Wisconsin Homecoming offers UW-Madison alumni a chance to celebrate traditions that unite undergraduates and graduates alike. Tom Detienne, an 82-year-old alumnus who began his freshman year at Wisconsin in the fall of 1948, returned to Madison this weekend for his 60th consecutive Homecoming football game.
Detienne, who has lived in New York since 1957, said his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, and his lifelong friends are important reasons for returning year after year.
I keep coming back because I enjoy meeting my old friends,"" he said.
Arlie Schardt, a 1954 UW-Madison graduate and one of Detienne's friends who returned for Homecoming this year, said a periodic newsletter written by Detienne is responsible for many peoples' return.
Schardt said 27 people from the early 1950s came back for Detienne's ""big number 60"" this year.
""[The newsletter is] a lot of fun,"" Schardt said. ""He keeps people young.""
Detienne said his involvement in the Wisconsin Eastern Alumni Scholarship Fund, which paid for disadvantaged minority students from the New York area to attend UW-Madison, cemented his bond with the university more so than being a graduate.
He said for 19 years, he treated his ""students"" to brunch at the Edgewater hotel the morning after the Homecoming game.
Detienne said Ted Crabb, an old friend and former Memorial Union director, is an important part of keeping his tradition alive. Crabb has reserved Detienne's hotel room on the fourth floor of Memorial Union for years and has already reserved the room for next year.
""He's just had a passion for coming back every year to the Badger football games,"" Crabb said, who met Detienne during his freshman year. ""He's got several interests in life: one was Duke Ellington, another one is golf and a third one is Badger football.""
Detienne recalled his role in bringing both Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to campus in the early 1950s.
In 1952, he was responsible for booking Armstrong for a fraternity social hosted by Beta Theta Pi, Phi Delta Theta and Sigma Chi at the Hotel Loraine in Madison, a historic building which now houses luxury condominiums.
The next year, Detienne hired Duke Ellington to play at Memorial Union's Great Hall and played overnight host to the band at his fraternity house.
Detienne said the biggest changes since his school days involved females' curfew each night of the week, Wisconsin's dominance in Big Ten boxing, which Detienne said was eliminated after a student died, and the overall size of the university.
""Everything was smaller then,"" he said. ""When I first was in school, I think there were only 12,000 students '¦ It was still a beautiful campus, there's no doubt about that.""
Detienne even mentioned Halloween.
""Halloween was nothing,"" he said. ""I don't remember anything done for Halloween and now '¦ I'm worried about getting to [dinner] because of all the tie-up and the traffic.
