"One of my grandchildren graduated this year, and our celebration was on Zoom. None of the virtual learning and events we have now would have been possible if Joe hadn’t invented DSL and gained a rigorous education at Cooper." 

In the 1950’s, Marie Lechleider married Cooper alum Joseph Lechleider who was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2013 for his invention of DSL. While Joe passed in 2015, Mrs. Lechleider remains connected to the school he loved and shares her thoughts on what Cooper meant to her family. 

I was born in Brooklyn, New York, the first in my family to go to college. My mother and father were first generation Americans, and my grandparents came from Italy at the end of the late 1800s. I was the only child for quite a while and I lived in a three-generation home until I moved out with my husband. 
 
I met Joe at a party. I was a senior at Queens College, and he was a junior at Cooper Union. It is truly a miracle that we got together, as we had very different temperaments, but we both grew up in Brooklyn, we came from similar families, and we were both the first in our families to go to college. Joe went to Brooklyn Tech high school, took the exam at Cooper Union, got in, and really applied himself. He worked on Saturdays to get pocket money. We managed to find free lectures and concerts for our dates. 
 
Joe was unique. With a wide-ranging curiosity, he never went after things that came to him easily. Our house was full of bookshelves filled with an eclectic collection of double-stacked books. He was charming, people liked him – not a bragger, and quiet. He was very creative, quietly so. As an engineer at Bell Laboratories, and later at Bell Communications Research, he thought about work every day and was often struck unexpectedly with the answer to a problem. He envisaged what became DSL one spring afternoon in the 1980’s and said, “it just hit me like a storm, one of the simplest ideas I had in my whole career.” 
 
That’s not to say that it came at all easily. Joe worked very, very hard. Cooper Union’s program was demanding and worthwhile, and Joe took his studies very seriously (even though he also knew how to make friends and have fun!). While working full time at Bell Laboratories, Joe completed both a Masters and PhD at night. We were just building our family, so we both worked extremely hard in those days. We knew that education and hard work were the keys to a better life. 
 
Joe and I built a very nice life together. We moved to New Jersey while Joe was working for Bell Labs. I had worked previously in market research and teaching, but we started a family soon after we got to New Jersey, and I became a stay-at-home-mother while Joe’s career was taking off. Where we lived there were so many Bell Labs people, and I would get together with all these very smart women that had babies too. We were part of the League of Women Voters and I had a turn as the president of that chapter. 
 
When my children were in school, I went back to work tutoring as a supplemental teacher and de-cided that I wanted to do more in special education. I went back to school and got a certification as a learning consultant, later developing programs for children with special needs and testing stu-dents to give them extra help if they needed it. I did that for the rest of my career, years until I retired. Our own children both earned advanced degrees, one becoming an oncologist and the other getting a PhD in computer science. I have four grown grandchildren, and I’m proud of every one. 
 
I marvel when I look back - I lived the American Dream, each generation getting better and better and making contributions to our world. People ask me, “why do you make donations to Cooper Union?” It goes right to the heart of my husband. If he didn’t go to Cooper, we wouldn’t have had the life, the intellectual surroundings, none of that. I feel that I would want to help somebody else do the same thing he did. One of my grandchildren graduated this year, and our celebration was on Zoom. None of the virtual learning and events we have now would have been possible if Joe hadn’t invented DSL and gained a rigorous education at Cooper. 
 
When Joe and I were young, if you had education it was easy to further yourself. It seems more challenging for students graduating now because of the job market, and I do feel sorry for that. But I also feel confident that when they graduate from Cooper Union, they have an advantage. They are well prepared and come out as good members of society. My advice to today’s graduates – you can overcome today’s challenges with hard work and a good Cooper Union education.