By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 21, 2024 – Is it normal that the older you get, the more you love your alma mater?

We RicheBurgers were back in Nashville early this month for the 55-year reunion of my Vanderbilt University Class of 1969.

It was a thrill being back on campus.

“It’s wonderful to welcome you now because we’ve just completed one of the greatest weeks in the history of the institution, an incredible week,” said Chancellor Daniel Diermeier when he spoke with several hundred alumni in one session.

The Chancellor.

He listed these recent triumphs:

–VU had just completed – 20 months before its target date – a $3.2 billion fundraising campaign called “Dare to Grow,” with 138,500 donors contributing.

–It was announced internationally that alumnus John Jumper, a 2007 grad now working in London, had shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research in developing new forms of protein especially beneficial for brain development and health.

–Vandy music professor Jeff Coffin, a jazz saxophone superstar, was inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame with the Dave Mathews Band, which he’s been a member of since 2008.

–And on the Saturday ending that big week, our Vanderbilt Commodores football team “shocked the world,” as our students bragged, by upsetting No. 1-ranked Alabama 40-35 in a game played at Vandy.

In subsequent weeks, the team has now qualified for a bowl game for the first time in six years. And, as the Chancellor said, “our students are excited, they’re committed, and they have demonstrated that they can carry very heavy hardware!”  He was referring to how, post-Bama, they charged the field, tore down a goal post, then carried it out of the stadium and three miles down West End and Broadway Avenues to downtown Nashville.  There they tossed it into the Cumberland River.  Of special note: The whooping students were led the last several blocks by Nashville Metro Police squad cars, with sirens blaring and emergency lights flashing, clearing the way to the riverbank.

All that set-up Diermeier’s boast at the reunion that “at Vanderbilt, we are proud but not satisfied. We want to be great on and off the field.  We want to beat Harvard and Yale Monday thru Friday, and beat Alabama on Saturday!”

You can imagine how revved up he had me, especially if you were among the thousands of people around Iowa whom I inflicted the week after that great football victory by publicly singing our fight song “Dynamite!”  I even sang it live during the midday farm show on powerful WHO Radio in Des Moines.

We RicheBurgers visiting with Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose $1 million gift in 1873 enabled the start-up of the university named after him. “If Vanderbilt University shall, through its influence, contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country,” says a statement from the Commodore engraved on the statue’s base, “I shall feel that it has accomplished one of the objects that led me to take an interest in it.” He specifically wanted to help heal the nation after the Civil War.

In Nashville, the Chancellor went on to talk about encouraging additional growth for Vanderbilt. He and leading faculty and staff members conducted “Commodore Classrooms” for us old grads. In those, Vandy experts in Artificial Intelligence, politics, psychiatry and aging, and the “Name Identity and Likeness (NIL)” and “transfer portal” that are rocking intercollegiate athletics.

The university, we learned, is opening its first new college in 40 years – the “School of AI & Connected Computing.”

Diermeier and other university leaders are also at work now on building and opening a new graduate school in business in West Palm Beach, Florida.  And they are planning another new center in two square blocks in the hip Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. This one will be for undergraduate and possibly some graduate classes in the fields of art, fashion and technology.

Then he shocked me again.

“And we have now joined several other prestigious universities to start a new program to attract more rural and small-town students, who maybe haven’t had the opportunity or resources to consider our schools,” Diermeier said.  He paused.

“So, say you’re a young person in rural Iowa…”

What?

I looked at my wife Mary Riche, like me a native of rural Iowa, to see if she heard what I heard. We gently elbowed each other.

Was this a flashback to 1965 I was having?

I mean, it was sort of like that back then, when Vanderbilt picked me out of the farm fields around my small, southwest Iowa hometown of Shenandoah. The private school in Nashville was trying to broaden its student body.  At that point, it drew students mainly from the Old South and New England.  I’ve always believed that somebody in Admissions saw “Iowa” on my application and assumed they had a genuine dirt farmer, probably a wealthy one who’d inherit half a county in coming decades.

But what they got in me was a small-town kid who needed help.  Decent student.  Good singer.  Pretty fair baseball catcher.  Being raised by a single mom after my dad had died of a heart attack in my freshman year of high school.  And I was apparently the second-most promising sportswriter in the nation among 1965 high school graduates.

You readers who’ve been with me for years know that my newspaper career started in my hometown daily newspaper, The Evening Sentinel, when I was 13 years old in Shenandoah.

Early in my senior year, as sports editor, I received a letter from Vanderbilt University, just like most other sports editors did across the U.S.  It explained that Vanderbilt was the alma mater of Grantland Rice, one of the most famous sportswriters ever, who worked in the first half of the 20^th century. He invented the nickname “the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame” for that football powerhouse’s backfield. He personally picked the All-American football teams. He wrote the poem “Alumni Football,” which ends with the great lines:

For when the One Great Scorer
Comes to write against your name,
He writes not whether you won or lost
But how you played the game.

