Brewer celebrates retirement

Tears, laughter and memories filled the Student Union Building Friday afternoon at Montana State University-Northern as colleagues past and present reflected on and celebrated Denise Brewer's more-than a quarter century working in the campus's office of student activities and wished her good luck on her retirement.

"I can not believe it has been 27 years," Brewer said. "I feel like it was just yesterday, when I came here and started this career, basically."

Many said they did not want to see her go.

"Denise has been with us for 9,797 days," Kim Watson, the dean of Student Engagement, said as she read from prepared remarks to keep from crying.

"Denise, would you stick around to make it an even ten thousand?" added Watson, who has been Brewer's supervisor,

The room then erupted in laughter before Brewer responded with an emphatic, but cheerful, "No."

Over the years, as the institution went from Northern Montana College to MSU-Northern and students as well as chancellors came and went, Brewer, with her beaming smile and energy remained a fixture on campus.

Her time at Northern began in April 1989.

Her husband, Dave Brewer, moved to the campus that year to pursue his degree in nursing at Northern, while she and their middle- and high school-aged children remained at their home down in Great Falls.

That arrangement, Denise Brewer said, soon became too tough to maintain, so she and the rest of the family looked to move to the Havre area to be with her husband.

But, she needed a job.

Standing before those in attendance at the party, Dave Brewer told how he first heard about the opening. He had been talking with Tom Marshall, then the director of student activities, who it turned out had an opening for an administrative assistant in his office.

"He said, 'Well, what kind of woman is she?'" Brewer said. "I said, 'Well, she is not a gossiper and she works really hard.'"

He said Marshall urged him to have his wife give a call for a phone interview. Then she was told to come up to fill out an application.

She then was given the administrative assistant position.

At first, Denise Brewer said, her stay at Northern was supposed to be temporary. After her husband got his degree, the family would likely move back to Great Falls or move on to the next chapter of their life.

Little did Brewer know that Northern was the next chapter.

"Originally it was just a job, you know," she said. "Then, when I got here, it was the students that did it. It was the students that, they just kind of draw you in and they become your children, basically."

In 1993, Brewer was promoted to events coordinator within the office and then, in 2002, to the position of director of student activities.

Through the years, Brewer has helped organize a wide range of student activities including talent shows, lip sync shows, hiking and canoeing trips and volleyball games, just to name a few.

Since 2002, when she became student activities director, Watson said, Brewer has organized some 400 programs and events.

Among them have been the Glow Run, a homecoming activity where students, staff and other participants sporting glow-in-the dark shirts and neon glow sticks run in groups throughout the campus and Havre.

Brewer said she also remembers organizing a series of tribute-band concerts to raise money for the digital marquee out near the parking lot in front of Cowan Hall and, in one of her first events, laughed at a lip sync event where she dressed up like controversial singer Sinead O'Connor.

Those who have worked with her say Denise Brewer has not only worked at the university but made the students and the college a major part of her life.

Through it all, her colleagues say, Brewer, who often had to work nights and weekends in addition to standard business hours, has left her mark on Northern and on them.

"I know she has impacted a lot of different people in a whole lot of different ways, students and the colleagues she works with," said Northern Chancellor Greg Kegel, who was a professor at the university when Brewer started.

But, she said, they have also had an effect on her.

Some students who left Northern long ago, she said, still keep in touch with her.

She said she remembers how one night she received a call that a student who was working in the office had been injured. Brewer went to the campus and took the student, who was bleeding from his head, to the hospital.

The next day, that student was back at work. He had told his mother, about what Brewer had done for him. The student's mother later thanked her.

"And she thanked me, of course, but that's what we do here," Brewer said before the room of her colleagues. "We do that here at Northern."

With tears in her eyes, Brewer said that each year she still receives a Christmas card from that student.

Brewer said she has made plans for retirement. Her husband had foot surgery recently, but once he has recovered, she said, they hope to go to Nebraska to visit a grandson they haven't seen in three years.

But no matter what, she plans to still visit Northern from time to time. Northern faculty and staff, such as defensive coach Jake Eldridge, have told her she has to.

"He said, 'I better see you at the football games, and if I don't, we will come get ya,'" Brewer said.