Return Trip
Eastern celebrates 100 years of coming home.
It was a Homecoming celebration a century in the making.
This year’s 100th anniversary edition of Eagle Family Homecoming, a must-attend happening that included both time-honored traditions and exciting new events, kicked off on Oct. 16. Before concluding a week later with a victorious football tilt against Weber State, the celebration brought Eagle Pride home for thousands of EWU students, alumni and friends.
Kelsey Hatch-Brecek ’21, director of EWU Alumni Relations, called it a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to indulge in all things Eastern. The EWU community was happy to seize that opportunity; hanging banners, painting windows and decking out campus classrooms and offices with red and white. Among the new events was a speculator, donor-funded fireworks extravaganza after the football game, and a “Lighting of the Water Tower” that permanently spotlighted the logo on Eastern’s iconic 102-foot-tall water receptacle. Transformed into a beacon of Eagle pride — one visible to the campus community and passing aircraft alike — the tower will now, say Eric and Denise Clements, the donors who made the lights possible, become an even more unambiguous landmark.
“We anticipated a big group of alumni and community members turning out to celebrate,” says Hatch-Brecek. “They did, and it was truly a once-in-a-century example of Eagle pride.”
After the lights flooded the tower, attendees were invited to walk down the hill to join Eagle student athletes at Reese Court for “Eagle MadNest,” another new event. MadNest featured members of the EWU women’s, men’s and wheelchair basketball teams, each of whom participated in skills contests, mingled with visitors in meet-and-greets, and offered insights into their upcoming seasons.
Certainly no Homecoming would have been complete without the tried and true old favorites. In 2023, these included the annual president’s breakfast, decoration competitions, an evening pep rally and bonfire, and, of course, downtown bed races.
A particularly poignant feature of the 100th Homecoming Anniversary celebration was a walk-though exhibit mounted by the Alumni Association and the JFK Library Archives. The “Walk Through the Decades” exhibition, held in the beautifully restored Hargreaves Hall Reading Room, used photographs, video and memorabilia to document EWU’s development since 1923.
“We anticipated a big group of alumni and community members turning out to celebrate,” says Hatch-Brecek. “They did, and it was truly a once-in-a-century example of Eagle pride.”
