Sally Hume Mencimer

Sally Hume Mencimer administered the Aspen Center for Physics (ACP) for over thirty years. She was hired in 1964 by the Aspen Institute as Secretary for its new Physics Division, a lone building with ten offices, which became the ACP in 1968. Mencimer was then an English teacher at Aspen High School. In 1966, she stopped teaching, started a family, and devoted her time to the Center. In 1996, Mencimer retired on her 60th birthday.

In her first decade at the ACP, Mencimer expanded the Center, helping to add an outdoor seminar patio; a volleyball court; racks of 100 bicycles; stores of cribs and highchairs; and a new building, Hilbert Hall. She managed the Center’s money, established communications protocol, and began keeping a library filled with journal subscriptions. She planned regular group picnics and volleyball games to foster community, traditions which physicists keep today.

In her second decade, Mencimer directed housing, transportation, entertainment, physical activities, reservations, event tickets, and announcements by Snail Mail. She rented and maintained fifty to ninety properties, managing cleaning, laundry, repairs, maintenance, key access, and damage control. She participated in constructing Bethe Hall, where she installed a washer/dryer to do laundry for physicists. Mencimer also attended Aspen City Council meetings to represent the Center in zoning disputes.

In her last decade, Mencimer managed over ninety houses and condos; organized the Soviet program, bringing physicists from the Soviet Union to Aspen; and welcomed notable visitors like Margaret Thatcher, Steven Hawking, Richard Feynman, R. R. Wilson, and Hans Bethe. Finally, she helped to install copiers and electric typewriters, telephone lines, then computers and email, bringing the ACP into the digital era.

Mencimer remembers her career at the Center as a “lovely, fun time together” with colleagues and friends: “Our hearts were young and gay and we had the best of times.”