Coming Home by Joyce H. Brusin In 1967 Sheila Skemp was a member of the UM Spurs and a resident of the Brantly Hall women's dorm. In 1997 Sheila Skemp '67 returned for Homecoming and stepped back into a UM classroom. History professors Kenneth Lockridge and Anya Jabour invited Skemp to speak to students in history and women's studies about Judith Sargent Murray. "She was the closest thing to a feminist in her day," says Skemp of the eighteenth century poet, playwright and novelist, who moved from New England to the early colonial settlement of Natchez, Mississippi, near Skemp's present home. Now a full professor of history at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Skemp's interest in colonial and revolutionary America began when she studied with former history Professor Jack Van de Wetering at UM. Skemp was keeping with family tradition when she chose the Missoula campus. Her father, Kenneth W. Skemp '49, graduated with a degree in history and political science. Her mother, Lucy Leet Skemp '42, graduated in education. "The University of Montana proved to be the ideal place for me," says Skemp. "It was a very nurturing environment. I wouldn't have continued my education if it hadn't been for the encouragement of the faculty there. "When I entered the graduate program at the University of Iowa my professors were amazed at the background and knowledge I had in history," she says. Skemp completed her doctorate at Iowa in 1974 with a dissertation titled A Social and Cultural History of Newport, Rhode Island, 1720-1765. Skemp began teaching at the University of Mississippi in 1980, after stints as visiting professor at universities in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa. Her teaching and research have won her numerous honors. In 1985 Skemp's colleagues and students named her the school's first Outstanding Teacher in Liberal Arts, and students in the campus chapter of Mortar Board selected her as Outstanding Faculty Woman for 1990. Since 1998 she has directed the University of Mississippi's Sarah Isom Center for Women. Outside the classroom Skemp has made her research available in three recent books. Two of them examine the lives of the American revolutionary Benjamin Franklin and his son William, who chose to remain loyal to the British side. William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King, was published in 1990 by Oxford Press; Benjamin and William Franklin: Patriot and Loyalist, Father and Son, appeared in 1994 from Bedford Press. A third book, Judith Sargent Murray: A Brief Biography with Documents, was published last year by Bedford. Skemp's Homecoming visit left her time to look over the UM campus and reminisce. "I was incredibly impressed with the changes on campus--both the physical changes and the intellectual atmosphere. Students came to a lecture the afternoon of Homecoming and they asked good questions. I saw how they interacted with one another at the University Center," she says. "I loved UM in 1967, but I think I would like it even more now."