Tag Archives: University of Washington

As Special As A Place Can Get

When asked, I’ll bet just about everyone could identify their own special place. A spot somewhere on the globe that, when they find themselves there, they wish time could stand still. A place full of memories and special meaning. That, while not possible yet, but some day, they’d love to be able to fire up an app that would magically take them there, after a bad day at work or any of the other day-to-day annoyances we face.

Maybe I’m greedy, but I have at least a half-dozen of such places in my collection. But at the top of the list is “the Quad” at the University of Washington, especially on a sunny day in late March, when those gorgeous cherry trees break out into thousands and thousands of blossoms.

It rivals the show in early April when the tulip fields of Skagit County put on their show. Man, catch that on a sunny day, and you’ll max out the memory on your phone before you know it.

Yeah, pretty stunning stuff, but I only work in a visit up to Mount Vernon every couple of years. The cherry blossoms at the U.W. have the definite edge in being one of my all-time favorite places because of its location and the history that goes along with it.

I admit, there was a long stretch of years where I didn’t bother to swing by campus. But it’s now been 50 since I wandered around there, trying to figure out what I was going to do for the rest of my life and making so many life-long friends along the way. Every time I set foot on the grounds of the University of Washington, it just takes me back.

The Quad was one of the routes I took back in those days, on my way to the Communications Building, which was my major. The odds are pretty good that, on the way there, I probably walked by the girl that I would end up marrying decades later, as she was a Husky, too.

Visit this special place on a sunny day and you’ll find a vibrant collection of people excited for what they’re looking at, posing for pictures, serious photographers trying something new or getting shots with models striking poses. People show up in formal wear, costumes, even bridal gowns. You’ll see all ages, all ethnicities, all smiling away and it makes you realize, you know, if we wanted to, we all really could get along.

But what seals the deal on the Quad being at the top of my life of special places is because during the cherry blossom season, I’m not only reminded of that school’s stunning beauty but also about a friend that left too soon 10 years ago.

I’ve written about Bill Strothman before. His tragic death a decade ago was a big-time reminder that this can all just go away in the flash of a moment. Monday, March 18th of this year marked the 10-year anniversary of the helicopter crash that claimed Bill’s life. When I was reminded of that on social media, the almost 70-degree day outside and a report on the radio saying that the cherry blossoms were at their peak pretty much locked that I was heading there in the afternoon for a quick visit.

The next thing you know, there I was. In the place I spent those incredible college years, remembering the awesome friends I made, enjoying a  flood of memories and then, when you toss in those incredible cherry blossoms, it becomes obvious why this definitely tops the list of my collection of special places.

It really is about as special as a place can get.

Tim Hunter

I Think You Still Deserve a Statue

It happened all so fast.

I have to say, of all the sports of which I am a fan, my deepest feelings are for my University of Washington Husky Football Team.

For so many reasons.

I wasn’t even that much of a football fan before coming up to attend the University of Washington back in 1973. Arriving early to get acquainted with campus, I strolled around in awe of the beauty of the school, the historical buildings, “Red Square”, classrooms for lectures that held 900 half-awake students. It was just amazing.

Going away to college marked my first time away from home in Torrance, California. I had migrated to the Northwest to “live in the kind of place we used to go camping”, as I often said. So much green, trees everywhere, Mount Rainier in the distance, the cherry blossoms blooming in spring, the diverse campus architecture and beautiful girls everywhere. Stop and think of how much we each change in those years from age 18 through 21. So much growing up, experiencing life lessons, trying to fit in, setting your course for the future. Those were big years!

With school pride and wanting to enjoy the full student experience at University of Washington, I just had to buy season football tickets! For a $50 student pass, you’d receive an unreserved seat for each home game in one of the color-coded sections of the student side. You’d be assigned the Orange section one week, Purple the next and so on, so that all students would eventually get a chance to sit in those areas. One week also included being assigned to the unpainted top section, known as the “Stone section”. (for multiple reasons)

My arrival coincided with the swan song of the Jim Owens era, which was followed by those Don James golden years. That’s all it took for me to take a serious dive into becoming a serious Husky football fan. Three years after my graduation and my brief radio stint in Yakima, Washington, I found myself working at KOMO radio in Seattle, “Your Husky Station.”

I got to know and chat with the likes of the legendary Coach Don James, his wife Carol, assistant and eventual Head Coach Jim Lambright and even was lucky enough to work directly with Bob “the Voice of the Huskies” Rondeau and the late Gary Johson, the broadcast team of U.W. football at the time. No matter what happened in baseball, professional football or basketball, Saturday afternoons were always spent cheering on the Dawgs.

Even while raising kids and all those Saturday afternoon soccer games, I’d have a transistor radio with me to hear what was going on at Husky Stadium. In time, a co-worker offered up her season tickets to me. While they stayed in her name, I’d still get to be there for every home game. I kept ’em all the way through that much dreaded 0-12 season and that was just too much for me. So, I gave them up.

