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her father and Spanish professor Phil
Gillette on the school tennis courts.
When it came time to recognize student
achievements, Anna won every award
the high school had to give. “My mother
was a very shy woman; she never wanted
her children to show off. We were sitting
in the chapel, and they were giving
these awards. I went up to get one, and
I went up to get two. My mother said,
‘Anna Ruth, I don’t want you to go
up anymore.’ And, of course, people
were clapping and I was so embarrassed.” After the ceremony,
Dr. Long brought the rest of the awards to Anna referencing
Mahomet coming to the mountain if the mountain wouldn’t
come to him.
Masters appreciated daily interactions with her classmates
and professors, but the person who “saved her life” was Mary
Landon Russell, the school’s music professor. The teacher and
student shared a passion for playing the piano and performing,
but they also supported each other through personal losses
and sadness. Russell’s young husband had been killed in a
WWII military training accident. Masters was terribly lonely
and homesick for Duluth, Minnesota, where she had enjoyed
an active and happy school life with many friends. Russell was
a demanding, but very supportive teacher. “I loved to practice
and play piano. I played all over Williamsport -- every women’s
club, church, or museum.” The joy in playing and performing
was the highlight of her senior year. It was also the beginning of
a friendship between the two women that would last a lifetime
and influence Anna’s future. After Masters had graduated from
Vassar College, married, and given birth to her first child, she
began a 48-year career as a piano teacher. “I loved it. I really
liked the children and I wanted them to learn to play the piano
the way I had. I wanted to be like Mary Russell.”
As Mary Russel was to Anna, Masters’ parents were an
integral part of Lycoming College life for many. The Sandins
regularly opened their home to the college community. “My
father had coffee every afternoon at 3:00, and he usually brought
a faculty member home with him or he brought some students
home with him. And my mother would bake a cake. There
probably would be five or six of them
that would sit there and talk.” At the
beginning of each school year, Anna’s
father would place an invitation in
every faculty mail box. “He would say
Ruth and Eric Sandin at home the first
Sunday of the month. At first nobody
would ever come, they didn’t know
what this was. But one or two in the
English department would come. Dad
would say, you coming over? What is
it? We are just going to get together,
my wife makes cute sandwiches. Then everybody came. They
discussed everything from the school to current events like the
conflict in Vietnam.”
Masters believes that her father was a leading influence on
what the college is today. “He demanded excellence from his
students. “Having achieved his doctorate degree over a period
of ten years while teaching and raising a family, Sandin believed
that the college must equip itself with faculty who had earned
terminal degrees in their fields of expertise, something that was
not the case in junior college years. Her father had great respect
for Dr. Long even though the two did not always agree about
how the college should go forward into the future.
Masters credits her mother’s contributions to the life of the
college as going well beyond making sandwiches and cakes.
“Mother was very kind to the students. She just felt so bad for
the young men who came. Whether they got a bad grade or they
had lost a girlfriend, she would invite them over to the house.
Mother was shy at times, but she was a wonderful conduit to my
father in every regard.”
“I know my mother and dad really loved Lycoming. It was a
great challenge to them. After their retirement, they would often
host former Lycoming colleagues at their home in Connecticut.”
Although she remembers her experiences fondly, Masters her-
self seldom returned to Williamsport and now barely recogniz-
es the College or the city. Many things have changed since 1948,
but Masters was happy to hear the neighboring church bells
still ring, just as they did when she was a student, and she looks
forward to the next chapter in the life of a college that meant so
much to her parents.
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www.lycoming.eduF E AT U R E S