Ohio University’s graduating class of 1963 will have a chance to fulfill its Homecoming theme — “Remember When” — 50 years later as its members watch the 2013 parade with the theme “OUr Past, OUr Present and OUr Future.”
OU’s Campus Involvement Center and OU Alumni Association initially began brainstorming in March to establish this year’s Homecoming theme, said Dawn Werry, director of external relations for the Alumni Association.
The two entities surveyed student organizations, administrators in the Division of Student Affairs and alumni who actively participate in OU events before sending out three potential themes to students and alumni to vote on in June.
“We’re trying to capture what Ohio means to everyone,” Werry said. “Trying to capture that in a theme and an image can be challenging.”
After a month, the Campus Involvement Center and the Alumni Association received about 1,200 responses — the most popular of which was sent to OU Communications and Marketing to design a logo, said Brian Heilmeier, assistant director for student activities.
This year’s theme has a broader focus than last year’s “Better Than the Best Ever,” which highlighted the Marching 110, featuring the band’s alumni in the parade and halftime show.
Definitive themes attract a lot of alumni to OU, but the Campus Involvement Center and the Alumni Association were looking for a theme that could involve a wide range of alumni and current students, Heilmeier said.
“This year, it’s more OU spirit, so I think it’s nice to mix that (perspective) up a little bit,” Heilmeier said.
Homecoming had a similarly broad theme of “Remember When” 50 years ago, which highlighted visiting alumni’s memories and Homecoming traditions, according to previous Post articles.
Like the football game itself, OU’s 1963 Homecoming was a big competition — for Homecoming queen, house decorations and parade floats.
Students in sororities and fraternities would stay up all night building floats with the most school spirit or ones that best reflected Homecoming’s theme for the Saturday morning parade, according to previous Post articles.
Homecoming themes are still very important to the float-decorating tradition, as well as Homecoming’s overall marketing, Werry said.
Although Homecoming spirit caused a lot of competition in 1963, that liveliness calmed down a decade later.
By 1973, Homecoming was enveloped into Oktoberfest, a unique festival that combined Homecoming and Halloween festivities, including concerts, a carnival and the Homecoming football game, according to Spectrum Green 1974, OU’s yearbook.
The Alumni Association worked to restore Homecoming by 1983 under the theme “Spanning the Globe.”
The theme celebrated the large number of international students studying at OU in the 1980s by letting international students walk in the parade in their traditional garb, according to previous Post articles.
In 1993, Homecoming welcomed the alumni back with the theme “There’s No Place Like Home.”
The parade was also historic for women in the Marching 110, which had the band’s first female sousaphone player.
Homecoming in 2003 was OU’s “Bicentennial Homecoming” and drew an attendance of more than 400 alumni to the Alumni Awards gala.
OU also honored its 200th year by releasing a U.S. Post Office Bicentennial postcard of Cutler Hall and a compilation CD of songs representing OU, recorded by faculty from the then-called School of Music, according to previous Post articles.
From his four years of celebrating Homecoming at OU, Todd Ward, a senior studying broadcast journalism, said that although he thinks the overall OU spirit is the most important part of Homecoming, he thinks the all-encompassing themes like this school year’s “OUr Past, OUr Present, OUr Future” are important to the goal of Homecoming.
“I think any theme that has to do with connecting past alumni to here is a really good idea, because that’s the whole spirit of Homecoming: the alumni coming back and trying to get involved,” Ward said.
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