Born in Barcelona, Asensio and her older sister were educated in Switzerland and England. "I was not a Spanish person who was always bound to be in Spain," she said recently. Still, if not for a stranger’s love of roses, Asensio and her husband’s passage to America from Franco’s Spain may have never happened.

A friend who grew roses introduced them to Robert Pyle, an American who in the 1930s made frequent trips to Europe in search of new breeds. This man, a Quaker from Pennsylvania, helped them leave. "We were lucky," she says, remembering her colleague Hilde Cohn, who came to Swarthmore not long after she did. "I had a feeling she had had a hard time."

Once here, the Asensios formed quite a team: She taught Spanish language and literature at Swarthmore, and husband Manuel taught the same at Haverford College. "I was more fluent in French and German than he was," she says, "but he was better in Spanish literature." They also regularly opened their home on Sunday evenings to their students. "I enjoyed langauges," says Asensio, now 93 and living in Haverford, Pa. And of Swarthmore? "I have good memories."

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