Alumna's Milestone is One for the Ages

Now just days away from her century mark, Roberta Eidemiller heads a family rich in San Diego State history.

In January 1942, she was Roberta Billings, a graduate of San Diego High. She enrolled at San Diego State College on a scholarship, became a Phi Sigma Nu sorority pledge, and soon met Donald Eidemiller (‘43), a fraternity man on a fast track to graduation and then deployment to World War II with the U.S. Navy. Her daughter, Marilyn Skelley, said the couple married in August 1943 — not at all an early age for women to do at the time.

And while Eidemiller would withdraw, re-enroll, but never graduate, it proved to be the beginning of an enduring family relationship with the institution as it evolved into San Diego State University. The Eidemillers eventually settled into a home just two blocks from campus; the couple were longtime Aztec football season-ticket holders and all three kids got at least part of their college education there.

“We have always been very close to San Diego State,” Skelley said. “We kind of live it.”

Eidemiller, whose husband died in 2013, turns 100 on January 2. 

In years gone by the day was typically low-key, coming as it does after a string of family-oriented holidays. This time, however, the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and a few children of her friends will converge to mark the birthday with an afternoon reception at her home, the same College Area residence in which the family grew up.

Under care, Eidemiller remains conversational, takes walks and enjoys listening to classical music and the crooners of her young adulthood: Sinatra, Crosby, Como. She has been living with Alzheimer’s Disease for the past few years, no longer able to reminisce about her college days.

Skelley, however, outlines a rich history for the family on Montezuma Mesa. Her mother “studied chemistry, botany and biology … and she got straight A’s.”

“She was that type of student where the only grade would be an A,” Skelley added. “Which is probably the reason why she quit, because there’s not enough time to be a mom and get straight A’s.”

A 1943 yearbook shows Eidemiller in a nurses’ aid class; Skelley recalled that her mother was a “candy striper” ? a volunteer at a hospital, named for their red-and-white striped pinafores ? and had considered working as a nurse.

Donald Eidemiller’s 1943 graduation was followed by a hiatus from San Diego of about 13 years, beginning with the U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School in Illinois and an assignment with Amphibious Forces-Atlantic. Eidemiller was part of the D-Day assault on Normandy.

Several other relocations came about as Donald pursued advanced degrees at the University of California, Berkeley, and Indiana University, and taught at Texas A&M while Roberta raised the kids. The family returned to San Diego State for the fall 1956 semester. 

Donald was hired into the faculty of the geography department where he taught meteorology and climatology; in the early years of the institution’s push to become a research powerhouse he and a colleague got a National Science Foundation grant to work with educators on the physiology, climatology and botany of the southwestern U.S.

Roberta returned as a full-time student in the natural sciences and assisted her husband in the field by collecting, pressing and cataloging southwestern plants.

On campus

For several years she was a temp for Aztec Shops during the frantic registration period, working as a clerk at the counter of a store originally located in a Quonset hut. 

Although Eidemiller never completed enough courses for a degree, she maintained connections and kept her enrollment status for three full decades by auditing a twice-weekly swim class.

She joined a social organization of faculty wives, which led to longstanding friendships and bridge games. “It involved gloves and hats and going out and buying new clothes,” Skelley said. There were teas with the President Malcolm Love’s wife, Maude Love.

Eidemiller somehow snagged scarce tickets for the whole family to attend President John F. Kennedy’s commencement address at Aztec Bowl on June 6, 1963. Donald Eidemiller was among the faculty members invited on stage with the president; Skelley remembers being “overwhelmed with the specialness of the occasion as we shared our emotions in a late luncheon hosted by my mother.”

And, in a still-visible example of civic activism, Eidemiller was also part of the College Area Community Council’s successful push to require parking permits along the streets surrounding SDSU, which had become congested with students looking for free spaces.

All three children became Aztecs.

Skelley earned an undergraduate degree in social science and a teaching credential that led to a 32-year career in the Sweetwater Union High School District. 

Robert Eidemiller attended for two years then transferred to UCLA; Kathleen Glanville earned an undergraduate degree.