This university, which I’d only known from the agate score lists newspapers would run in football and basketball seasons, said it had established a full-ride scholarship for promising sportswriters in Grantland Rice’s name. They were asking us sports editors to look around our coverage areas, spot a high school senior who might be a good sportswriter, and recommend him or her for the Rice scholarship.

So, I did just that.  I nominated myself.

I was runner-up to Michael Kiernan, of Washington, D.C., who’d been writing for the old Washington Star.  He became a good friend at Vanderbilt, by the way.  He got the full-ride, but Vanderbilt gave me – the kid from Iowa – a consolation scholarship of $1,000 per year and a $1,000 per year National Defense Loan.  I jumped at the offers.  My big brother Tom Offenburger drove me to Nashville in early September, 1965, and I enrolled as one of the 1,000 or so freshmen – without previously visiting the university or city.

I was one of three Iowans on campus then.  Jody Conrad, from Waterloo, was a member of my class but like most Vanderbilt women back then, would barely talk to me.  Patrick Gilpin, of Wellman in southern Iowa, was a graduate student who for a time served as resident advisor in one of my dorms.

There were a whole lot of students and faculty at Vanderbilt who were nothing like me. The university had enrolled its first Black students in the years just before I got there.  Our Commodores “broke the color line” in the Southeastern Conference in my sophomore year and signed our first Black scholarship athletes.  Many Vandy students came from real wealth.  Many had attended exclusive private prep schools.  My freshman roommate, I’ve told you before, was Nicholas Rutgers Duke, of New Haven, Connecticut.  We became real friends then, and we still are more than a half-century later.

Mary Riche (center) and her Vanderbilt alumni posse of Paul Kurtz, Chuck Offenburger, Caryl Privett and Carol Kurtz at the Vandy Reunion. The five of us have done a lot of Vanderbilt baseball.

Let me assure you, I loved the whole Vanderbilt scene!

I played baseball my freshman year and the first part of my sophomore year before I accepted that there were many catchers better than I was.  I worked part-time in sports for the metro’s morning newspaper, the Nashville Tennessean, and also wrote for Nashville Magazine. Mike Kiernan, the Grantland Rice Scholarship winner, and I started-up a campus humor magazine.  And I began my four-year run with the Vanderbilt Hustler, the twice-weekly student newspaper that was the oldest newspaper in the state of Tennessee.  It was already regarded as one of the top student papers in America.

Late in my junior year in 1968, I was named editor-in-chief of the Hustler, and it seems my time leading the newspaper was as memorable for a lot of other people as it was for me.

First, it was a turbulent time in America – and especially the South.  We covered big stories like the Civil Rights Movement, student protests of the Vietnam War, the presidential campaign and assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the assassination and funeral of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the early stirrings on campus of the Women’s Movement.

Our aggressive coverage brought lots of criticism from alumni, some faculty, university trustees and the Nashville business community.  There were calls for then-Chancellor Alexander Heard should resign if he couldn’t control his students – and calls for me to resign with him.

Chancellor Heard defended the idea of the “open forum” on campus, protecting students’ freedom of speech, and defending unrestrained freedom of the press for us at the Hustler. He became a real hero to Vanderbilt’s students, especially the student leaders.  We knew he was receiving lots of criticism because of our activism.

At one of our Class of 1969’s reunions before Heard’s death in 2009, my classmate and great friend Douglas T. Bates III, of Centerville, Tennessee, and I were asked to do a live interview of the former chancellor in front of all our classmates.  We called Heard before that gathering, to share ideas about what we all wanted to discuss.  When we got him on the phone at the appointed time, I said, “Chancellor Heard, I’m not sure you’ll remember me, but I am Chuck Offenburger, and I was the editor of the Hustler in 1968…”

He immediately broke into my introduction.  “Hah!” he almost yelled. “Asking the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University from the late 1960s if he remembers Chuck Offenburger is like asking Napoleon if he remembers Wellington!”

We had a fabulous chat – both that day on the phone and later in our program at the reunion.

I was always just as proud that in my time as editor, the Hustler’s coverage of normal campus life and Vanderbilt sports was as aggressive and thorough as our coverage of bigger, more controversial news that was important to our students.

O.K., there’s another reason some remember me as editor.  When my senior year started that September of ’68, I was so broke that I couldn’t afford a dorm room or meal ticket at the school cafeteria.  So I moved into the Hustler editor’s office, came up with a canvas cot from Army surplus to sleep on, a four-drawer file cabinet to hold my clothes, a small refrigerator to hold my food, and a good coffee pot.  I’d walk shirtless, in shorts and in engineer boots or black & white saddle shoes, to take showers in a nearby dorm.

