There have been many Lehigh alumni love stories and marriages since 1974, but Tom ’74 and Jill Frey Duerig ’74 can claim bragging rights to being the very first since Lehigh opened its doors to women.
The two first met at the beginning of the 1972-73 academic year, when they lived on opposite sides of Centennial I. Jill, a fundamental science major with an admitted weakness for sports cars, saw Tom, an engineering physics major, working on his Triumph TR4 in the parking lot and struck up a casual conversation. But they didn’t become seriously acquainted until that October.
“We sat down at a table in Rathbone with a mutual friend who then got up and left,” Tom recounts. “That left the two of us to talk.”
They discovered a mutual Swiss heritage. Jill shared that her father worked for TWA, and she could fly standby anywhere in the world for free. She said she would love to go visit family and ski in Switzerland over the winter break but couldn’t find anyone to go with her. Tom volunteered to accompany her and, after introducing their respective families during Parents’ Weekend, they were off to ski in December.
As first dates go, it was less than stellar — and a little dangerous. Tom may have … exaggerated … his skills as a skier. The two hit the slopes of the famous Lauberhorn mountain in the Bernese Alps, where his lack of expertise soon became apparent.
“You know, what young man doesn’t exaggerate his skills a bit when talking to a young lady?” Jill laughs. “But this was just beyond the pale. We kept going up and up the mountain, and I’d say, ‘Do you want to get off here?’ but he’d say, ‘No, let’s keep going,’ because he was panicking and didn’t want to ski down."
“I fell the whole way down, basically,” admits Tom. “And that’s when she realized I had never skied before in my life.”
That “first date” resulted in a sprained ankle for Tom and cuts to the head for Jill when she attempted to help Tom out after a fall and was attacked by her own ski. But in spite of it all, the couple kept up their relationship after returning to Lehigh.
Future dates were on the cheap (Tom had spent all his money on the Switzerland trip) but romantic nonetheless. “Our idea of ‘going out’ was to get together enough money for gas so we could drive to the lookout near Cedar Crest College to watch the sun rise, then get fresh, hot donuts that they’d give us two-for-one because it was so early,” Jill recounts.
Tom remembers sunrise-viewing from the tower in Packer Chapel, which the couple would climb at around 3 a.m. “It’s not allowed anymore. Actually, it wasn’t allowed back then, either!”
So did Tom propose romantically during one of those pre-dawn outings? Not exactly. “It was never really a question — more of an assumption that we’d get married,” Tom says.
Jill concurs. “His idea of proposing was to ask me, ‘What do you think the chances are that we’ll eventually get married?’ I jokingly said, ‘Oh, about 50-50.’ So the next time I saw him (at the beginning of summer break in 1973) he showed up at my parents’ house with a diamond ring his mother had given him, opened it up, and said, ‘Look!’” Jill laughs. “We got married about a year later, a few weeks after graduation in 1974.”
“I think we’ve been very lucky in love. I know not everybody is."
Tom and Jill have been together ever since. Tom’s skiing skills improved dramatically over the years, and the Duerigs have enjoyed many family ski vacations. There are three Duerig children — the first of which, daughter Kristin born in 1978, they believe may be the first dual-Lehigh alumni baby! — and six grandchildren. Tom is retired from Nitinol Development and Components (now Confluent Medical Technologies), the medical device company he founded in 1991, and has since founded and serves on the board of other young companies. Jill retired as general manager of a water utilities company and is very active in Rotary International.
“I think we’ve been very lucky in love,” Jill says. “I know not everybody is. Tom is a lifetime partner, my other half. So when I think about it, I feel incredibly lucky.”