Last night I had the privilege of being apart of the first meeting of the South Atlanta JSU Alumni. I have lived in south Atlanta 11 years (ok, THIS time, I’ve only lived here 6 other times before in my life—army brat, you understand). Most of the Atlanta Alumni meetings I have attended, have resulted in road rage along the way to get to the meeting normally held in North Atlanta.
Kaci Ogle of the alumni office and I got to talking and I started naming off many of the alumni on the south side, the number of Band Directors on this end of town (seems like the majority of schools have a former Southerners leading the music departments) so we thought — what the heck, we’ll try an exploratory meeting to start a group down here.
About 20 of us met at Partners II Pizza in Tyrone last night and had a ball…you might have known someone before you came (I think I knew one) but before you knew it, the people around you knew someone who knew someone and so forth. The great common denominator was we were all Gamecocks — some of us Southerners, others 92J jocks, drama peeps, and even athletes — but we were all Gamecocks.
What wasn’t surprising to me was that we all loved our time at JSU and couldn’t help but share that with the group — it molded us to be who we are, who our extended family ended up becoming, and where we tell any young person around us about the University we love and why they should love it to.
I know many people that have gone to other schools and when they talk about their college experience I hear about how they went there but it wasn’t the experience that Jacksonville State seems to impress on those who go there. They just went to college — no big deal and have never been back since.
I wish I could explain how a modest size University in a small sleepy town at the Foothills of the mountains in Northeast Alabama becomes the place that changes your life…but it does…and last night proved it 20 times over…
PROUD to be a Gamecock!
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