'Not Just Men Anymore'

Mar 31, 2019

By Ryan Clark

It was the Dean of the Evening College who first realized Patty could be the first woman at Xavier to graduate from the undergraduate day division classes. He had to sit her down and explain the situation.

“It would mean I’d have to take an extra class, but we were pretty excited,” says Patty Burke (’70, ’73).

Back then she was Patty LaGrange, and she’d been taking classes through the Evening College at Xavier since 1966 because her father, Glen, was a professor in psychology. It had been done that way for years, professors’ daughters taking day classes through the Evening College — they called themselves “faculty brats” — but in the fall of 1969, the university allowed women to register for classes as part of the undergraduate day division. Based on her previous credit hours, Patty was in line to be the first to graduate with the men in the daytime section.

There was an evolution, not only at Xavier, but throughout the world, as political unease, demonstrations, Civil Rights, the Vietnam War and the Hippie Movement signaled a time of change for American youth. When Patty, who had been taking classes at Xavier for three years, heard they were going to allow women to join the men in the day school, she jumped at the chance.

“We would meet in the ladies’ room on the first floor of Alter Hall,” she remembers. “There were six of us. And we really bonded. As the years went by, more women would come, and we’d all go to The Grill for lunch together. We stayed away from the cafeteria because there may be some men there who were rude and didn’t think we belonged.”

Some professors didn’t like the idea either, she says, and she recalled one who wanted to throw her out of class for wearing pants instead of a dress on a very cold winter day. But others would go out of their way to make sure she was comfortable in the environment. The students at the school newspaper reached out to her to include her voice on the staff. The student government did the same.

And with change going on in the world, Patty says Xavier changed, too.

She graduated in 1970 with a degree in psychology, then went on to earn a master’s in the same subject three years later. She married Tim Burke, who had served as student body president her senior year. They had three children, and she worked as a teacher for five years before leaving to work for the city of Cincinnati for 28 more.

Now, at 71, she’s retired, enjoys playing with her grandchildren and loves giving back to Xavier — whether it’s financially, or through her own talents. She spent three years on the Alumni Board of Governors from 1971-74, and is a member of the Founders’ Club and Deans’ Club. She and her husband have been donating to Xavier since the mid-1990s, giving to, among other things, a project near and dear to her heart: The Glen A. LaGrange Memorial Scholarship, named after her father.

“The university was so good to us,” she says. “And because of my father I was a part of Xavier before I ever went there. We’d come to picnics, and all the faculty and staff kids would play. It was always where I saw myself.”

Later, in 1970, she stood as the only woman in the rows of daytime graduates.

“And Fr. (Paul) O’Connor, I don’t think he meant anything by it, but he kept saying during our graduation breakfast how we were becoming Men of Xavier,” she says.

One of the priests approached her. “I’m going to tell him it’s not just men anymore — isn’t that right, Patty?”

“And I told him yes,” she says, “he was exactly right.”