Costa Mesa : OCC Really Pitches In for Professors’ Wedding

It could have been a Hollywood version of a fairy tale, “Indiana Jones Marries the Princess.” It also looked like it could have been a school project.

When Orange Coast College professors Dwayne Merry and Susan Smith were married Thursday afternoon on the tree-lined campus quad, it was as if the wedding party included the entire college community.

Prof. Ted Wall of the department of philosophy officiated at the ceremony. The flowers were provided by the horticulture department. The wedding was videotaped and photographed by student photographers and catered by student caterers. At the reception, the couple and guests danced to jazz performed by music instructor Alan Remington’s combo. The ice-sculptured “lovebirds” centerpiece was created by the school’s ice-carving class.

The ceremony also signified the union of two different, but at the same time similar individuals. Merry, in his mid-50s, is an anthropology professor who has been likened by himself and others to the swashbuckling movie character, Indiana Jones. Like Jones, Merry travels all over the world looking for artifacts, which he brings in to show to the students in his introductory anthropology class.

At the end of a brief ceremony, someone threw Merry an Indiana Jones-type hat, and the couple walked out, arm in arm, to the theme from “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Smith, 35, is a teacher of European history, concentrating primarily on British history. It was she who best described the newlyweds’ relationship. “His idea of heaven is two years in a desert somewhere digging holes. My idea of heaven is sitting at home-- warm, dry, safe and clean,” she said. “We do totally different things. . . . He goes out and finds history, and I tell people about it.”

But the couple, who will live in Corona del Mar, have found the perfect endeavor for their first project as husband and wife. Beginning in the summer of 1987, they will work on the dismantling and transplantation of a 13th-Century Anglican church from Covenham, England, to a church site in Corona del Mar.