Alumni couple from Metropolitan State College’s first two graduating classes share their story

This story appears in the fall 2025 issue of MSU Denver Magazine.

He was a reluctant student who had to be dragged back to college.

She had come home to Colorado after finding college in Kansas wasn’t right for her.

Each found their way to a new college, then known as Metropolitan State College, and to each other.  Now, Doug and Suzanne Holcombe have been married for decades. Both are retired, Suzanne from teaching elementary school, Doug from teaching and coaching. As they look back on those first years of what is now Metropolitan State University of Denver, they share memories of college experiences that were far from typical and that changed and shaped their lives.

There was no campus then, Suzanne recalled. “The student union was in an old garage,” she said. “We took PE classes at the Y. It was a real trick if you were in the Double A Building to get to the Cherokee Building in the time allotted between classes. We did a lot of walking.”

Initially, Doug Holcombe’s and Suzanne Williams’ academic careers sputtered. Doug had an athletic scholarship to another Colorado university but was done in by an essay class. “I flunked out because I couldn’t spell,” he said.

Suzanne had attended college in Kansas but wanted smaller classes and hands-on learning.

Once Doug enrolled, faculty “gave me the concept that I could make a difference,” he recalled. “One person can do something incredible.”

RELATED: Opportunity rising

Doug and Suzanne met working at Winter Park over Winter Break, then reconnected when a group of students went to check out the new McDonald’s on Colfax Avenue.

Suzanne earned her Education degree in 1969; Doug still had to take a few more classes to complete his because he had taken that one-person-making-a-difference idea seriously.

In 1968, as student-body president, he spent so much time at the state Capitol convincing legislators to fund the college and allow its students to participate in intercollegiate athletics that he didn’t take enough classes to graduate on time.

“They were cutting our budget every year, trying to make [MSC] fail,” he said of the state legislature.

Doug recalled that one advocate for a rival university “got up on the floor and said, ‘We don’t need to fund those hubcap thieves,’” referring to MSC students.

Holcombe got mad and “got six of the sharpest students I could find and took them up there to meet with legislators.”

That wasn’t his only political success. He recalled sitting in the old student union one day when fellow student Lauren Watson walked in. “He said, ‘I’m getting sick and tired of paying these parking tickets.’”

At the time, downtown meters allowed only one-hour parking, not enough time for students to attend class and get back to their cars — something well-known to the city’s parking enforcement staff. So Holcombe and Watson, who later founded the Denver Black Panthers, gathered 15 students and staged a sit-in at city hall. As everyone in Denver knows, two-hour parking is now the downtown norm.

As student body president, Holcombe also helped organize a multi-institution student protest downtown against the Vietnam War and in favor of lowering the voting age to 18 — the minimum age of young men being drafted.

Holcombe didn’t serve in Vietnam, because he once agreed to go skydiving. “I did a lot of crazy things back then,” he said.

When he jumped out of the airplane, “the wind picked up, and I came down and hyperextended my right knee and had to have surgery.”

The injury was enough for the draft board to send him home. It wasn’t enough to sideline him.

“We were not just your average high school graduates,” Holcombe said, recalling the pluck and dedication of his fellow students. Many of them were veterans of the war, many then, as today, were older and, like Holcombe and Williams, first in their families to attend college.

“We were people of purpose,” he said.

That purpose followed the couple throughout their careers. “We’ve kept our ties with MSU Denver,” said Suzanne Holcombe, who noted that their son also has a degree from their alma mater. “I think that it’s important for people who have been there to stay involved.”

What does MSU Denver mean to them so many years later?

“It’s supposed to be there for the average guy or the vet who comes back or the person who dropped out and then comes back,” said Suzanne.

Doug said MSU Denver was his “last chance” for a college degree. “It was a last chance for a lot of kids. And a first chance for a lot of kids.”

Learn more about alumni relations at MSU Denver.