A BITTERSWEET RETURN
A writer returns to his alma mater for a unique reunion 45 years later
Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University. (Photos by Michael Lewis)
Before I get serious about World Cup coverage, I wanted to share with you an experience I had with my wife Joy in April.
Late last year I was invited to attend a reunion at Syracuse University. Because life has always gotten in the way, I probably hadn’t returned to the college since 1981.
I was a 1974 graduate and had covered Syracuse football and basketball from 1980-81 as the college sportswriter for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Even though the cities are 75 miles apart, the paper wrote about and covered the Orangemen in both sports on a regular basis.
So, in December I decided to take the alumni association up on its offer.
Instead of flying in, my wife Joy and I decided to take the train on Wednesday, April 22. We didn’t have to get to the airport many hours before takeoff, and we would have a leisurely trip to upstate New York on Amtrak. Besides, it has a dining car that could cook hot food (and Hebrew National hot dogs!) and there are two bathrooms in every car, instead of maybe four for an entire plane.
This senior reunion was focused on classes for years ending in six - 1956, 1966 and 1976 - although other years were welcome.
Even before we got to our hotel, our trip from the train station via Uber was educational. I could not believe how much the college had grown. There seemed to be parking garages everywhere. They weren’t there back in the day.
The Skyler Hotel used to be a synagogue.
We stayed at the Skyler Hotel, just outside of the campus perimeter.
The outside of the hotel certainly looked familiar because it was a converted synagogue that I used to pass when I had to visit the nearby Marine Midland Bank on the corner (it is now a Chase Bank).
The building was built in 1921 and was home of the Temple Adath Yeshurun for about 55 years. After the congregation moved to a new building in 1968, the edifice at S. Crouse Avenue was purchased by the City of Syracuse as a part of an urban renewal project. The project fell through, although the Salt City Theatre Group used it as a headquarters.
On Thursday (April 23) and Friday (April 24) morning, I would walk up South Crouse to get breakfast at Varsity Pizza, a favorite haunt for me and my friends because the pizza there was much like the New York City and Long Island varieties. I was given mixed reviews of the 2026 version and never sampled them. Varsity Pizza certainly would have been difficult to top Little Vincent’s Pizza on LI. Breakfast was good, though.
Before the events on Thursday began, I decided to take a quick tour of the campus. The quad (the Kenneth A. Shaw quadrangle) looked smaller than I remembered. Was there a new building on the west side of the campus green or was my memory playing tricks on me?
I sat on the steps of Hendricks Chapel to take in the spring morning. My thoughts wandered back to my days at SU.
Even before I took my first class in late August 1972, I wound up writing a front-page story for the student newspaper, The Daily Orange. I had stopped by the offices to say hello, and they needed someone to write a story about an SU professor whose sex information book was banned at the nearby State Fair. I wound up talking to him via telephone and typed up the story (yes, a typewriter, not a computer) right there. The editor was impressed and said he was looking forward to having me on the news staff. I definitely disappointed him because I told him I was a sportswriter. But writing a story for the student newspaper before I even took a class obviously defined what I was going to do with my life.
The stairs to Mount Olympus.
My first year, my “home” was at Day Hall, at the top of Mount Olympus, with its twin dormitory, Flint Hall. You need to take 123 steps to climb or descend the stairs, which seemed much longer on cold days, of which there were enough. Flint was for freshmen, while Day was mostly for transfers, at least on the seventh floor. Our floor was co-ed, with boys in one wing and girls in another. There was some hanky-panky going on - what do you expect of 20-21-year-olds? - but for the most part the boys looked at the girls as their sisters, and the girls at the boys as their brothers.
I remembering playing frisbee hockey with some of my floor mates. Basically, the rules were simple - find a way to float or smash the frisbee past your opponent. My future apartment mate, Steve Glade, had a fast ball and it was a challenge to stop him. Myself? I had a decent hard shot, but I perfected a throw in which the frisbee would hit the floor and bounce away, not unlike a knuckleball in baseball.
Once, Steve threw the frisbee so hard that it knocked down the supposedly sturdy red Exit sign at the end of the hall. SU workers fixed it within a week. And guess what happened? Within hours, Steve broke it again when we were playing. He wasn’t aiming for it. Still, we got a good laugh out it.
