There’s a reason they call it HomeCOMING. Because people come from all over the country, from all over the world, to one place, one city block. And there’s a reason they call it HOMEcoming. Because each year, all the people who come make the campus feel more like a home—with more fathers and mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, more stories than can fill a church, a football stadium, a street fair. Everyone comes to catch up with old friends and see how the campus has changed. In the thick of it, the whole weekend seems like a random hodgepodge of conversations and events. And maybe it is. But in the end, all the jumbled conversations rise out of the chaos to make sense—the sense of home.
Perhaps Homecoming’s signature event is its first: Illumination. Students and staff worked all through the day to set up the paper bags filled with sand and candles. That night, as dusk settled over campus, the old lights came and mingled with the new lights at the Helios fountain as current students Nathan Barrow and Nick Stanton provided music for the evening. Even this early in the celebration, reunions were happening.
A group of women gathered together around Helios that night in the comfort of old friends. Jane Lockhart, Maria Malernee, Kim Petty, and Shari Potter, all attended AU from 1969-1973. They met as freshmen and remained friends ever since. They reminisced about dorm life in Morrison Hall when they used to teepee each other’s rooms and have water balloon fights. Now years later, all of the women have married and have families. Jane noted, “Marie started emailing us [several years ago],” and since then, they’ve kept in touch.
Even as the crowd dissipated, the luminaries kept burning through the late night and early morning. The next day promised to be the fullest of them all.
Saturday morning was celebrated in song with the Celebration of Song at Park Place Church of God. A number of acts from days past reunited to perform for over 600 AU Alumni and friends. They ranged from Selah, The Kingsmen, to the Presence Quartet. One of the groups that performed, the Contemporaries, gathered before the event for photos and breakfast. As they remembered together old times, their story became yet another part of the medley that made Homecoming 2006.
The Contemporaries started in 1959 and toured for three years with no official sponsor. Their performance at the Celebration of Song was their first reunion. Some new faces from a younger generation were featured in the reunion, as some of the older members had passed on. Although the group is no longer together touring, Contemporary Dave Reynolds teased, “Most of us got famous, except for Gaither.”
As the doors opened for the Celebration of Song to end, the 2006 Street Fair on University Boulevard was well underway. In the shadow of Dunn Hall, the Street Fair featured many different booths, music, games, and foods. Each of the social clubs had their own booth, including Dativus, which celebrated its 35th Anniversary this year. Their Homecoming staple comedy show, Cheap Thrills, ran on Friday night and displayed the talents of not only current members, but also that of older members from years past. Vice President Eric Martinez said, “It’s been great to… incorporate the older Alumni from the 70’s and 80’s and the skits that they did.” Over a thousand people took in Cheap Thrills this year. On Saturday night, Dativus also celebrated their anniversary with dinner and worship. As the older members engaged with the newer members, Martinez noted, “A lot of times being in Dativus makes you feel, ‘We’re always in trouble.’ But just talking to [the older members made me realize] we’ve always been [this way]. That’s just the kind of group we have… And it’s good to see where we came from.”
Other booths at the Street Fair raised money for different campus organizations, such as SGA, Cheerleading Squad, and ISA. The residents of the men’s dorm, Dunn Hall, also showcased a booth selling hot dogs and a football throw. All the proceeds went to support a group of other young boys in an African village called Kasubi, whom the Dunn Hall men see as their “little brothers.”
The Alumni Office also hosted a tent at the Street Fair which held displays of different dorm room designs throughout the decades. The Gerlich family from Canyon, Texas visited the booth with their two young daughters Becca, 8, and Bailee, 5. Nick and Becky Gerlich are both Alumni of Anderson University. However, they almost never met since Becky started in 1984—the same year Nick graduated. But as part of one last hurrah, Nick decided to go on the annual Spring Break bike trip. As serendipity would have it, Becky Brewbaker was also biking with the group down to Florida. That was when the couple-to-be met. After they married, they decided to raise a family and adopted their two daughters from China. Their story was just one of many being shared as hundreds gathered to pack the Street Fair this year.
Even as the crowds thinned on University Boulevard, the Ravens were battling Franklin in the Homecoming football game. Before Macholtz Stadium was built, people gathered all the way around the field to watch the game because there was no good seating available. In the mid-1990s, a group of 1950s graduates decided to set up a tent for their decade so all the Alumni could gather and chat during the game. They hoped that it would encourage other decades to do the same, and the whole field would be encircled with a kind of promenade of decade tents. Although it did not have the intended affect, the 1950s booth continues to be a mainstay at the Homecoming game.
Among the crowd gathered in the 1950s tent was Paul and Virginia Clay. Both of their AU experiences prepared them for their future careers: Carl’s in teaching industrial arts at Anderson High School, and Virginia working as a medical technologist. Besides the new editions and the change in class sizes (compare around 30 graduating to now over 400), the campus has changed in another way. Virginia explained, “The community’s attitude has changed toward Anderson College. I did not really want to announce that I was going to Anderson College.” But now, years later, the college has been growing by leaps and bounds. Record enrollments and the new campaign show that in years to come, new memories and new stories and new people will make Anderson University their home. AU certainly has a different reputation than it did fifty years ago. And while Homecoming 2006 culminated that Saturday with class reunions, the new attitude is assurance of more Homecomings to come. Years from now, all of those stories and people will come back and illuminate the campus like candles in the window of an ever-growing, ever-loving home.
