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When We Were Normal began as a passing conversation between myself and university archivist, Asher Jackson in 2015. It started as “wouldn’t it be nice to have an augmented reality tour for Robert Cormier’s Leominster and Fitchburg?” However, after three years of coming in and out of the university archive’s Robert Cormier collection, I had heard so many stories of the campus from Asher. From a Supreme Court case on free speech in student papers to launching the first Special Education program in Massachusetts, Fitchburg State had entirely too many good stories that deserved telling.

By 2017 it seemed impossible to leave all those stories behind in the windowless basement archive to chill. Students in my Fall 2017 Experimental Writing and Media Conscious Storytelling courses conducted the initial research and Faith Chesbrough, Dan Hein, Trevor Murphy, Aaron Canterbury and I completed the research and wrote the 35 stories included here.

While researching for When We Were Normal we found that Fitchburg Normal School students and their pupils at the elementary and middle practice schools applied their learning to developing the school’s infrastructure, revenue models, and marketing, we thought of our work as part of that legacy. To spread the joy, we asked Professor Stephen Goldstein and his students in Publication Design to help too by designing a brochure and this website.

Ultimately, the more we knew of Fitchburg State’s past the more connected we felt to its collective future. We are the product of these principles and its history lives on in us. Bringing that history above ground makes those stories that much more a part of our everyday lives on campus.