There’s nothing like a fight song, and folks at IPFW like it so much, the band played it twice Monday afternoon at the 50th anniversary celebration kickoff. Rain rerouted the event from Kettler Hall, the original building in 1964, to the Walb Student Union ballroom. As Marcus Farr directed the pep band from a small stand, mascot Don the Mastodon cheered on the clapping students, teachers, administrators and guests. Up on the riser sat Mayor Tom Henry, who had already set aside the day for history in a proclamation, and five state legislators: Martin Carbaugh, Casey Cox and Thomas Wyss, all of Fort Wayne, and Dennis Kruse of Auburn and Susan Glick of LaGrange. Speaking to a packed ballroom, while hundreds stood outside in line for free hamburgers and chips, Chancellor Vicki Carwein told the crowd the campus started with one building, and 3,100 students signed up for the first term. Now there are 56 buildings, and nearly 10,000 graduate and undergraduate students and almost 3,000 high school students take credits through the school. Back in the day, only two-year associate degrees were offered. Now there are 200 four-year degrees students can pursue. And there was no alumni association, because there weren’t any alumni. Now they number 55,000, she said. “Fifty years from now, there will be over 100,000,” she added. School colors were crimson and gold. “Today we’re true blue,” Carwein said. And there was enough of that color in the room to make it obvious. Wade Smith, president of the school student association, wore a bright blue shirt and white tie as he predicted that “the next 50 years will be amazing.” Carwein said the mastodon was chosen as mascot, the only such mascot in the United States, after someone found the fossils of a mastodon on a farm near Angola. “We could have been the Pioneers, the Turtles, the Chiefs, the Hobbits, even the Boiler Hoosiers,” she said. Also making remarks was Lowell Beineke, one of the original mathematics professors and still a booster. “I love it for its concerts, its theater, its athletic events, its lectures and more,” said Beineke, who remembered attending a performance of “The Fantasticks” when it was first performed in the ’60s and when it was recently performed again. Theater students Kelcey Merkle and Nick Lubs, both 19 and from Fort Wayne, said they intended to attend a few basketball games after listening to Beineke say he had signed up for season tickets. They also plan to look for the words to the fight song. “I didn’t even know we had one,” Merkle said. journalgazette.net/article/20140916/LOCAL/309169969
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 07:55:15 +0000
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