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By Vince Frieden, Associate Director of Development Communications
When Bob and Dorothy “Do” Haines attended Miami University in the midst of the Great Depression, there was no student center where they could stop for a quick bite or to meet up with friends. You wouldn’t have heard them complain, though. The high school sweethearts turned Miami Merger were pretty happy just to have the opportunity to attend Miami at all.
“In those days, if you were a college graduate, it was pretty rare,” Do recalled. “We were all broke when we got to college, but being there gave us a better chance of finding a job.”
While Do was able to squeak by to graduation on some money her parents had saved, Bob had to work a year to save up for college and then worked 40 hours a week throughout his college career. He earned his room and board waiting tables and serving as house manager at Phi Delta Theta and also made 25 cents an hour mimeographing tests in then-President Alfred H. Upham’s office—a job made possible through the New Deal’s National Youth Administration (NYA).
According to Bob, he was driven to press on and graduate by two fears.
“My father had lost his business during the depression, and I saw what that had done to my family. I pledged that was never going to happen to me,” Bob said. “I also knew that if I didn’t manage to stay at Miami, my girlfriend would be there without me and I might lose her. So I studied hard.”
It paid off. The 1941 graduates defied the odds and found jobs right out of college. Bob, after learning the food business with the Kroger Company, would go on to launch his own food brokerage business, Robert A. Haines Co.
Do, after working initially for Wright Aeronautical, would go on to teach and write a newspaper column.
Decades later, in an example of what's made possible by an American Dream realized, they have generously given current and future Miami students the opportunity to enjoy a student center and student experience that students of Bob and Do’s era could never have imagined.
In the mid-1990s, their support created Haines Food Court, Spring Street Market and Tuffy’s in the Phillip R. Shriver Center. Their endowment also has helped support student activities and entertainment within the Shriver Center, including the Miami AfterDark program.