Oh, I continued to follow the team over the years, but gave up the idea of being there each week. I did my best to make at least one annual visit to that high holy Husky ground each season. Early in 2023 at a church auction, I had a chance to bid on some opening day Husky tickets for a season that I just felt was going to be special and boy was I right! In 2023, this amazing team went 13-0. The New Year’s Day Sugar Bowl win put ’em at 14-0 prior to that letdown performance in the college championship game. But I still have so much pride in my school, in my Dawgs, in that collection of talented players who pulled out miraculous victories week after week in the season of ’23.

I bring all this up to help you understand why it was so difficult for me to understand the thinking that went through Head Coach Kalen DeBoer’s mind when, after only two years, he left this successful program he had built to take over Nick Saban’s job at the University of Alabama.

In two seasons, Kalen had restored the glory days of Husky football and could have remained God-like to Dawg fans throughout the land. However, our first-year Athletic Director started to get suspicious when the school offered Coach DeBoer an $8.7-million a year contract extension before Thanksgiving and the coach said he wanted to wait on the money stuff and focus on the remaining games. Following that amazing win over Texas in the Sugar Bowl, they upped the offer to $9.4-million a year. Same response.

DeBoer’s choice became: continuing a positive, talent-rich program at one of the top schools in the country, at $9.4-million a year; or, taking over a legendary program down south. DeBoer described it as a “once in a lifetime” job offer, and that’s where he went.

I base my definition of happiness on doing what you love to do in this life. If you’re doing that AND you’re getting paid for it, you win. I’ve been pretty blessed to have been in that situation most of my life. It’s obvious that Kalen’s life and destiny has always been about football, but at what point do you reach the top? When you’re at Alabama? When you’re at Alabama and win a national championship? Several national championships? Or, when you move on from that job to a coaching gig at the pro level?

Maybe it’s because of my advanced years and perspective, but I think I would be more like Mark Few, the basketball guru at Gonzaga, who over the years had offers to leave, but chose to stay in Eastern Washington for 25 seasons and counting. I would be completely surprised if he doesn’t retire there. They’ll most likely put up a statue of him after he retires. He’s making some very nice money, living his dream job, and Zag fans remain loyal and grateful.

It seems to me a few years back that a Washington State University Head Football Coach was lured to the Alabama job. Mike Price didn’t even make it to the start of the season. I don’t need to bring up the details again, but it involved a strip club and boosters who just didn’t like the school’s choice.

Coach DeBoer, you did some amazing things in your short tenure here. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for and that the Alabama fans are good to you. Frankly, I have my doubts and I’m afraid you’ll get your answer shortly following a couple of losses. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen.

As a die-hard Husky football fan, I appreciate all you did for the school, for the program, for Husky football and that incredible ride through the 2023 season. I wish nothing but the best for you and hope that Karma behaves itself.

In the meantime, let me just publicly state that for all Coach Kalen DeBeor did achieve at our school in those two brief years, he still deserves a statue out in front of Husky Stadium.

An ice sculpture. It’ll be interesting to see which one ends up staying here longer.

Tim Hunter

They Really Were Some Pretty Good Old Days

Last Sunday, I got to enjoy a wonderful stroll down Memory Lane. I gathered with friends from my college days, when I was living in a dorm named Terry Hall that no longer exists at the University of Washington.
You’re saying, “Oh, Tim, they still have a Terry Hall at the University of Washington.” Different one. They tore down the building I lived in for three amazing years back in 2014. When the last of the students moved out in December of 2013, the Seattle Police actually used the building for SWAT Team training before the wrecking ball showed up to do its work.

Taking me back to my time at the original Terry Hall means going back over 40 years ago. That’s weird. Growing up, when my parents talked about 40 years ago, that would have been referring to the Great Depression and pre-World War II.  But here I am now, in this 60-year-old body with a mind that thinks he’s still 35, reminiscing about those days in the 1970s like they were yesterday.

Terry Hall was my first experience at living away from home. It’s where I learned that if you spend too much time being lovesick over a girl from your home town, you could end up with a $112 phone bill. Yes, kids, there was a time where long-distance calls actually cost money. I was attending school at the UW, but my social world was this building full of other kids who had left the nest and were reinventing themselves into the people they wanted to become.  I arrived in Seattle as a black-belt in goofball (no surprise to my high school friends) but being away at college allowed me to be a goofball on steroids. A few examples? Oh, sure.

Like I said, no surprises there.

These were the transition years. Going from a kid whose parents provided a safety net to being a semi-adult with full adult responsibility. There was so much learning going on, both in and out of school. The three years I lived in Terry Hall pretty much shaped my future. The high school girlfriend I was supposed to marry decided to set a new course. A guy down the hall, Bob Carey, gets full credit for telling me about the broadcasting program at the U-Dub. I remember thinking, “You could play on the radio and learn about television and call that a major? Done deal!”

