Snowfalls and sunsets, beanies and books (or is it Buck’s?), the Founder and Fallbrook … These are just a few of the things we love about Oswego. To celebrate the college’s Sesquicentennial, we asked you, our readers, to send in the things you remember most fondly about your alma mater. The list includes current faves and long-gone treasures. But one thing remains certain — Our alumni love Oswego!

Editor’s note: Entries are numbered for listing purposes and not ranked. Click on the links to read a story on that item.

1. Applause-worthy sunsets

2. Lake Ontario

3. Lake winds

4. Shady Shore

5. Great Lake Review

6. The Wheel

7. Wade’s

8. The Bluffs

9. Blackfriars

10. Smokestacks

11. Activism of the ’60s/’70s

12. Take Back the Night

13. ALANA

14. King Alumni Hall

15. 9/11 Memorial Garden

16. Glimerglass Lagoon

17. The Lodge

18. Torchlight

19. Old Alma Mater

20. New Alma Mater

21. Ontario Orchards

22. Wall Street Café

23. Sheldon’s trees

24. Max Ziel

25. Eleanor Roosvelt visit

26. Sheldon Hall ballroom

27. Book Brigade

28. Normal School pride

29. Epic Snowfalls

30. The Furniture Shop

31. Sundial Quad

32. Lee Hall pool movies

33. Rice Creek

34. Fallbrook

35. Waterspouts

36. New vs. Old Campus snowball fight

37. Bridge Street Run

38. Dirt Day

39. Washington Boulevard

40. Rudy’s

41. Bev’s

42. Sweete Shop

43. Oswego Sub Shop

44. Martin Luther King Day celebration

45. Springfest

46. Mahar-Tyler tunnel

47. Late Night (snack bar)

48. The Art Attack

49. Rush Week

50. John Belt’s studio

51. Sons of the Wilted Wallet

52. Daughters of the Wilted Wallet

53. Carillon Bells

54. Lake Effect Café

55. WNYO

56. WOCR

57. WTOP

58. WRVO

59. The Ontarian

60. Solid State

61. StateSingers

62. GOLD (Graduates Of the Last Decade)

63. Lakeside Dining Hall/Johnson Hall

64. Quest

65. Media Summit

66. Centro

67. Student Association

68. Flat Rocks

69. Ropes

70. Car buried at Culkin

71. Bonfires behind Riggs

72. The Village townhouses

73. LOCO

74. Sheldon cupola

75. Old City

76. Buckland’s

77. 2007 national Div. III men’s
champion hockey team

78. Sheldon Statue

79. Nunzi’s

80. Cooper

81. Mackin

82. Honors Program

83. Phi Beta Sigma (first African American
fraternity on campus)

84. Women’s ice hockey

85. Campus School

86. Splinter Village

87. Poucher Hall radio lab

88. Industrial Arts

89. The Tavern

90. Campus Center

91. PPB/SAPB concerts

92. Meteorology

93. Cayuga Hall

94. Funnelle Hall

95. Hart Hall

96. Oneida Hall

97. Onondaga Hall

98. Scales Hall

99. Waterbury Hall

100. Hidden Fields

101. Laker Hall

102. Lanigan Hall

103. Penfield Library

104. Rich Hall

105. The ’Shed

106. Greek life

107. Lab Theatre

108. Uldrick Thompson’s Clock

109. Children’s Center

110. Draper Hall

111. The original Sheldon Hall

112. Return to Oz

113. Reunion Weekend

114. Artswego

115. Alumni-In-Residence

116. Indie Concert Series

117. Lil’s

118. Toilet Talk

119. Snygg Hall

120. Piez Hall

121. Swetman Gymnasium

122. Our 75,000 alumni worldwide

123. College Mace and Medallion

124. Writing Arts Program

125. Football

126. Beanies

127. The Pergola

128. Symphonic Choir

129. Romney Field House

130. Timepieces

131. College-Community Orchestra

132. Northern lights

133. Senior Clam Bake

134. Sunset Café

135. Transportation Lab

136. O-Zone

137. Bowling Alley in Hewitt Union

138. Zamboni

139. Honors Convocation

140. Road Show

141. Pontiac Hotel

142. Muhammad Ali visit

143. Ice sculptures

144. Commencement

145. Hideo Takamine

146. Homecoming Parade

147. 1893/1903 World’s Exhibition medals

148. Rugby

149. 1966 championship men’s soccer team

150. Waterman Theatre

“150 Things We Love about Oswego” was researched, reported and written by Editor Michele Reed, Associate Editor Shane M. Liebler and Keith Edelman ’10. Thanks to colleagues from the offices of Public Affairs, Publications, Penfield Library Archives and Sports Information for help in compiling the stories and images.

The college’s first and only on-campus bar opened in Hewitt Union as the Rathskellar. Students were charged with converting the former post office and storage space.

“It was quite a project,” remembers Mark Wahl ’74, who designed and built the hangout as an industrial arts major. The Tavern included multiple levels, professional-grade stage and sound, murals and, of course, the bar.

“We actually went out and tore down some barns,” to get the wood, says Wahl, who went on to a career in designing and building as a contractor.

The Tavern thrived into the mid-1980s, when the legal drinking age was upped from 18 to 21. The space became Timepieces, an alcohol-free pizza joint, in 1986. Students also migrated to the Ozone dance club, in a different corner of Hewitt Union. It closed shortly after the Campus Center opened in 2007.

The Campus School closed in the budget cuts of the 1980s, but its legacy lives on in the thousands of teachers who learned their craft in its walls and the millions of their students who benefited from teachers trained in “The Oswego Method.”

