Letters

CMU logos bring people together

Editor:
In my travels over the past 25 years, I have experienced some rewarding encounters with other CMU persons who are identified through sweatshirts, T-shirts, hats, etc.:

• I was returning from the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns, Australia, and coming down the aisle on our bus was a young woman wearing a CMU sweatshirt. She turned out to be an exchange student attending the University of Sydney.

• I was filling my car with gas in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, and on the other side of the pump was a fellow Central alum. He saw my CMU baseball hat, and it turned out he was from Cadillac, Michigan, and his daughter was currently attending Central. He had graduated in the early 1970s.

• We were picking up our bags at the airport in Hawaii. The baggage agent was a young teacher (and Central alum) working at the airport during the summer vacation who spied my CMU T-shirt and gave us VIP service.

• We were on a Caribbean cruise, and two CMU faculty and their wives saw our logos, then joined us for lunch and brought us up-to-date on what is going on at our alma mater.

• We were walking down the street in Charleston, South Carolina, with my CMU baseball hat perched upon my head. A young man dressed in a business suit and pulling a small cart greeted me with “Fire up Chips!” He was a 1992 graduate from Muskegon, living in Atlanta, Georgia, and in Charleston on business.

I have had hundreds of encounters with CMU students and alumni all over the world. When I attended Central Michigan College in the late 1940s (’47 to ’51) its motto was “the friendliest campus in the world,” and I’m happy to see this extended beyond the campus. Nice things happen when you display your emblems.

Jerry Oehmke, ’51
Clinton Township

 

Corrections

In “The royal treatment: Homecoming through the years” (Fall 2007 Centralight) a photo of the Homecoming queen and her court from 1953 were misidentified with the names of the queen and court from 1958.

Here are the two photos with correct identification.


1958:
In their swan float are court members (from left) Nancy Cockerill, Karen Pankonin, Rose Blakeslee, Sue Gregory, and (back) Queen Marilyn Starkey.


1953:
In their Michigan float are court members (from left) Janet Dueltgen, Janet Caldwell, Martha Moyer, Eleanor Kaiser, and (back) Queen Jeanne Martin.