Northwestern alumnus Jeffery Zochalski pulled the football-shaped mask over his head, adjusted the eye holes and peered at the near-sellout crowd. Then he stuck his trumpet through a hole in the mask and began to play “Go U Northwestern” as the football team scored its second touchdown and the crowd erupted in cheers.
“It’s my game face,” said Zochalski, Weinberg ’90, a Chicago resident who majored in biology. “It’s a little hot, but it will bring good luck. We haven’t lost since I’ve started wearing it.”
But even Zochalski’s football mask and his yearly trumpet playing were not enough to help the No. 17 Wildcats overcome the No. 21 Boilermakers this weekend. Purdue University beat NU 41-28, marking the Cats’ first Big Ten loss this year.
Even so, the football defeat did not seem to dampen NU’s homecoming hoopla.
Zochalski and hundreds of alumni packed the campus this weekend for the school’s annual Homecoming celebration — a return that gave them the opportunity to relive their youth, revisit memories and, for some, criticize current student traditions as vastly inferior to their own.
Throngs of students and alumni lined Sheridan Road for Friday night’s Homecoming parade, then followed the last float to the North Campus pep rally. On Saturday they woke up early to attend tailgates and cheer for the Cats.
NU alumnus Jim Eckelberger, who graduated in 1960 with a degree in business, said students’ casual dress still astonishes him when he returns to campus. In the 1950s, Eckelberger said, he wore a coat and tie to dinner each night and often attended fraternity parties in a tuxedo.
And, after such parties, the women had to hurry home so they wouldn’t miss their curfew, said Eckelberger, a retired Navy admiral. Although the men could stay out as late as they wished, he said, the women had to check in by 11 p.m. on weeknights and 2 a.m. on weekends.
“It was good times,” said Eckelberger, whose ROTC scholarship paid NU’s $1,000-a-year tuition. “There was none of this easy mixing of genders. It just wasn’t happening. It was a much more formal place.”
Other alumni said the university also has become bigger and more prestigious.
NU alumnus Evan Evans, who graduated in 1957 with a major in economics, brought his two daughters with him from New York to see his alma mater for the first time this weekend.
In 1953, Evans’ first year at NU, the Lakefill did not exist, fraternities lined a longer stretch of Sheridan Road and elm trees dotted the campus.
Some alumni went all out to show school spirit. Evanston resident Richard Moenning, who graduated in 1959 with a business major, marched with the alumni band in the parade and at the game.
Dressed entirely in purple and white with several marching band pins covering his hat, Moenning held his trombone straight in front of him and lifted his knees as high as possible.
He said NU’s current band does not lift their legs up nearly as high.
“(Band members) keep treating us like we can’t march,” he said. “They have a lot of fun at our expense. But there’s still a bunch of us who keep our knees up high. They don’t know what’s wrong. They think we’re something out of the past.”
Moenning called this year’s band a “band in training” and said they will not truly become members until they graduate.
Moenning said he plays his trombone only once a year for this spirit-filled weekend.
“‘Go U Northwestern.’ That’s one you never forget,” he said. “We really had a great time getting the team up. When things got down, everyone used to turn to us.”