Whether it’s actually crafted from the melted pennies donated by New York’s schoolchildren — as college lore has it — or paid for by their collected coins, the statue dates back to 1899. It depicts Sheldon instructing a small child, using the Oswego Method of object teaching. The founder holds a sphere, which was one of the objects that made up the tool kit of instructors in the Pestalozzian Method, which Sheldon popularized among American educators.

The statue was created by sculptor John Francis Brines and stood in the State Capitol in Albany until 1922, when it came to campus. It has moved over the years, from the front hall of Old Main to its lawn, from storage in the 1980s to “Sheldon Park” between Hewitt Union and Culkin Hall after refurbishment
as the 1985 Senior Class Gift, but wherever it stands, the founder’s statue remains a symbol of the institution. Generations of co-eds have claimed a seat on Sheldon’s lap and Oswego’s 75,000 alumni have waited patiently for the “apple” to drop.

That’s not too much of a problem for Pete Flanigan ’79. He has something that most Oswego alumni don’t: a Buckland’s on the first floor of his home.

Flanigan, the last of many former owners of Buckland’s, laid claim to decades of memorabilia. When the doors closed and bulldozers came, everything was fair game.

“I took what I could,” Flanigan said. That included half of the iconic Buckland’s sign that once stood outside.

“We got a truck and some rope and just pulled the thing down,” Flanigan said. He ripped out all the old electronics and split the sign down the middle. Flanigan’s half (pictured) resides in his Buckland’s-themed recreation room at home. The other ended up with his old business partner Pete Sobel ’82.

Rocco Varacchi ’70 and Cindy Spiak Varacchi ’72 first met on the beer-soaked floor of Buckland’s, where Rocco worked as a bartender and manned the grill.

“I tried to sell her a ticket to my fraternity beer blast, but she didn’t want anything to do with it,” Rocco Varacchi said.

For many, it was more than just a bar or a place to work.

“Buckland’s was family,” Bill Price ’70 said. “(Owner) Bob (Clark) took care of us, and we took care of each other.”

— Keith Edelman ’10

Many of the 13 students’ creations were designed in D’Innocenzo’s Dimensional Design class. The colorful mosaics were erected on Tyler and Mahar halls, Penfield Library and other spaces on campus.

“It was a very exciting project to work on,” remembers Amy Gingold Horwitz ’86, one of the Art Attack crew who also wrote an Oswegonian article about the project. “It was really wonderful that the campus was concerned about bringing out some environmental art at that time and giving funding to that project.”

Upon hearing that many of the murals still stand, the Albany-area resident commented, “It’s wonderful that they have preserved them — it’s fantastic!”

While the murals still bring pleasure to current visitors to campus, for Horwitz they’re a reminder of “an exciting time to be part of the Art Department in Oswego.”

At one point, Fallbrook was a residence hall for 60 to 70 men, mostly transfers and hockey players. John Daken ’66 and Ron Kilbourn ’66 remember their time at Fallbrook fondly.

“It was like living in a fraternity,” said Daken. “We were a close-knit group of guys.”

The residence had its own cook, and the added benefit of a beautiful natural setting. “On nice days, we would stand under the waterfall and wash our hair,” Daken recalled.

The ski slopes and horseback riding ended with the budget cuts of the ’70s, but Fallbrook is still used for weddings, meetings and retreats, as well as the annual favorite, the “Come as You Were” barbecue at every Oswego Alumni Association Reunion.

Alumni who were on campus in the years 1958, 1966, 1978 and 1993 will never forget how Oswego made headlines around the country and across the globe for the feet of snow that piled up in a matter of hours.

Judy Driscoll Skillen ’61 recalled the snowstorm that greeted students returning from the 1958 Thanksgiving Break. “I was living in Johnson at the time,” she said. “We never went to school that whole week. They airlifted in food.” Other grads tell stories of climbing out second story windows and walking on the tops of cars.

Oswego’s “Big Snow” of 1958 dropped nearly six feet of snow in five days and inspired the late Dr. Maurice O. Boyd, who directed the Symphonic Choir, to pen “Oswego Is Famous For Its Snow.”

The January Intercession of 1966 marked another massive storm.

The Blizzard of ’66, which saw 103 inches fall from Jan. 27 to 31, caused a bit of cabin fever, too. Linda Peters ’66, an Arethusa sister, recalled, ”We got so bored we got some chalk and played hopscotch in the hall.”

The snowfall of 1978 caused Oswego to become the butt of jokes for several nights on “The Johnny Carson Show,” and Carson even showed photos of the famous “snow bar” erected by students on West Fifth Street.

Grads who were on campus in 2004 and 2007 have vivid memories of monumental snowfalls too. From Jan. 26 to 30, 2004, 53.7 inches fell in just 113 hours, causing 966 classes to be cancelled. In February 2007, 72 inches of snow fell over seven days. Oswego was under a state of emergency with classes canceled for three days. The city received mention in The New York Times and alumni from as far away as Asia repored seeing news of Oswego’s blizzard.

Whatever era they graduated, Lakers will always be able to say with first hand knowledge that, “Oswego is famous for its snow.”

“I remember they had a few of us who were president of our groups shake hands and talk with her,” she says. Also greeting Roosevelt were the late Betty Burden ’45 and the late M. Carol McLaughlin ’45.

Originally held around the statue of Founder Edward Austin Sheldon on the lawn of the building that bears his name, as in the 1938 ceremony pictured here, Torchlight has grown so large it now fills a tent to the north of the Campus Center. Despite changes over the years, the ceremony’s core remains the same: Light from the Torch of Learning is passed from the faculty and alumni of Oswego to the graduating seniors on the eve of their Commencement.