Alma Mater Visit
They always say distance makes the heart grow fonder. I can say that has been the case for me in visiting Oswego, NY and my alma mater, Oswego State University. As I am sure you have heard about 300 times in the 21 episodes we have done, Chris, Kevin and I all attended Oswego State in the late 90’s-early 2000’s.
The last time I was there was over eleven years ago and it was a trip with Kevin, Chris and two-time guest Joe Yerdon after we all attended the Bill Leaf Kickball tournament in Syracuse. We came up for the afternoon, walked around, marveled at how nice the campus looked and how nice the television and radio stations were.
Kevin goes up multiple a times a year to see hockey games (which I will need to do again soon as it has been even longer), it had been a while for Chris and obviously as mentioned even longer for myself. We started this podcast because three friends were texting back and forth, mostly about sports with some other topics mixed in. We now see each other via zoom every two weeks for the most part, but chatting on zoom is not the same as seeing friends in person.
I see other friends from Oswego during the year but it is that four and a half hour drive that makes it tough to visit the shores of Lake Ontario. We had heard earlier this year that the Communications Alumni Dinner would be making a return and we discussed coming up so we could all hang out and see each other again after that long hiatus.
It turned out that stars were aligning and a lot of the old friends from Oswego were able to make it up during that last weekend in September. After working out all the detail, we were all booked to go back to campus. A long three and a half hour drive for my friend Jay from LI to NJ due to monsoonal rain in the New York tri-state area and then a slightly less than four and a half hour drive up to Oswego (I may have been going slightly faster than the speed limit…. shhh don’t tell anyone), we were there for the weekend.
We started by hitting up a new bar and hanging out with our friends we hadn’t seen and then of course made our way to the immortal Oswego Sub Shop for the one and only cheeseburger sub. We missed you, old friend.
Saturday was a day of again visiting some old food joints, Wade’s for breakfast and Rudy’s for a late lunch and the food was as good and bad for you as always. In between visiting these two, we saw a speech by Ted Metellus, another old friend who was surprisingly in Oswego speaking about the 50th anniversary of EOP. We then took a hard hat tour of what we all used to call “The Union” (aka Hewitt Union) which is being transformed into what will now be called Hewitt Hall and the new state of the art home for the School of Communications, Media and the Arts (SCMA) as well as for Graphic Arts. Right now, it looks like a typical construction site but the renderings and what is going there will make this place look amazing.
Later was the reason we were all there, the Communications Dinner. Again, seeing some old friends, meeting some more alumni as well as meeting some current students. Some great speeches, pictures, took Jay, our friend Dana and I onto the airwaves of WNYO after the dinner to sit and chat with the GM of WNYO, Jacob Wallach. We discussed being old and the type of equipment we worked on, as well as some stories of the old days at WNYO.
Everything ended as usual at the Press Box where we sat and just chatted some more with our old friends before we all went back to our hotels and parted ways. A great visit up north with nice weather before the cold sweeps in and IT WILL sweep in.
Until next time Oswego and hopefully we shouldn’t all be strangers for that long again.