So many alumni met their future spouses at Seattle Pacific, and no two stories are alike. The Osbornes story begins with a weekly car ride to church.
Ask Bill Osborne ’67 about his recollections of Seattle Pacific, and he mentions the friendships formed in college and appreciates the intimate size of the classes at the University. “But I think my best memories are from when I met Susan,” Bill said.
Susan Gantenbein Osborne ’68, however, contends that Bill didn’t seem to notice her at first. Every week, Sue and her roommate attended church at Westminster Chapel in Bellevue, Washington.
“Bill would drive a carload of students over to Westminster Chapel. That’s how I first met him was on those drives … but he always had a girlfriend on his arm!” Sue laughed. She was just a passenger in the backseat of his car.
On a church retreat in the fall of 1966, Bill and Sue began talking. “The spark kind of started there,” Bill said. A week later, he asked her out for a date, although neither can remember what they did or where they went. Did they see the movie, Doctor Zhivago, or was that a later date?
Bill graduated in 1967 with a degree in business administration. The two exchanged letters while Bill was at Coast Guard boot camp, and Sue completed her degree in English along with a teaching certificate. A year after Sue graduated, the couple married in 1969.
Bill went on to have a successful career in health care finance. Sue taught for four years and then stopped teaching to raise their two kids. In her 40s, Sue discovered a new passion with a job in her children’s high school library. She returned to school to earn a master’s degree in educational library media and worked as a school librarian for 17 years.
Bill and Sue remember their time at SPU fondly by continuing to invest their time and resources into the community. A few years ago, the Osbornes chose to include SPU in their estate plans and created two endowed scholarships close to their hearts — one to support the SPU library; the other to fund teacher education scholarships. They say they are happy to provide a legacy to help future generations of SPU students. “It’s a win-win for us and SPU,” Bill said.
(This article originally appeared in the spring 2023 issue of Significance, a newsletter of the Office of Endowment and Gifts.)
