UMass Magazine Online

Fall 2003

Departments

Extended Family

Features

Experiencing Jeff Corwin

Drawing on the past

Clean-up at the old Davis Mine

Extended Family

First Person

Karen Kurt Teal ’00G

WANT TO MAKE A UMIE far away from home smile?
It’s maroon and really fuzzy on the inside. It’s got a hood and it spells out “UMASS” in sharp white satin letters. It’s a sweatshirt, but you don’t give it to the far-flung alum. You wear it in a public place and walk your dog.

I’d never had one of those thick UMASS sweatshirts before, so I made a point of getting one in the campus bookstore on my latest mission home to Amherst this summer. I needed a serious sweatshirt for walking the dog in the rainy predawn in my adoptive hometown of Seattle.

There, on an early morning walk with my dog, I heard a kind voice in the direction of the sunrise. A woman appeared and identified herself as a ’76 graduate. She wanted to know how things had been since she graduated! Stunned that someone would even strike up a conversation at that hour, I forgot to ask her name, but I can’t forget that instant, sunny friendliness brought on by the sweatshirt.

Not long after that, I was wearing the sweatshirt and I stopped to talk to a neighbor. Suddenly two youthful guys in a pickup truck slowed down, got my attention, and waved. Seattle is friendly – but not that friendly. “Now, that’s been happening a lot, and I don’t get it,” I told my neighbor. “It’s the college sweatshirt. Everyone always stops to read them!” he sagely explained, adding, “They must have been from Massachusetts.” It hit: What a low-tech, easy way to signal “hi” to people a very long way from home.

Not a week later at the walking/roller blading trail, a distinguished-looking couple saw me and called out “UMASS! UMASS!” The man was class of ’83 visiting from Texas, and he was thrilled to see another Umie. When we parted company, he remarked that he’d wanted to view some real estate in the area, and now he’d do it. Because of a UMass sweatshirt? Sure.

Since then, a jogger has turned around and run back to talk to me (a homesick Dartmouth College grad), and an elderly woman out walking hollered: “You are a long way from home!” In a friendly place, this sweatshirt opens up smiles and hearts. It makes home seem less far away and melts urban reserve. What a nice return on a $57 investment.

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