My Old House: 232 Lowes St.

On the fifth floor of Marycrest, seven first-year students became the closest of friends.

“When we had to move into a house junior year, we applied for housing for seven girls, and there were very few houses that would hold seven girls,” Jeannine Doty Villing ’71 said. “But one of them was 232 Lowes, and we loved that house. It was perfect.”

The house was so perfect that the roommates lived there until they graduated.

Inside the four-bedroom, one-bath house was a typical living room, dining room and kitchen, but more importantly it was the place where memories were made to last.

The ladies still laugh about crawling out the back window to sunbathe on the roof and recall their dinners that brought them together almost every night.

“Being together,” Villing said, was her favorite part of the house. “The most important thing was sisterhood, and it continues to this day.”

Playing Jeopardy was one of their favorite activities to do together.

“We had very aggressive Jeopardy games,” Villing said. “We would bang on boxes and milk cans when we knew the answer. We played with our roommates and the guys once a week.”

Those guys are the “beaus” to the housemates on Lowes. Three men from a house around the corner started dating three roommates from 232 Lowes, and as history tells it, they all got married and are all still married to this day.

Together, these three couples are the nucleus to “Lowes and Beaus” — a name you can see printed and hung on a custom banner at every group reunion.

“Lowes and Beaus” can be seen having their annual reunion this August at a cottage on Houghton Lake, Michigan. The banner will be there just as it has been for nearly 50 years.