Scottish Rite Dormitory

It’s SRD Saturday Story Time!
As we mentioned in the Friday Fun Fact, the Sardine was the SRD yearbook from 1922 until the late 1960s. Last year we revived it and are so excited to offer this to our residents. Hopefully next year we’ll be able to recruit some of them to write their memories for the book like this young woman did in 1935.

An Ode to Inconvenience

Have you noticed my friends of the dorm.
That on cold days the room’s never warm?

Haven’t you found it as certain as fate
If you leave for a second, you’re minus a date?

It never fails that while you’re dressing,
You suddenly find the outfit needs pressing.

And always around the close of the week—
A lack of towels, a condition of which need I speak?

The candy, carried over from last Sunday’s meal, Has melted all over my new stocking heel.

I suppose as you read this you wonder why I don’t pick up and leave SRD high and dry. The answer’s as plain as the nose on your face. I’m honestly crazy about the place.

—THE SARDINE
Volume 13, 1935

It’s SRD Saturday Story Time!
If you want to be exactly factual, SRD as a place to house young woman at UT has existed for 106 years. A boarding house was used while the “Grande Dame” was constructed, finished in 1922 making it 104 years old. But there is no question that for well over 100 years SRD has been the place for making and growing lifelong friendships!

The Secret
In the spring of 1946, I was only sixteen, and ready to begin my freshman year at UT, my father’s alma mater. I had a confirmed room at SRD, but my best friend from North Dallas High School, Mary Strasburger, had been told there
were no more vacancies and she would have to be on a waiting list. I was so disappointed.

Someone kept a secret, however, and on the day my family was helping me move into the dorm I found out that Mary had not only gotten a room, but she was my roommate! What joy! We fixed up our room with rose-colored Bates bedspreads* and matching curtains and settled down to our
studies. Mary went on to get her R.N. at Galveston and later became the mother of six! Her husband, Dr. Robert Cade, invented Gatorade at the University of Florida. I went on to get my B.S. in home economics, married, and became
the mother of two. I pursued an early career in home furnishings, and a later one in nursing home therapeutic recreation. Mary and I are still best friends sixty years later!

—MARJORIE KNIGHT WATSON
1946–1947

*In 1850, the Boston Industrialist Benjamin Bates formed Bates Manufacturing Company, a textile mill in Lewiston, Maine. Bates of Maine became one of the great producers in the world of woven bedspreads. When the Bates Mill closed in 2001, a group of former employees formed Maine Heritage Weavers and continue to produce the
Bates style bedspread.

*Mary Strasburger Cade passed away in 2021
Read more about her here:
https://www.gainesville.com/obituaries/pgai0059187

Continuing our look back at the year at SRD.
Then we had some first day of school fun, celebrated when Taylor got engaged, and got ready for some football! 

This morning we said farewell to our last few residents of the 2025–2026 school year. We hope everyone has a great summer and we’re especially proud of our graduates who walk the stage this weekend! 🧡🤘🏻