Campus News
The Cowell College Love Bank
When Rich Vicenti and Alesa Lightbourne were students at Cowell College in the 1970s, he courted her, but she was not available. They took separate paths after graduation. Nearly four decades later, finding themselves both single they finally began the romance that was not possible in their youth.
As an undergraduate at Cowell College, Alesa Lightbourne gave Rich Vicenti, a Cowell RA, a raincheck drawing on the “Cowell College Love Bank” and promising her love at an undetermined time in the future.
They went separate ways. They both started families and built careers. And 39 years later they were finally both single at the same time.
Lightbourne was teaching at a middle school in Iraq. She reconnected with Vicenti on Facebook. They began Skyping every day. When Vicenti sent her a photo of her raincheck, the message was clear.
Now married, Vicenti and Lightbourne live in Santa Cruz.
“Sharing a history together is like a firm foundation,” Lightbourne says. “We can crack jokes about Cowell and the 60s and 70s, and we both get it.”
Lightbourne has written an award-winning novel, The Kurdish Bike, inspired by the Kurdish women she came to know while working in Iraq.