Golden Reunion a perfect opportunity to contemplate, celebrate and anticipate
We’re all familiar with one of time’s odd characteristics: Something may have happened ages ago, but it can feel like only yesterday. Over many years, things change a lot, or maybe not at all.
This feeling is occurring now within the newest members of the University of Cincinnati Alumni Association’s Golden Bearcats Society, which honors those who have reached the half-century mark as UC graduates.
The annual Golden Bearcats Society Reunion will take place during Alumni Week: On April 11, a student-led, afternoon campus tour will test alumni recollections about which buildings and landmarks have stayed or gone. That evening, a celebration will be held in the West Pavilion of Nippert Stadium, including the induction of Class of 1975 members into the Golden Bearcats Society.
Three members of the Class of ’75 recently pondered their upcoming return to their old stomping grounds. Jerry Truesdell graduated from the College of Pharmacy decades before it bore the name of James L. Winkle. Bob Favorite earned an electrical engineering degree from the College of Engineering long before “and Applied Science” was added to its name. And Bob’s wife of 50 years, Phyllis (Snape) Favorite, earned a pair of degrees from the College of Education well before the schools of Criminal Justice and Human Services were added to it.
Phyllis and Bob Favorite bookended their final academic year as UC students with a September wedding and June commencement. Ever since, they have been thrilled to be husband-and-wife and Bearcats for Life. Photo/Provided
The Favorites are chairing this year’s Golden Bearcats Society Committee, making sure other returning members of the Class of ’75 enjoy a fulfilling trip home. Their UC story has made them enthusiastic ambassadors for their alma mater — cherishing the events of the past that brought them together, while anticipating the amazing successes that will carry the university forward.
Like so many others living the Red & Black life, Bob and Phyllis are grateful that coming to UC in the early 1970s ultimately led to their becoming “Bob and Phyllis.” Today, Sander Hall is most famous for the spectacular 1991 implosion that brought the 27-story dormitory down — a unique moment in UC history. Yet 20 years before it crumbled, Sander Hall was where Bob met his future bride. She accompanied some sorority sisters to Sander because one of them had a boyfriend who had a new puppy in his room. Living directly across the hall was Bob, a sophomore from Piqua, Ohio, just north of Dayton, with a mind for numbers. Phyllis was a freshman from Cincinnati’s west side who was, at the moment, swimming upstream in a mismatched course and, as she puts it, “desperate for a lifeline.”
“They’d placed her in the engineering- and math-major calculus course because she’d scored well on the AP English test,” Bob recalled. “I’d taken the same course the year before, so we got to talking. I said, ‘You know, I’ve got all my notes and my textbook,’ and we started meeting a couple times a week at her sorority house.”
Phyllis likened the experience to learning a foreign language from scratch, but with Bob’s help she passed.
Shortly thereafter, Phyllis was convinced to go to Homecoming with Bob, and the toothpaste was out of the tube. In all the years since, she’s never had occasion to revisit calculus in her daily life, yet the challenging course clearly served its purpose. Phyllis ended up marrying her tutor at the start of her senior year. As Bob says now with a smile, “When you find the one, you find the one.”
UC set up its students for success
Jerry Truesdell likes wearing the C-Paw when he travels because he’s learned to expect fellow Bearcats to see it, introduce themselves and start up a conversation. Here he’s sporting the colors with his wife, Lora, in Ephesus, Turkey, in 2024. Photo/Provided
“I have to admit that when I received the email stating I was now a ‘Golden Bearcat,’ I laughed — a true OMG moment,” said Jerry Truesdell. “Here was another reminder of the passage of time.”
As it is now, in the early 1970s UC was a solid choice for students who wanted their college experience to be a productive step into professional life. And Jerry appreciates that long after his graduation and successful career, the university and the UC Alumni Association provide the means to stay involved.
“Attending UC was the right decision for me,” he said. “I was looking for a career path out of high school and the college of pharmacy provided that pathway. Now that I’m retired from pharmacy, I’m off pursuing other skills, hobbies and interests. The alumni association is one of those interests. Meeting other alumni and sharing time and space with them, if only for a few hours, is a good thing. I look forward to participating in future events.”
I wear the C-Paw when traveling and I cannot count the number of times I’ve connected with strangers who have shared that they’re also UC alumni.
Jerry Truesdell, UC College of Pharmacy alumnus
The Favorites can vouch for the UC Alumni Association’s inherent value and the university’s many options for keeping alumni connected.
