M. Patrick O’Donnell ’03 & Cheri Forry

August 2003

M. Patrick O’Donnell ’03 was looking over pictures that a friend snapped during a conference for Athletes in Action, a national Christian youth group, when one field hockey player caught his eye. “I thought she was attractive,” he says, “so I got her e-mail address.” After two months, O’Donnell and the field hockey player, Cheri Forry, arranged to meet each other in person on the fourth of July. “I knew we had a lot in common, but we needed to meet to see if a relationship would work,” O’Donnell says. The two hit it off and continued their e-mail correspondence. Forry, who graduated from Bloomsburg College in eastern Pennsylvania, soon began to supplement their conversations with visits to Harvard. O’Donnell says that by last summer, after two years of dating, he felt ready to pop the question. He contacted Forry’s mother and planned a surprise proposal at her church. During a morning service, a rose was placed on the altar at the beginning of the ceremony to signify a joyous event, but Forry, who thought O’Donnell would wait until after graduation to get engaged, thought nothing of the symbol. She was shocked to hear the preacher offer his congratulations on a congregation member’s engagement and see O’Donnell stroll down the aisle, clad in a tuxedo. “She was crying when she saw me,” he says. “She couldn’t believe it.” But O’Donnell had known that she would be emotional and stood ready to dry her tears with a handkerchief he had embroidered with her initials. He proposed through a microphone for all to hear. Shedding tears of joy, Forry accepted. And the whole drama was caught on tape, sure to be replayed at the wedding this summer.

Eugenia V. Levenson ’03 & Jamison Stoltz

August 10, 2003

Eugenia V. Levenson ’03 started dating Jamison Stoltz in her Oak Park, Ill. high school and has remained with him ever since, even though he attended college at New York University and studied abroad for a time while she was in Cambridge. “The fact that we’ve been able to do long distance is surprising to a lot of people, including ourselves,” she says. She says Stoltz’s proposal didn’t quite come as a surprise, as the two had discussed marriage before. One cold night over winter break, Stoltz convinced Levenson to come out with him, even though she was very tired. The couple was on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building in Chicago when Stoltz began fumbling in his pockets and pulled out a ring. But it wasn’t an engagement ring, just a special token he had given to her early in their relationship. It wasn’t until they were driving home and missed their exit that Levenson began to realize there was still another ring coming. Stoltz took her to the Chicago Planetarium, which overlooks Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline. “It was beautiful, shimmering, very romantic, but cold,” she says. In a moment that she describes as “nervous,” Stoltz got down on his knees, took off Levenson’s glove and slid an actual engagement ring onto her finger. The two will wed in a civil ceremony this September.