A memorial service for Prof. Emeritus Marie “Pete” Hartwig was held yesterday with champagne and strawberries as refreshments, an offering Hartwig”s visitors would have been given had they come to her home.
During the memorial, held at the University”s golf course clubhouse, where Hartwig played golf until her last year, friends and colleagues of Hartwig at the University and the Interlochen Center for the Arts recounted their memories of their deceased friend.
Hartwig, 95, died Dec. 23. A longtime Ann Arbor resident, she received a fine arts bachelor”s degree from the University in 1929, another in physical education in 1932 and a master”s degree in physical education in 1938.
Hartwig began teaching in the University”s physical education department and later took on the role of athletic administrator and professor of physical education. She became the University”s first associate director of women”s athletics in 1974.
Former student Eleanor Doersam and the Division of Kinesiology established the Marie “Pete” Hartwig Collegiate Professorship Fund in 2000.
“We want to use the proceeds from the fund so we can have someone who can come in here and do for kids what she did for us,” Doersam, the former principal of Lansing Eastern High School, said. “Miss Hartwig taught me how to become a high school principal, and I wanted to thank her.”
The Hartwig Building on State Street was dedicated to Hartwig by Athletic Director Don Canham in 1984. The building houses the athletic ticket department and athletic media relations.
Hartwig spent her summers at Interlochen from 1944 until 1982, training counselors and running the physical education program, a job Kinesiology Prof. Emeritus Rodney Grambeau said Hartwig “grew to love.”
“If ever there was a fair-haired staff person at Interlochen, that person was Pete,” Grambeau said.
Interlochen President Edward Downing said “Marie made a large difference, a lasting difference, at Interlochen. She led the counselor-in-training program. In fact, she wrote the book for it.”
Executive Associate Director of Athletics Michael Stevenson remembered, “The start of women”s athletics at Michigan was very controversial.”
It is a tribute to and partly due to Hartwig”s work that the Michigan women”s athletics program is currently “by far the best in the Big Ten,” Stevenson said. “I soon found Pete and I had two important things in common a great love for Interlochen and a commitment to the Yost philosophy of sports for all. She dreamed of what sports could be for women and for men on our campus.”
Hartwig is survived by two nephews, Tom Bloomer of Ann Arbor and Harlan Bloomer of Mankato, Minn., and caregiver and best friend Sheryl Szady of Ann Arbor. Memorial contributions are being accepted to the Hartwig Professorship Fund, U of M Kinesiology, 401 Washtenaw Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 or Interlochen Center for the Arts, P.O. Box 199, Interlochen, MI 49643.