Going back to where it all began

35-plus years after graduating, I'm headed back to Trinity, where I became myself

I arrived at Trinity University, San Antonio, in August of 1986.

I was 17.

By the time I left home, Oklahoma City, I couldn’t wait to get there and beyond freshman year I couldn’t wait to get there even more in ’87, ’88, ’89 and for a long time, I don’t think any longer, I was certain the worst day of my life arrived the day I graduated, May of ’90.

I didn’t want to leave.

I did it in four years because that’s how long my parents said they’d pay for it, double majoring in mass communication and political science, the first of which provided no life-changing professors, though I quite liked Sammye Johnson, who I think is still with us and who I know found her way in front of C-SPAN cameras at the 25:40 mark of this 2001 video.

As for poli-sci, there was a life-changer, Dr. Hal Barger, who’d in a different life covered city hall and politics for the Chicago Tribune and, upon becoming an academic with enough standing to create his own class, created “Is America Governable,” which I took sophomore year, amongst juniors and seniors, and loved. He also happened to be the father of one of three short-lived first-semester girlfriends — after having zero, not even a date, in high school — Jennifer, who’s worked for the Washington Post, among others, and these days has her own Substack, too.

How about that?

When Facebook manages to get word to me of Jennifer’s birthday in a timely manner, I delight in telling her how much I loved her dad.

Look, even writing that sentence, the one right above this one, tears pop.

Not because Jennifer made it to The Post and I didn’t, though I would have loved to and if only I’d know the way the world worked by the time I’d graduated perhaps I might have. Just because it’s a poignant piece of a four-year experience that changed everything.

My confidence, the way I looked at myself, the way others looked at me, what I believed in and what I didn’t, my friends, the victories I’d forged, the losses I survived, what I wanted to do for a career despite having no real plan to chase it.

I became a person there.

It was everything.

Today, I’m going back.

Every October since departing, Trinity’s hosted Alumni Weekend.

I missed a Sooner football game — Ball State, ’10 —to attend my 25-year high school reunion but this will be the first I’ve missed since ’97 for any other reason.

Well, if you can call it “missing it.”

I’ll watch it, but maybe not take notes, not turn around and begin construing a column once it’s over for the first time in 15 years and not write anything after it for only the second time since some time in ’97, when I only wrote from games I attended and missed two on the road: Northwestern (at Soldier Field) and Kansas.

That’s the seed of this column, which may be my last until Monday or Tuesday, when I’m sure I’ll have something new to say, some of it about Sooner football.

Perhaps I’ll take notes after all.

Back to Trinity.

I just looked at the list and not too many from our class are returning for what’s kind of, sort of — though all alumni are invited — a 35-year reunion after COVID killed the 30-year.

About the whole experience being so heavy, what can I say?

Did I mention no dates in high school?

Or that I must have barely been accepted at all, my SAT score being a combined 1160. I took it twice but never studied, making 630 math, 470 verbal the first time and 620 math, 530 verbal the second time, hence the combined score.

All of my friends scored higher. The class average was beyond 1200.

Yet, I seemed to fit in.

My best friend, Chris Bright, was already there, two years in front of me, as were other Westminster-McGuinness people: Mike Coats, Joey Ferretti, Laura Yoeckel, Chris Haunschild and, though I’d not gone to middle school with Conry Davidson, she was with me at McGuinness and she went to Trinity, too.

She stayed in San Antonio.

I’ve long been jealous.

I was pretty sure I could play on the golf team and I did, all four years. We weren’t a great team but good enough for NCAA Division III.

The first round I ever shot under par came at Tapatio Springs, just outside San Antonio in Boerne, a 2-under 70 in a tournament hosted by UTSA. I hit only eight greens, but needed only 24 putts.

I chipped in on No. 9 to shoot 32, lipped out to get to 6-under on No. 13, cratered and fell back to 1-under after triple-bogeying the 16th, but finished with a birdie.

Though I did for more than 20 years, I no longer remember every shot, but I do the last four. I was so angry after the triple I decided to make eagle at the last. I killed my drive down the middle and pulled out a 1-iron from about 260 thinking, just maybe, if I crush it, I can roll it on. Instead, I smother-hooked it into the middle of the ninth fairway, from which I had 90 yards left and knocked it two feet.

I made it.

I think I fell in love twice.

The first time I had no idea what it meant, just that I didn’t want it to end. The second time feelings remained for about 19 years.

I began at the student paper my junior year and became sports editor my senior year, though I wrote only one column, under Dick Vitale’s name (and in his voice) for our April Fools’ edition.

The basketball team loved it.

The reason I only wrote the one was editor Shannon Prosser chose who wrote the weekly sports column and selected Tom James, who’s been running media relations for the San Antonio Spurs almost since graduation.

After growing up in a pool hall — site of my high school social life — I was the best pool player on campus most of the time and a top-five table tennis player, the No. 1, if you can believe it, being Jay Hartzell, no longer president of Texas-Austin, now president of SMU.

The over-under of the hours of table tennis we played must be north of 100.

Great guy.

Scott Kubie will be there this weekend.

From opposite sides, we talked politics and pro wrestling constantly.

He might have led Trinity’s College Republicans and was mostly a WWF guy.

I was a Young Democrat and mostly a Mid-South/Georgia/NWA guy.

We’ll enjoy seeing each other again. Don’t know if we’ll talk politics.

I’ve been on campus a few times since.

Every time I drive inside Loop 1604 my heart rate goes down.

It’s the craziest thing.

I’ve even been there with the Great Gwenda.

That was for an hour.

This will be the real deal.

This time it’s participatory.

Please excuse my lack of output until I return.

If you want to tell a college story, comments and e-mail are open.

See you when I get back.

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