Chuck Offenburger, Vanderbilt Hustler editor-in-chief, in his office & living quarters in 1968.

That’s why, at this most recent reunion, when I walked into the Hustler newsroom for a special event, I looked around at a special crowd gathered there and said, “I’m home!”

A bunch of us who worked in Vanderbilt student media circa 1967-’70 were luncheon guests of this year’s Hustler editor-in-chief Barbara “Barrie” Barto, a senior who grew up in Denver, Colorado, and one of Vanderbilt Student Communications’ four full-time advisors, Paige Clancy.  We had a nice additional connection, in that Barto is the granddaughter of my Vandy classmates, Jim and Peggy Morgan.

Barto and I, two Hustler editors-in-chief with 55 years between us, led a conversation about significant growth at Vanderbilt, just like Chancellor Diermeier had.  But our focus was growth in VU student media.

Consider, in my era:

–The Hustler normally published two editions per week, each with 12 to 16 pages, and we printed and distributed free about 3,500 copies. We had about five “sections” – news, opinion, sports, features and entertainment.

–The other forms of student media back then were campus radio station WRVU, the “Commodore” yearbook, and a literary magazine.

–My best recollection is that there were about 75 students, total, who were active contributors to the four media, three of which were headquartered on the third floor of Alumni Hall and the radio station was in a cramped tower of Neely Auditorium.  We had no full-time advisors.

And now:

–Under Barrie Barto’s leadership, the Hustler is now a 24/7 online publication, with nine different “sections.”  In addition, there are two emailed newsletters – a news round-up on Monday, sports on Friday – that have 28,000 “subscribers.”

–The other forms of student communications today include 16 “media groups.”  Besides the online newspaper, there are the “Commodore” yearbook, two radio stations, two TV news outlets doing news, programming and video production; a marketing group, and a whole list of online special-interest “magazines.”

–Barto and advisor Clancy say their best estimate is there are more than 800 students who are active contributors.  They say what helps draw so many is being able to work with professional-level equipment in nice offices – the lower level of Sarratt Student Center – and having access to financial support for special projects, much of it donated by alumni of the programs.  And many of the successful alumni over the years have returned to mingle and talk with the students  — going way back to Grantland Rice; Atlanta editor Ralph McGill; NBC-TV anchor David Brinkley; Nashville Banner sports editor Fred Russell; former Tennessee governor and U.S. senator Lamar Alexander; writer and humorist Roy Blount Jr.; national political reporter Julia Malone; NBC show host Willie Geist; public media show hosts and execs Bridget Kelley and Alison Scholly;  and a long string of nationally-recognized sportswriters like Buster Olney, Skip Bayless, Henry Hecht, Bill Livingston, Dave Sheinen and others that have given Vandy the nickname of “Sportswriter U.”

All those and more from a university that has never had a journalism school.  Students interested in media have always been encouraged to study liberal arts and, when possible, snag part-time jobs at Nashville’s professional media for the experience.

Two Vanderbilt Hustler editors-in-chief, 55 years apart — Chuck Offenburger and Barrie Barto.

What will Vanderbilt student media be like in the future, both short- and long-term?

“I can’t predict what lies ahead for journalism and entertainment media, but I’m enthusiastic about Vanderbilt student media continuing to grow and evolve,” said advisor Clancy, who was a Hustler managing editor and Commodore yearbook editor before her 1998 graduation. “We’re so fortunate to be able to quickly adapt to changes while preserving students’ opportunities for free expression and experiential learning at Vanderbilt.”

She said the visit by alumni from my era during the recent reunion was a real spirit-lifter for her, editor Barto and other students who stopped in on us.

“Some of my happiest memories as a Vanderbilt student happened in the newsroom,” Clancy said. “What a delight it was to create a new memory in the newsroom with alumni from 1965 to 2024.

“People shared stories about women’s curfews and bygone rules, wise deans and chancellors, and the highs and lows of Commodore sports. I was struck by the common threads — students and alumni from The Vanderbilt Hustler are passionate about the truth, supportive of each other, and brilliantly funny.”

Barto shared this thought with my ol’ pal Bates: “I can only hope my friends from the Hustler and I will have such strong connections when we reach our 55th reunion,” she wrote to him. “I am so blessed to have you and yours as an example.”

Now, let’s continue beating Alabama.  And Tennessee, too.

Editor Barrie Barto with our ol’ pal — and former Hustler columnist — Douglas T. Bates III, of Centerville, Tennessee.

It was a lively lunchtime in the Vanderbilt Hustler newsroom. This shows about half the crowd. (Photo by Paige Clancy)

The RicheBurgers with the winter scarves that Vanderbilt gave all visitors for the reunion Nov. 7-10.

Checking in for our class dinner at the reunion. (Photo by Tom Bailey)

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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.