“You’re not up to the minute evidently, unless you’re talking either about the J-Prom (can’t help but know it’s Friday night at the Graystone ballroom and Henry Busse won’t spare the horses as far as the music goes), or the Merry-go-round of last weekend fame. Those two ultra social events are keeping tongues wagging.” — From Memo-Randoms, the society column in Varsity News, Feb. 15, 1939, by Ottilie Renz.
Among the people planning to return to campus for Homecoming Sept. 28-29 is one of the University’s oldest alumnae — 100-year-old Ottilie Nott. The 1939 graduate is returning to join the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the student-run newspaper Varsity News, for which she was a society columnist all four years she studied at University of Detroit. She shared her remembrances through her daughter, Pamela Van Oast.
Nott was Ottilie Renz when she started working for the paper in 1936. She signed up because she had done some writing in high school, enjoyed it and thought it would be fun. When she was assigned to write the society column, Memo-Randoms, a collection of reports on private and fraternity parties, weddings, group meetings and other school-sponsored social events. She was thrilled, because she was a bit of a social butterfly and it meant she could attend all the functions she wrote about without having to pay admission. Money was tight then and in addition to the hours devoted to the Varsity News, she was working at Hudson’s and D.J. Healy department stores to pay for her education.
Her name first appears in Varsity News in October of 1936, when she is listed as Society Editor with another student and Memo-Randoms includes this charming item:
“And so they danced and danced and had a swell time at the SCRIBES’ BALL ‘n then they left two by two until there weren’t any more and the Crystal ballroom of the Book Cadillac was once again all quiet save for echoes of the happy snores of the sound asleep little boy who curled himself up on a chair and shut out the light with his little fists and forgot all about the dance.”
Her private life might well have been a society column item itself. Renz was at a party with friends who were football players when she met Doug Nott, a Titan football star who had graduated in 1936. He was working at Ford Motor Co. and returned to visit his old teammates. He saw Ottilie and asked to be introduced. They dated for about six months before they decided to get married. They kept their marriage a secret until Renz graduated nearly two years later because at the time female University of Detroit students could not be married. The two were married until his death in 1991, two weeks short of his 80th birthday.
In her last Memo-Randoms column, which ran May 3, 1939, she wrote:
“Time goes so fast that in my hustling and bustling around to find things to tell you, and I have almost forgotten that I am on my way out. It doesn’t seem possible that I won’t be writing Memos after today, but I can truly say that although we’ve had our ups and downs, I have enjoyed my work of the past three years, and hope you won’t forget me too soon. … Speaking about swinging out Phi Gamma Nu is doing it in a big way Friday night at the Sweater Swing. The lads and lassies dressed in a very comfy style will wend their way to Glen Oaks that p.m. …”
Homecoming 2018 is just days away. We hope to see you here. Click here to register.