February 14, 2018 | Atlanta, GA

By Zoe Kafkes

Boy meets Girl… in real life. Boy flirts with Girl. Boy decides he has to ask Girl out officially. Boy squeezes into a small phone booth on the third floor of the Architecture Building on Georgia Tech’s campus and calls Girl. Boy spends nearly an hour inside the phone booth convincing Girl to go on a date.

Gary Cornell was the Boy, an undergraduate in the fifth year of his bachelor’s degree in architecture. Like any architecture student, he spent countless hours in his studio each week, often sleeping on his drafting table instead of returning to his bed at Georgia Tech Presbyterian Student Center (now the Westminster Christian Fellowship).

Fast forward 45 years and that boy has become a Tech alumnus, city planning professional, and served as part time faculty for the School of City and Regional Planning.

As for the girl? Her name is Mary Jane and they’ve been married since 1975.

 They’re still big fans of the tiny phone booth presently standing in the east wing of the Architecture Building. Cornell swears it was all because of that phone booth.

How They Met

On Sunday, January 7, 1973, snow began to fall, covering the Atlanta area. Determined to still make it to Decatur Presbyterian Church for a youth event, Cornell and several of his friends piled into the car together.

At the youth event, Cornell met a young woman studying history from Agnes Scott College named Mary Jane. He spent all evening flirting with her until the event concluded and everyone went home. The roads back to Georgia Tech were no longer clear, so a church member that lived across the street from Agnes Scott invited the group of young men to stay the night.

The next morning, Cornell looked up Mary Jane and reconnected the same group from the youth event the night before to play in the snow outside on Agnes Scott’s campus. By afternoon, the temperatures had climbed enough that Cornell was able to drive back to Tech.

The Phone Booth

Classes started up again that Tuesday. Cornell had a busy morning but the moment he had a break from his studio, he raced to the phone booth right down the hall. Dialing Mary Jane’s number, he waited for her to pick up.

It took 45 minutes, but she finally agreed to go on a date with him that Friday, January 12, 1973. They went to see a play, “No, No Nanette,” at the Civic Center and out for pizza afterwards.

After the Phone Booth

Cornell and Mary Jane began to date. The next few months while Cornell finished his degree, Mary Jane started to become a consistent visitor to the studio. 

“She was a pretty weird girl, willing to put up with a guy that had such a crazy schedule,” said. Cornell. “She would even come over and help me do some of the drawings that just required putting little dots on paper, thousands and thousands of dots to illustrate sand or shrubbery.”

“We learned every nook and cranny in the Architecture Building,” Cornell said.

“We had to learn to play hide and seek when the security would try to lock the building. We had to hide until they turned off all the lights and left the building and then we could come out of our hiding spots and go back to work.”

“They locked it up every night at midnight, so before midnight you had to find a place to get out of the way where no one could see you. They’d come in and say, ‘time to close, good night!’ and bam the lights would go out. They didn’t spend much time looking for us, they knew we were there.”

Mr. and Mrs. Cornell

“She was a smart girl. But she wasn’t smart enough to stay away from me.”

The two were married in 1975. Both went on to earn master’s degrees; Cornell from Harvard University in City and Regional Planning, and Mary Jane from Columbia Theological seminary in Divinity.

They had two sons. One lives in Dallas and is a Presbyterian Minister like his mother. The other lives in Boston and works for a high-tech marketing firm. “We tried to get both sons to go to Georgia Tech, but they told us it was too much work and that they’d heard the stories,” said Cornell.

Returning to Georgia Tech

Cornell was already involved with Georgia Tech as an alumnus through his board position with the Presbyterian Student Center that was so important to his undergraduate years, but he knew he wanted to come back and teach.

In 2013, while simultaneously working as the Development Director for the City of Chamblee, Cornell taught the city and regional planning introduction course. Coming back to teach his own studio course was a bucket list item for him, and he finally crossed it off in Fall 2017.

The studio involved a project for the City of Brookhaven to establish redevelopment standards for the Buford Highway corridor: one of the most culturally diverse communities in metro Atlanta. Overall, the plan sought to redesign the highway corridor and the adjacent properties to more fully integrate the new 3-mile long Peachtree Greenway.

Cornell hopes to continue to share his passions with the students and young professionals putting so much time and love into what they’re doing in the Architecture Building. He is retired and does not plan to continue to teach but is always willing to offer support for the people who put so much of their energy into city planning and good design.

One of his favorite Georgia Tech designs, he admits, is that tiny phone booth on the third floor of the East Architecture Building.

“Save that phone booth,” he asked. “If it needs another home, I’ll carry it over [to my house].”