Schniddley Crouchkoff goes back to Ship

I couldn't resist using the name of Doc's alter ego.

Welcome to Bil and Jesse! Post soon, you guys.

The Photobucket slide shows indicate that Bob, Chris, Eric and Lisa have been back to Shippensburg recently. Here's what happened my last visit there. The funny part is it was such a busy weekend that there wasn't time to take pictures (I hear you booing)!!
2007 marked the 50th anniversary of the university's student newspaper and radio station and all the Comm./Journ. alumni got invited to campus to celebrate in April. A radio station is a curious thing to start up at a teacher's college, which is what the school was back in 1957.
Besides going back on the air again for an hour (and sharing a story from the "Grease" strike party from 1991), there was an informative campus tour. I took such a long look at the Luhrs Center that the tour group moved on without me and I had to go back to the CUB and join the next tour.
At first I had an attack of angst because we deserved a stage like that back in the day. But then, after talking with some of the current "Slate" writers during panel discussions, I realized there's a sad disconnect between the Center and the student body. Events held there are too pricey for student budgets and are mostly geared toward Harrisburg and its Western Shore.
WSYC's alumni advisor (not a grad assistant, but an alumni advisor!), Trevor Stottlemeyer, asked me to be on a "music directors" panel, which turned out to be even more fun than I expected.
Another pleasant surprise was how cool the alumni from the '70s were.
At the banquet Steve McGinnis, who some of you remember, was supposed to talk about the station in the '90s. There was a speaker for every decade. A death in Steve's family cut his campus visit short, and I was asked RIGHT BEFORE DINNER to take his place. I had to piece together some memories while I was eating and prayed I didn't look too unprepared in front of a whole Reisner Hall roomful of alumni, students, faculty and the new university president.
I opened with: "Full disclosure, here, I was only asked to speak a few minutes before dinner. So my remarks aren't going to be as prepared as the others'." I had the room in the palm of my hand from the get-go.
Got quite a few compliments, including from some students :-O, saying mine was the best address of the night. Some expressed disbelief that I agreed to speak last minute. Hah! compared to that Alpha Psi Omega induction (ugh), this was nothing.
At an after party at the bar at the Shippen Place Hotel (with the G-Man gone, that's the upscale hangout) some of the alumni said I should become a professor. I briefly looked into it until reality set in that I'm a single father working full-time with no time or money to be investing in a master's program.
I felt like a million bucks that weekend though! Especially when one recent graduate said to Trevor at the after party: "Do you think we'll ever have anything like the '90s (in college radio) again?" He was talking about the music, of course. But I always felt that there was something very special about being in Shippensburg at that particular place and time.
Last April, it was as if God was giving me a big hug and saying: "You're okay, really."