Edinboro alumni reconnect at reception honoring past classes

Shouts of recognition echoed through the walls of the Alumni House as old friends spotted each other in a crowd almost 200 strong. Alumni from the area and as far away as Massachusetts and Missouri gathered together on Oct. 13 as homecoming celebrations began all over campus. 

As Paul Tunis, Steve Gramley and Ray Lanich — members of the Ray Lanich Band — set up their equipment on the patio deck of the Alumni House, they reminisced about their days at Edinboro.

“All the dorms have been updated, there are random parking lots where there used to be swamps, it’s definitely improved a lot since I’ve been here. I love coming back here,” Steve Gramley, class of 2000, who plays drums for the band, said. 

Ray Lanich, class of 2005, and whom the band is named after, said, “The biggest things I’ve noticed is that Heather Hall, the old music building, isn’t here anymore.” 

“I was bummed to hear about the cuts to the music department,” Lanich continued. “If I’m being completely honest, our music department was great, I mean it was always small but we always had at least a couple hundred students. I teach down in Pittsburgh, and I was asking some of the kids, ‘were you looking at Edinboro for music?,’ and some students weren’t even sure that Edinboro would even have a music program. I think that’s too bad and I really hope that they try to keep it. I mean, all of our professors were world-class, man, they were from all over the country, even all over the world. They really knew their stuff. It was a really strong department, and it would be a real loss. I would really urge them not to cut the program.”  

Inside, older alumni traded memories and stories about an Edinboro that is almost unrecognizable to them now. 

“A lot of the old buildings that we went to are not here,” said Patti Pogue Snow, class of 1967.“The campus was only on the front and the whole back of the campus was just swampland.”

She continued, “Our class was the largest class that Edinboro had ever had, and after us, the class size just kept on growing.”

James Como, class of 1967, noted that the problems of past students and current students are the same: “I owe a lot to the university because I came here in July and got accepted; I had scholarships to other schools, but I couldn’t afford to pay the rest. And so I feel a debt to them.” 

“I haven’t lived here since 1972, and I wasn’t really connected with the university until they began sending me flyers and things. After that, I contributed a little here and there as I could over the last 10 years.”   

This year’s banquet was also the 50th reunion of the class of 1967.

Shayma Musa can be reached at eupnews.spectator@gmail.com.

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