Each of the people at the reunion triggered different memories. There was Erika, the girl from Germany, who once tried to teach me skiing. Jen and Abdoul, who both ended up working for a local city. My long-time pal, Steve, who knows more incriminating things about me than anyone should. Even my old roommate, Les showed up. That was a treat. Les and I ventured away from the dorms my senior year of college, to a funky house in the Fremont district of Seattle. That house still stands and is now actually a barbecue place. Seriously, this was our home.

We remembered classmates who weren’t there and wondered what they were up to. Who was still around? Who is about to retire? Who has already retired?

I got to meet spouses and hear about their kids. It was a small group, but with all the value of a big fancy class reunion.  These were people I saw every day, that became a part of my life. They were the folks I would look for, when sitting down in the cafeteria and with whom I worked with in the kitchen. That picture of me up above in the white hat? That was taken when I had the dorm kitchen job of milk runner, where it was my responsibility to make sure none of the milks ever ran out. I was also a fry cook and on egg days, I would cook around 1200 eggs or flip 1500 pancakes in the morning for breakfasts.

Get me going and there’s a movie’s worth of stories that, maybe, someday I’ll write down. In the meantime and for now, they’re alive and well up in my brain. A few of the forgotten ones were knocked loose again last weekend. We all agreed, we HAVE to do this again sometime soon. Those really were some good old days.

The hardest part about pulling off one of these mini-reunions? Yes, all those various schedules make it a challenge. But the most difficult part is admitting that everything we talk about happened over 40 years ago.

That’s hard.

Tim Hunter

Wacky Week Podcast EPISODE 144

Hang on, we’re going back to my early radio days. First, you’ll hear a comedy demo tape I sent to Ross Schafer with the hope of getting involved with “Almost Live” and, as you know, I didn’t. Then, we’ll go back even further to the first episode of my college radio comedy program, “Tim Hunter’s Return to Normalcy.” Damn, seems like just a few years ago….

Friends

Of the billions of people on this earth, we’ve chosen a few along the way to label as “friends.”

Friends come in many forms. Facebook Friends. Best Friends. Close Friends. Great Friends. Sorta Friends. Casual Friends (some with benefits). There are Childhood Friends, High School Friends, College Friends, Work Friends. Think of any of those categories and I’m sure names and faces pop up in your mind. As many as there are different types of people, there are varying degrees of friendship. I put an extremely high value on my friends. Over my six decades, I’ve made a lot of them and stayed in touch with as many as possible along the way.

There are some people who limit the amount of friends, keeping it a core group.  The group of friends they stay in touch with are pretty much it. In my case, I’ve got a ton of really good friends that I see sporadically. It could be several months, it could be years. But those are the people who know, when we get together, it’s as if it had just been moments before and we just pick up where we left off. None of that, “You never called” stuff.

There were the elementary school friends, who I lost track of. The high school friends, which I’ve reconnected with thanks to Facebook. I hit the jackpot with my college friends. I’m hoping at some point, I can do justice to that story and write a screenplay about those crazy days at Terry Hall.  And of course, my incredible collection of radio friends that I have made along the way. There’s a lifetime supply of stories right there.

The one term I have a really hard time with is, “Best Friend.” To single out one person out of all the people I know, I’d probably have to default to the cliché answer, “My wife.”  I don’t really have one person I would call a best friend but that’s because I want it that way. If forced to identify someone outside of my marriage as a Best Friend, I’d probably say, “It’s whichever friend I’m with at the time you ask.”

There are people-watchers. I’m a people-listener. The bottom-line is that everyone has a great story.  Last weekend while chatting with Victoria, somehow I got on the topic of a certain person and suddenly, details started spilling out about their life and their story.  All stuff that could easily end up on the Hallmark Channel. Maybe it’s the writer in me, the story-teller, but it’s the details of people’s lives that simply fascinates me.

If you’re a friend and you’d like to sit around some day and compare life stories, just say when & where. There are actually two people from my past that I would love to have that conversation with and hear how life has gone since the last time we saw each other.  I think we all have people like that. For no other purpose, just for the curiosity of it. Here’s what happened to me, how about you? How was your life? I really doubt these two particular conversations will ever happen, but I’d like to believe they will.

Or maybe, just maybe, that’s what heaven is. Just sitting there, with a friend from long ago, swapping stories, getting answers to your questions, remembering old times. Having their stories trigger more of those long-lost adventures from your memory bank.

For yours truly, that would work. A lot. Yeah, that sounds like heaven to me.

Family is assigned to you. Your friends are those wonderful bonuses that add so much to our crazy story of life.

To all of my friends, thank you for being a part of my story.

Cheers!

Tim Hunter