Be true to your school

As soon as I washed the winter grime off the car, I placed the red "LU" magnet on the back. I'll find a place for the "Liberty" window cling, too. And I still need to transfer all my keys onto the Liberty keychain.

A true LUnatic

I'm feeling a surge of pride in my college alma mater these days. After being mostly disconnected from Liberty University since I received my degree in May 1986, I'm now yearning to associate myself with the Lynchburg, VA, school again.

My 25th year graduation anniversary probably plays a part in this wave of boosterism, but there's more to it than that. Three unrelated events in the last five months have come together to focus my attention back on the university that I’d mostly lost touch with.

I’d never intended to become an alumnus in absentia. It just sort of happened, as it does with many college graduates. Too often unless we live in close proximity to our alma mater and can easily keep up with what's going on or, better yet, earn a fortune and drop a huge chunk of change on the institution to get a building named after us, we mentally drift away. After we claim our sheepskin the real world calls. Jobs, family, church, civic duties and other activities begin demanding our time and attention, and, before long, we aren’t even attending Homecoming. Unfortunate, but understandable.

I'd reached that stage myself. For the first couple of years after graduating from Liberty I made an attempt to stay connected to my school. I received a few mailings from Liberty, and wrote a few of my closest friends and professors on a semi-regular basis. In time those communiqués became fewer and farther between. Eventually, except for stumbling upon the occasional Liberty sports score in the newspaper or a Larry King interview with Liberty founder the Rev. Jerry Falwell, I had no connection to my school at all.

The Liberty campus. It's much bigger than it looks.

Then a postcard arrived in the mail late last summer. “The Liberty Flames football team is coming to your area!” it declared. Liberty was traveling to Indiana to play Ball State University in September. Ball State is in Muncie, just a couple of hours away from my Lafayette home. On a whim, my wife Margie – also a Liberty grad – and I purchased tickets for the game and a pregame meal with other Flames fans, through Liberty’s athletic department.

It was a blast. We met fellow Liberty alumni and football parents, as well as Liberty’s athletic director. The night ended with the Flames’ 27-23 upset of the Cardinals. The approximately 200 of us in Liberty red and navy celebrated with the team as it left the field.

Fast forward to New Year’s weekend. I was browsing the new paperbacks shelf of a Chicago-area Barnes & Noble, when I came across The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose. The book was about – you guessed it – Liberty University. Roose, a Brown University student, transferred to Liberty in 2007 to write a book about what it was like to attend the school. He spent an entire semester incognito chronicling his experiences. No one knew his real intention.

LU's basketball team warms up in Vines Center

I had to read the book. I bought a copy and devoured it in little over a week. Many of Roose’s tales sounded similar to my own experiences at Liberty except, of course, I never pretended to be someone I wasn’t in order to make my literary mark. On a side note, Liberty decided to stock the Roose tome at the campus bookstore, although LU chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said The Unlikely Disciple did not present a completely accurate picture of the university.

Whatever the administration thought of the book, it was a fascinating read.

The third – and most significant – event to reawaken my alma mater spirit was my daughter’s acceptance letter from Liberty. LU is among six evangelical universities she’s applied to and, to date, one of four that has accepted her for enrollment. This came as a surprise to me, given I’d never encouraged her to check out Liberty.

That letter quickly led to registering her for Liberty’s College For A Weekend, a four-day get-to-know Liberty event held a couple of times each school year for prospective students.

Last week Margie and I drove Alissa and her boyfriend to Lynchburg. It was only my third visit to LU since my graduation, and I was in awe from the moment my foot touched the Liberty parking lot.

LU has its own ski and snowboarding facility. Really.

We attended a Flames basketball game in the 10,000-seat Vines Center – new since I graduated (NSIG). We ate dinner in Liberty’s huge dining commons – also NSIG. I drank a strawberry milkshake at Doc’s Diner, a Jerry Falwell-themed restaurant (NSIG). We saw the 12,000-seat Williams Stadium (NSIG), LaHaye Ice Center (NSIG), Liberty Mountain Snowflex Center – a university-owned skiing and snowboarding facility (NSIG) – the giant “LU” monogram on Liberty Mountain (NSIG) and a number of academic and dormitory buildings that were NSIG. We also met so many friendly and helpful students and faculty, most of whom, naturally, were NSIG.

Although the campus has changed so much in a quarter century and enrollment is several times larger than my era, I felt a sense of belonging at Liberty. I found myself wanting to, well, be close to it again.

I filled out an LU Alumni Association information card. I figure I’ll get a call and all kinds of stuff in the mail. They’ll probably get around to asking me for money because, as we all know, alumni are the sugar daddies of higher education.

But, you know, that’s okay. I’m just happy to be part of the family again.