The Wrubel Crittenden Family
Charlie Wrubel ’59, P’85, ’88, GP’26, ’28, Bill Wrubel ’85, P’26 and Jennifer Crittenden ’92, P’26 and Maisie Wrubel ’26
Despite a long family history at Wesleyan that stretches back to the 1920s, no one in the Wrubel family has ever felt any pressure to attend the University.
Charlie Wrubel ’59, P’85, ’88, GP’26, ’28 recalls choosing Wesleyan because it felt comfortable. Living on campus, he was just around the corner from his parents’ house in Middletown but felt like Wesleyan was a “home away from home.”
After graduating, Charlie moved to New York City, where he met his wife Myra Gold Wrubel, before ultimately settling in New Jersey. When two of their sons, Bill Wrubel ’85, P’26 and Robert Wrubel ’88, P’28, decided to attend Wesleyan, Charlie was happy they did so without any influence or pressure from him. The family tradition has since extended to the next generation with Bill’s daughter, Maisie Wrubel ’26 and Rob’s daughter, Annie Wrubel ’28 also attending Wesleyan.
“I was looking at a bunch of schools, mostly small liberal arts schools in New England,” says Maisie. “I actually think having had both my parents and a lot of my family go there was kind of a deterrent. I wanted to do my own thing.”
Her parents, Bill Wrubel and Jennifer Crittenden ’92, P’26, both television writers in Los Angeles, were thrilled when Maisie decided to attend their alma mater.
“The beauty of having Maisie at Wesleyan was getting to relive the college experience through her,” says Bill. “But beyond that, I bumped into a lot of people that I went to school with and reestablishing those relationships has been really magical.”
For Maisie, the community she found at Wesleyan was one of the most important and meaningful aspects of her “favorite four years.” From where she lived on campus to where she studied abroad (Bogota, Colombia) and even her decision to return to campus post-graduation as the Kim-Frank Creative Writing Fellow at the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism, Maisie was hugely influenced by her friends, particularly those who were above her.
“A big part of my Wesleyan experience was making friends older than me,” she says. “Having that advice passed down to me and being able to follow in their footsteps was so important to me.”
Bill agrees that one of the great things about Wesleyan is the older students who become friends that “may see things in you that maybe you don’t understand.” Though he came to Wesleyan as an English major, it wasn’t until a playwriting class with Tony Connor, professor emeritus of English, that he realized he wanted to become a writer. Following the performance of a play he wrote, a classmate in the year above him shared a piece of advice that stuck with and motivated Bill: that he “should be writing for television.” After graduation, he spent a decade in New York before joining two of his closest Wesleyan friends—Jon Turteltaub ’85 and Craig Shapiro ’85—in California. Even 10 years after graduation, it was a full circle moment to have his relationships from Wesleyan give him a soft place to land when he moved to Los Angeles to finally pursue becoming a television writer. Bill found success in Hollywood, writing and executive producing a variety of television shows, including Modern Family, Ted Lasso, Sports Night, and Will & Grace.
For Jen, whose writing and producing credits include The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond, Seinfeld, and Veep, it was a fellow film major in the year above her that helped her see that she could pursue a career in writing. Encouraged to apply for a summer internship at The Late Show with David Letterman, Jen was responsible for tidying Letterman’s office where, she would see his monologue jokes on his desk—how he crossed things out or changed them—and she paid attention to which ones he ended up using in the show.
“I started submitting monologue jokes and he started using them,” she says. “I thought ‘I have a job in TV! I’m writing for David Letterman! I don’t even need to go back to school.’”
She ended up staying in New York for a semester before returning to Wesleyan to finish out her senior year. Having regrets about “rushing through” her senior year, getting to experience it again through Maisie’s eyes was particularly joyful.
“I wish I had Maisie’s senior year,” says Jen. “I feel like she got the most out of Wesleyan.”
One thing they all agree on: Wesleyan was hugely influential and instilled in them a set of values that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. Charlie still gets together with his senior year roommates every other month—a tradition he started more than 50 years ago—and Bill and Jen acknowledge that the Wesleyan community is still very much a part of their social fabric.
“When I’m aspiring to be the best version of myself, I think of the people I knew at Wesleyan who brought out the best in me,” says Bill. “I don’t ever want to be too far from that person.”