“A few years after we graduated, we became Life Members when we could afford to do so,” Phyllis remembered. Life Membership eventually morphed into the William Howard Taft Society but the idea was essentially the same: Stay invested, help others do the same, and watch the benefits come back to you and your fellow Bearcats many times over. That promise led Phyllis to serve on the UC Alumni Association’s Board of Governors some 15 years ago. She and Bob remain big believers in cultivating strong, ongoing relationships within the alumni family, which now numbers over 350,000 worldwide.
Meanwhile, living in Osgood, Indiana, about an hour west of Cincinnati, Jerry hasn’t been as deeply involved with UC as an alumnus. Yet he does what he can, including as a devoted Bearcats athletics supporter, a common thread for graduates. And he loves the immediate bond that exists when he encounters someone else sporting the colors.
“I wear the C-Paw when traveling and I cannot count the number of times I’ve connected with strangers who have shared that they’re also UC alumni,” said Jerry. “It starts a conversation that is always interesting and enlightening. It shows how much we all have in common despite our differences.”
UC Athletics draws alumni, students together
Seeing the UC students of today showing out in Nippert Stadium (such as when he was back for last year’s Homecoming) makes Jerry Truesdell optimistic about his university’s future. Photo/Provided
Jerry is particularly fond of two special moments when Bearcats gear was the uniform of the day — joining thousands of his UC brothers and sisters in South Bend in the fall of 2021 for UC’s win over Notre Dame, and again three months later in Dallas for the College Football Playoffs. And he knew that a special season like 2021 was a very visible symbol of all the great things going on throughout UC, far beyond athletics.
While sports is just one aspect of UC life, it’s evident to Golden Bearcats that what happens in historic Nippert Stadium on game days is a barometer for how far the university has come in 50 years’ time.
Phyllis vividly remembers one lopsided home loss when she was a student, during which a woman turned to her and made a slow, bored declaration: “This game has become de-ci-ded-ly dull.”
Laughing at the memory, Phyllis said, “Yeah, that was kind of it in a nutshell.”
No one could have imagined what was to come years later.
Living in State College, Pa., gave the Favorites a leg up on tailgating when their beloved Bearcats played at Penn State, including on this day in 1986, when UC narrowly lost to the eventual national champions. Photo/Provided
“A defining moment for me as an alumnus was being in Nippert when we first had season tickets,” Bob said. Work had taken the Favorites to State College, Pa., for much of their alumni lives, although they maintained the best, long-distance relationship with UC they could, including making the eight-hour drive to Clifton for the games. “It was a sold-out game during the late 2000s. We looked at the packed student section and they were all doing ‘Down the Drive’ in unison. It was mesmerizing. Never in my life did I think I would see something like that.”
Jerry concurs about the importance of that pulsating horseshoe of future alumni. “It’s a good feeling seeing all the current students at the games cheering on their fellow Bearcats,” he said, “and you hope that good things will follow for them when they graduate.”
If you had told Bob and Phyllis Favorite in the 1970s or ’80s they would one day attend the Orange Bowl to cheer on their Bearcats, they likely wouldn’t have believed you. But there they were — UC and the Favorites — in Miami on New Year’s Day, 2009 (with bigger games to follow). Photo/Provided
The continuous evolution of UC helps strengthen its relationship with many Golden Bearcats. Each time they return to campus, they’re reminded of this momentum — oh, and the need to keep a current campus map handy, because there’s no guarantee that the UC you know and love is the way you last left it. That’s not only a good thing — it’s quintessentially UC. Having the perspective of a Golden Bearcat makes that clear. It’s a balancing act, as Phyllis noted.
“Change is good, as long as you honor some vestiges of the past, too,“ she said “You don’t get to where you are without remembering where you’ve been.”
The Favorites recognize that since becoming a state university shortly after their class graduated, UC has been compelled to tap into its inner innovative spirit in ways that many other universities are not. As UC grows, it can’t just scoop up another tract of land from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of real estate around it. Unlike large land-grant institutions with acreage to spare, UC has been “forced” to be creative. For instance, Bob and Phyllis admire the great example of repurposing the old Sears Building on Reading Road into the 1819 Innovation Hub and then developing the Digital Futures Center at the nearby Martin Luther King Drive and I-71 interchange.
Jerry Truesdell agrees.
“The campus has changed completely from when I was a student,” he said, “but there’s still a connection for me, with what it was and is now. It has changed for the better, and continues to improve.”
“If it’s the same campus, then the university has failed in one of its primary missions, which is to grow and challenge and learn and evolve,” Bob Favorite said. “Universities that don’t change are failing. That’s why I love our ‘Next Lives Here’ strategy. It says, ‘We’re focused on the future.’”
Featured image at top: The UC Alumni Association will host the annual Golden Bearcats Society reunion in April. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand
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