WARREN WILSON COLLEGE HOMECOMING
Once a year colleges all over the United States host a homecoming weekend, a weekend that brings graduates back to the college to renew the friendships they made in college. It is also a chance for the the college fundraisers to cement the ties of alumni to the college to encourage financial support of the college. It has been almost twenty years since I retired and I have lost touch with the college so I was a unsure who would remember me. Today was a day to see what ties remain for me.
The first Homecoming event was a memorial service for Billy Edd Wheeler, the most famous Warren Wilson graduate, who was a song writer, playwrite and painter who wrote over 500 songs which were sung by Kenny Rogers, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio and many other outstanding singers. Billy Edd has a wonderful voice and put out a number of recordings himself.
Billy Edd died a year ago and his memorial was scheduled for Homecoming last year. But the flooding of tropical storm Helene put the college farm under water and turned off electricity and water. So Homecoming last year was cancelled and the memorial postponed.
The memorial service in the College chapel was beautiful with story after story about Billy Edd told by Doug Orr, former president of Warren Wilson College and singing buddy or Billy Edd, who gave the eulogy. It was also a time for friends to be reaquainted which is one of the functions of funerals and weddings.
After the service I went down on campus and picked up my ticket for the traditional homecoming barbecue. I sat at a table with people I didn’t know well feeling very out of place. When I was almost done and ready to retreat back home I discovered that at a nearby table were people that I knew, members of the class of 1975, back for their 50th reunion. Among them were four of the students whom I took to India over Christmas vacation 52 years ago, on the first of many student groups I led to India over the years. I was a young teacher at Warren Wilson College. I had spent a year in New Delhi the year before and when I asked in October in a class on India who would like to go to India over Christmas, a number of students raised their hands. So two months later about ten us took the train from the Biltmore Station, got snowed in in Washington, did a tour of the Capitol buildings in a foot of snow with nothing arranged for the trip beyond getting to Delhi at a time when communication by mail and phone was difficult with no Internet. The hotel we first stayed in at $4 a night was too expensive so through missionary connections we rented an apartment of an Indian family who was going out of town for a month and slept there wherever we could on couches or the floor for a month when we weren’t traveling. We had a wonderful time wandering around North India and then some of the group stayed on for the second semester and some of them returned for the second semester, two weeks late.
The four of us reminisced and talked over a a barbecue dinner in a big white tent and it turned out to be a wonderful evening.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 