Fog seldom slithers its way into Tulsa. Not real fog. Especially not the smoke-laced fog we had growing up in western Pennsylvania. The kind known for the dirty grey particulate it left behind on car windshields, house shutters and the forgotten lawn chair.
On the cool Friday night before our class’ commencement, a thick, smothering but clean fog fell on Tulsa bringing with it a clarity one needs between the scary page turns of life’s chapters.
It had been an evening of celebration with my family and fiancée. Nobody truly knew how thankful I was to graduate, or how close it had come to not happening – no one except my fiancée, Linda (Salisbury ’74), and my roommate, Randy (and a professor or two). After the fam headed back to their hotel, and I dropped Linda off at her home, I headed back to an increasingly foggy campus and my last night of dorm life.
It was past midnight, still early by my college and even current standards. If ever ORU looked like a colony on a distant planet, it was that night. The lights around EMR and the parking lots emitted an eerie glimmer, and the thickness of the fog, so similar to a heavy snowstorm, created a spooky quietness on campus that was… uncharacteristic.
Randy suggested we take a walk around campus. Enchanted by the fog and the idea of a last jaunt with my roomie, I immediately said, “Let’s go!”
From our first step outside, sinking deeper into the fog, we were caught up in a nostalgic look back that nature seemed to spur on.
We reflected on our four years at ORU, three of which we had been as roommates. We remembered several mischievous capers, which thankfully had never been traced back to us; the struggles to understand Number Theory and Abstract Algebra; our intramural championships highlighted by a 34-6 flag football win over the University of Tulsa in the first ever city championship game played at Skelly Stadium. Saga food. Girl problems. Career choices. People we would miss. People we would not miss.
When we got to the Avenue of Flags, we stopped. I still remember the peculiar beauty of that assemblage of flags and how the hanging mist moved ever so slowly through the upward beam of each flag’s footlight. It was there our conversation changed and we stopped looking back and began to gaze forward. We considered the change, the growth, the mega-shift in every part of our lives that awaited us on the flip side of tomorrow’s festivities.
We were both marrying ORU girls, but half a continent would separate us.
We knew the close friendship we shared would change. It would never end, but it would also never be the same. We mused about our hopes and dreams. We wondered if we had what it took. We talked about being husbands and fathers. We were ready to go, but we weren’t ready to part. We blamed the water in our eyes on the fog. We talked and listened until the moment ended, as all moments do. Things seemed clear, even if unexplainable.
We then resumed our victory lap, past the newly-opened Mabee Center, around the south end of the LRC, across the Fred Creek bridge, taking a detour through the Prayer Gardens, which had taken on an especially mystical look this night, and, lastly, back home to the dorm.
Our last night to call EMR home.
In some way or another, at one time or another, we alumni have all called ORU home. Our experiences before, during and since have been divergent. Our views, politics, beliefs and paths are varied and diverse, as they should be. But for a thin slice of our histories, ORU was home.
This October will be a unique and special time of alumni coming home to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our alma mater. In the Hebrew tradition, there was a Year of Jubilee every 50th year. They didn’t teach us about Jubilee in Vector Analysis class, so please give me some grace on theological exactitude here. But, that 50th year was to be a year of debt forgiveness, a time for land to return to its original heirs. In many ways, it was a reboot for the economy and the nation of Israel.
So, contact an old friend or two and make plans to visit your former home this fall. I can’t promise any fog, but it will be a Homecoming like no other. And who knows, maybe a chance to reboot.
I wish we could re-enact that lap from decades ago this Homecoming, but as I write he is suffering liver failure and needs a transplant to live. I hope to visit him soon. And, if I don’t get caught, I may sneak a fog machine into his room.
Epilogue: I traveled to San Diego in late July to visit Randy in ICU. I read him this article. We talked. We prayed. We remembered. Randolph Gibson Nolan II (’73) graduated to heaven August 15. Miss him I do.
