined Lance and Shield, which consisted of putting on the homecoming dance and was the social chairman in the dorms. On Friday nights, she would organize the dances.

“She would make me dance with other people who were kind of wallflowers,” Bill said, “because she was the social chairman.”

Their meals they ate together in the cafeteria. Ginevra said all meals were provided to students living in the dorms. On Sundays, however, only breakfast and lunch were served, so when dinner came around they needed to find food elsewhere.

There were only three people on campus with cars, Bill recalled, so when they needed to go into town, they would take the bus or borrow a car. On Sundays, they would usually get a car, take orders from everybody, and then go down to the Foster Freeze on Niles Street to get everyone food.

On other occasions, Bill and Ginevra would catch a bus downtown to go get haircuts or go on dates at the Fox Theater. They would also go to the Kern County Fair and on trips to the mountains.

One of their favorite things to do was attend sporting events.  “They had busses that came and picked kids up to go to away football games. So I always went down on the bus and went to Long Beach, Santa Monica, whatever. That was fun,” Ginevra said.

In those days, Ginevra explained, the seating for the basketball and football games were always full.  “We had so many people going football games that they had to extend the seating. BC just seemed like they were known for having good teams,” Ginevra said, “We had kids coming from New York to play basketball, Pennsylvania for football, even Hawaii. A lot of those people stayed in Bakersfield and have been big contributors to its growth.”

After Bill’s sophomore year at BC, Ginevra went to spend the summer in Fort Lewis, Washington.

Bill’s family moved to Santa Monica where he spent another year pre-med at Santa Monica City College before joining the Navy.

“Our courtship continued, from Santa Monica. I’d drive down for the weekends. She didn’t like me the whole summer,” Bill recalled. “She said, ‘you need to date others and see what’s going on.’ So I finally gave up and the end of September I gave her a note. It said ‘I’d really like to be a part of your life again.’ After that we continued our relationship, got engaged in June and married in October of 1962.”

Since then, they have had two daughters and two grandchildren.  They are still happily married and celebrate their marriage every 6th of the month by going out to eat.  This is a tradition they have maintained even through the rough times in their life.

Now retired, they still attend BC games semi-regularly, mostly just basketball and volleyball.  Not football so much because, Bill explained, “going up and down the bleachers is too much of a hassle.” They also have a lifetime membership with the BC Alumni Association, which gives them discounts for games and gives them access to the commodities on campus.

Though they remain loyal to BC, they also hold season tickets to Cal State Bakersfield and have even followed them to their away games in the past. They’ve traveled to Seattle, Baltimore, Hawaii, Las Vegas and Columbia.

“We try to support them both,” Ginevra said, “but BC has a special place in our heart because if it weren’t for BC, we probably never would’ve met … 48 wonderful years.”

“In spite of being a two year school,” Ginevra stated, “it was more like being on a four year campus. It was a good experience.”