Boxer Love Story: Rich Ryan '78, OD '79 & Marcia (Pogue) Ryan '79

The night that Marsh Hall burned, another spark struck at Pacific University.

Rich Ryan was a resident assistant in Walter Hall in 1975, when Marcia Pogue came to visit campus as a prospective student. They met in the evening, when some friends were playing cribbage, and reunited in the melee a few hours later, when the administrative center of the campus caught fire.

“There was a lot going on,” Rich Ryan '78, OD '79 told Pacific magazine in 2015, around the 40th anniversary of the infamous fire.

“Marcia comes up and says, ‘What’s all this?’

“I said, ‘It’s in your honor. They’re burning the school down.’

“She chuckled at that, and we stood there and talked and watched.”

Rich went on to earn his doctor of optometry degree from Pacific in 1979, and Marcia (Pogue) Ryan graduated with a degree in speech pathology the same year.

They married shortly thereafter, and had three daughters and seven grandchildren.

Marsh Hall, meanwhile, was renovated and rededicated in 1977 and remains the hub of Pacific’s Forest Grove Campus.

Read more Boxer love stories at pacificu.edu/lovestory.