The curator of history at the Michigan State University Museum, Val Berryman, has been at MSU for 48 years and knows the history of the campus inside and out.
In 1958 Berryman was a freshman art student at the university. He started working at the MSU Museum when he was a senior. He received his master’s in sculpture from MSU. Berryman said he has never left the campus for over a year.
“I love it,” he said. “I can’t think of a better, a more beautiful place to work or a better place to stimulate your mind, to stay young with working all the students that are here.”
Berryman works with students to catalogue objects, store them and provide them to exhibits and for educational use. Over the years Berryman has created exhibits of his own, including an annual Christmas exhibit and his favorite, Memories of MSU, the celebration of MSU’s 150th anniversary.
“That was a wonderful opportunity to learn about the campus history and to share it with others,” he said. “It was a very popular exhibit.”
Having been an MSU student in the 50s and 60s, Berryman was familiar with old campus traditions such as having to dress up for Sunday dinners in the residence halls, not being able to smoke on campus or men not being able to be seen walking with women. However, one of his favorite pieces of history in the sesquicentennial exhibit was when freshman used to have to wear beanie caps around campus.
“And that identified them as the lowly scum that they are and so upperclassmen could torment them for the rest of the year,” Berryman said. “They had to wear those stupid beanies all the time. If they didn’t and they were caught, they would get thrown in the Red Cedar. So that was one of the customs that I think everyone is glad is gone now.”
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