The background noise made it hard to converse, but everyone was in close conversation anyhow. Crowds of people trying to reach their seat blocked each other's way. Older people past retirement age hardly noticed the little kids dashing about. College students were everywhere, as were faculty and their families. It was not a normal Habecker Dining Commons lunch crowd. It was the Homecoming Alumni luncheon at Huntington College.
Alumni met for lunch this year in the dining commons at the same time and place as the Huntington College undergraduates were eating. The noise and congestion failed to dampen their homecoming.
Kathy Lepard returns to homecoming each year because she enjoys "meeting with the faculty and telling them what I'm doing and touching bases and seeing what they are doing. I maintain a close relationship with them and I enjoy visiting."
Kathy's most vivid memory from her college days was "after my husband asked me to marry him and we were first engaged, I was dropped off at Dr. Bordeaux's house dressed like a clown at two in the morning by my roommate Chris Smith and I finally made my way back home."
"My class was the class of 1942. They're having meetings of these various classes and I met with myself, I'm the only one here. We have two, maybe three left. One man I can't keep track of," said J. Edward Roush. "I usually come back. I love my college, I'm proud of what they are doing for young people and for civilization itself. We've people all over the world and I think they project a quality that speaks of their training and education. I like to brush shoulders with them and I just thoroughly enjoy these get-togethers."
Randy Lane liked Huntington College so well that he graduated twice. "Well, I graduated in 1985 with a degree in education and then this May I graduated from the EXCELL program, so I wanted to come back and see if I recognize all the familiar faces."
Lane remembers the old college gym. "My favorite memory would be the kill-ball games in the old gymnasium that we used to play. That was when you had basic dodge ball games, dorms against dorms and wings against wings and sometimes you got volleyballs thrown at you by baseball players and sometimes it hurt when you got hit."
Roush had quite a different favorite memory. "Of course, my most exciting thing was to meet my wife and marry her, but World War II broke out when I was a senior and I was the president of the student body and I sent Franklin D. Roosevelt a telegram telling him that the students at Huntington College were backing our country. That was not a pleasant experience, but it is something that is indelible in my memory."
From the class of '42 to the class of '99, Huntington College Alumni came home again to revisit their indelible memories. A little noise didn't deter them from their quest.