In our senior year, Greg (Rocky) Maxwell and I shared an apartment at Skytop, a “suburban” complex a mile or two away from the campus.
Inside the Newhouse School.
I had to visit Newhouse School of Public Communications building, where I spent a good portion of my time, preparing to be a journalist. Since graduating a Newhouse 2 and a 3 were built next to the original edifice.
There was some nostalgia. I got an opportunity to sit in the same place in the lobby, waiting for my journalism history class to begin after pulling an all-nighter to finish my 48-page term paper on yellow journalism and the Spanish-American War of 1898. Yes, I used a typewriter, not a computer back then. For the first and last time, I used “uppers” to keep me up all night so I could finish the paper. While sitting in the lobby waiting for the class to begin, I thought I was seeing things out of the corner of my right eye. I heard about the side effects, so I knew I wasn’t going crazy.
Was it worth it?
Well, I got an A on the paper and an A in the course.
A few prospective students and their parents were visiting, and I was allowed to follow them on a tour of Newhouse, while reminding that I had forged a career in journalism after graduating from SU.
While picking up our badges at Hendricks Champel later that afternoon prior to the Alumni Awards Celebration, we met other couples and quickly befriended Rosemary and Mark Dillon from suburban Philadelphia, and another couple, and Alan Richer.
It’s crazy how quickly you can bond with people you first met. It felt like we were friends with the Dillons for years.
After the awards celebration, we had dinner at the JMA Wireless Dome with our newfound friends and several hundred other individuals.
Mark and I talked about baseball and a few other subjects.
Toward the end of the dinner, someone from the university was taking pictures and asked us if we wanted our picture taken.
One was the actual photo, the other was AI. Now, I am not a big fan of AI, but in this case, I could live with it.
Some AI and some reality.
On Friday morning, the university took us on a tour of the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center, the practice facility of the basketball team. The facility was impressive. The trophy area was stunning, with a seemingly never-ending displays of basketball accomplishments and trophies of various accomplishments of other sports.
But I couldn’t find 2022 NCAA Division I men’s soccer trophy. I eventually was told it was in the lobby when we walked in. Somehow, I missed it but got a photo of it.
The 2022 NCAA Division I men’s soccer tournament trophy.
A little aside: I covered the SU soccer club - yes, it was not a team quite yet - in 1972, just to get some writing in and bylines because covering the football team was on a rotational basis. I was told the wrong time of the season-opening kickoff and wound up arriving at the field after the game, which the Orangemen lost to Colgate, 3-2. I found head coach John Allen in the brush behind of the goals looking for a soccer ball that was booted out of play. He found the ball.
The first paragraph to my story?
Not all was lost.
In what I thought would be a bit of a boring time at the SU Art Museum became a time for comedy and teamwork.
We were in a room with portraits. One of us had their backs to a picture while the other described it to each other to draw within a certain amount of time.
And then vice versa.
When Joy described the picture to me, a young woman holding an otter, I did not understand her. She said otter and I thought why is she saying that?
We both started laughing and I never got to finish the draw.
In fact, I don’t think Joy and I had a heartier laugh together. I think we were laughing at each other’s laughter.
And yet, it was good for the soul.
Afterwards, we were asked to form teams to figure out from what era and country an object was from the art museum’s archive. Not surprisingly, we and the Dillons teamed up together.
Each of us contributed something to our combined detective skills.
We felt like a team.
And, oh yes, the object was a teapot from India that was a few hundred years old. We were just about spot-on.
Teamwork.
The day was far from finished. We had lunch at the student center (which wasn’t around when I was there), and then we were taken to Bird Library for a small session and mini-lecture about the school’s archives. I should let it be known that Joy and I love libraries and that we have a mini-library for each of us in our house.
By then, many of us (we weren’t spring chickens anymore), were getting tired.
Joy and I decided to skip the dinner later that day - I had to finish a piece for Forbes.com.
On Saturday, we returned home.
It was a bittersweet trip.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved seeing the college again. At my age, I realize there might not be many opportunities to do so.
The reunion was a reminder to cherish every moment. You never know if it will come again.
Michael Lewis, the sixth recipient of the Clay Berling Media Career of Excellence Award in 2025, can be followed on X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky at @Soccerwriter. His 10th soccer book, Around the World Cup in 40 Years: An American sportswriter’s perspective, has been published and is available on Amazon.com.
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