It takes two

Cathryn Lombardi settles into familiar role

by Daniel J. Fitzgibbons, Chronicle staff

Cathryn Lombardi (Stan Sherer photo)

uring Chancellor John Lombardi's three decades as a university administrator, his wife Cathryn knows one thing for certain about the role of an academic spouse: "This is a job - I just don't happen to get paid."

     Now settled into Hillside, their on-campus residence, Cathryn ("not Mrs. Lombardi") last week summed up the division of labor in their 39-year marriage in succinct fashion. "John runs the University ... I run everything else."

     It is a role that she has grown increasingly accustomed to as her husband moved up the academic ladder from director of Latin American studies and later dean of arts and sciences at the University of Indiana, Bloomington in the 1970s and '80s to provost at Johns Hopkins University to president of the University of Florida from 1990 to 1999.

     Now their partnership has brought them to Amherst, where they are again in the spotlight - objects of great curiosity within the campus and local communities. But there are some differences between Amherst and the loud and sprawling 42,000-student University of Florida campus in Gainesville.

     "Florida was like a rock concert," she says. "UMass is more like a chamber music performance - older, classier, more sedate, but just as significant in its own way."
The move north also fulfilled her desire to see more of the Northeast, an area they experienced only briefly while attending graduate school at Columbia University in the 1960s.

     "I jokingly say it's my fault we're up here," says Cathryn with a broad smile. "A year ago, we were talking about trips we'd like to take and I said I'd like to see fall leaves. I've never lived in New England - it's beautiful country with interesting architecture and geology."

     So when the chancellor's post was offered last spring, they considered the possibilities.

     "This [opportunity] interested John because of the challenges" facing UMass. "It intrigued him," says Cathryn, but "coming here, as in every one of our moves, was a dual decision. We make decisions as a team."

     Before their move in mid-June, her husband focused his attention on his new campus, while Cathryn coordinated the logistics of pulling up stakes and relocating at Hillside. Upon arrival, she set about getting the couple settled into the manse, handling everything but the chancellor's personal library, purported to number somewhere between 22,000 and 24,000 volumes. After nearly a dozen moves over their years together, she is well-versed in the mechanics of establishing a new home.

     Being part of the academic life has also given her a keen sense of purpose.

     "I believe there's a certain role for a chancellor's spouse to play," Lombardi says. "My job is to make people comfortable," gesturing around the sitting room at Hillside. "It's my job to make this the University's living room."

     As might be expected, the chancellor's residence hosts an unending stream of guests and official functions for faculty, staff, students and various dignitaries. Cathryn Lombardi is a key player in how those visits are planned and presented. She's also called upon to attend various events, ranging from athletic contests to receptions to occasional fund-raising trips that involve social occasions.

     "I'm on call for whenever I'm needed, but other people make those calls," she says. "How you do it, how big it is, changes with every job."

     Being married to the campus's chief officer also means the loss of some privacy, a lesson she learned in Florida, she said. Though not as easily recognizable as her husband with "his white hair and black Roy Orbison glasses," Cathryn found she, too, was in the public eye.

     "Someone asked me what I was singing in the car," she remembers. "After that, I assumed that someone was always looking at me."

     It also required a mental adjustment at home, she added. "If I was not upstairs, I was on. You can't just come downstairs in your robe to get a cup of coffee. You have to get completely dressed."

     Still, Cathryn says she truly enjoys her role, particularly the opportunity to join various organizations and boards and volunteer in various capacities. In Florida, she served on the boards of a number of local groups, including the local Red Cross, Ronald McDonald House, Gainesville Symphony Orchestra, and the United Negro College Fund.

     At UF, she was on the board of the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida Performing Arts and the University Women's Club. During her nine years as the "president's partner" at UF, she also worked with student groups, participated in a range of events and was involved with several programs and initiatives at the university's hospital.

     Nationally, Cathryn was on the executive board of the Council of Presidents' and Chancellors' Spouses of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC). In 1996-97, she chaired the council.

     While she's still getting familiar with UMass, she said she hopes to find similar pursuits tied to her "avid interest in fine arts" and her commitment to volunteerism.

     "I get to try a lot of different things - that's one of the advantages of this job," she said. "I get to meet a lot of people. ... I like the social part of it. It's something I would do even if John wasn't chancellor."

     As for volunteering, she expressed a strong belief that it is characteristic of people in the United States. "We are blessed to be able give back to society. We should always give back something."

     Cathryn was born in El Centro, an agricultural town a dozen miles from the Mexican border. At age 10, her family moved across the border to Mexicali, where her father managed a U.S. cotton company.

     A botanist by training, Cathryn met John Lombardi when they were undergraduates at Pomona College in California, their home state. After graduation, they were married and set off for graduate school in New York.

     John's dissertation research took the couple to Caracas, Venezuela for a year and half. While he delved into the national archives, Cathryn taught biology and English.
In 1968, John joined the history faculty at Indiana University. That introduction to campus life set the stage for the years ahead, says Cathryn.

     "John started off as an assistant professor," she recalls. "His job involved having members of the department over to the house. ... As director of Latin American studies, we had a lot of people at the house - students, graduate students, visiting professors."
The Lombardis' two children, John Lee and Maryann, were both born in Bloomington and for a number of years, Cathryn says, her job was to be the "traffic cop and glue" of the family. "I made sure everyone was where they were supposed to be."

     Along with being "super-mom," Cathryn also developed a freelance cartography business. Her work began when John needed a map for a forthcoming book. Since Cathryn could draw flowers, he said, how hard could a map be?

     Cathryn managed to produce the map, but to this day still cringes a bit when she discusses it. "It was horrible," she says. "Unfortunately, the book is still in libraries."
But that first map sparked an interest that blossomed. When John needed 22 maps for another book, Cathryn sought out a friend at IU who was a cartographer.

     "You either have an eye for composition or you don't," Cathryn says. "The rest is tricks of the trade."

     Serving faculty and various presses, the cartography flourished for 15 years until the family moved to Baltimore. The experience was ideal, Cathryn says, because "I could do it on my own time" and "it was something I could do for me and my intellectual growth."

     These days, with the children grown and living in Florida and New York, Cathryn pursues interests in quilting, needlepoint, genealogy and natural history, at least as her "official" duties allow. Hoping to "dig up some dead ancestors" in the records of the Northeast, she says genealogy is really about the "movement of man."

     While she has traced some of her family history back to the year 1000, there are still blanks to be filled in, says Cathryn. "The records are more detailed in the Northeast" because so many in the South were lost during the Civil War.

     But at the heart of her research, she says, is the question "what in their lives made them move or want to move?"

     Along with the fall foliage, she's particularly eager to attend her first hockey game, a sport with which she's completely unfamiliar. Since she and John are often called upon to attend athletic events, they sometimes divvy up the games. Very diplomatically, she declines to say which sports she prefers.

     She does recall an unfortunate incident at an Indiana University basketball game some years ago. Irate about an official's call, she hit her husband's shoulder so hard that he vowed never to attend another Hoosiers game with her. "And he never did," she says.

     With the semester underway, the Lombardis are pleased to see students passing by Hillside on their way to and from classes. Though she says to the students as she walks their dog, GB, she suspects that few realize who she and John are. That will come in time, she says.

     Meanwhile, she's ready and willing to pitch in with her husband to promote UMass Amherst to anyone who will listen, especially prospective donors.

     "They have to feel you're going to use their money to a good end," she says. "This is a first-class research institution that's worth everybody's investment."