Many universities across the country are welcoming back their former students this month.
Our own university is celebrating our annual homecoming event this week, with the main events starting on Thursday. Alumni will be everywhere, participating in tours exploring new areas of campus, the Crimson Classic 5K on Friday and of course, they will see the 2024 hockey national championship banner raised into the rafters on Saturday night against Northeastern.
Homecoming is a standing tradition that originated in the early 20th century. It’s highly debated which university actually came up with homecoming, but it’s largely believed that the University of Missouri invented it in 1911.
The Director of Athletics at Mizzou, Chester L. Brewer, wanted to invite past alumni to the first football game of the season against the University of Kansas. He also planned a parade and a rally to go along with the new festivities.
Soon after, homecoming traditions of all sorts were made at all kinds of schools, including high schools. So, for this week’s Into the archives topic, we will dive into DU’s history of homecoming and how the student newspaper has covered it.
The Into the archives column was an idea I came up with last quarter, in line with the Clarion’s celebration of its 125th anniversary. I siphoned through the Clarion digitized archives located at the DU Special Collections to help showcase the great history of our newspaper, and I will continue to do so for the rest of this quarter.
1917 Kynewsibok (vol. 20)
I usually only include Clarion archives in these articles, but including this Kynewsibok archive is necessary to provide additional context to the start of homecoming at DU. Some of you are probably asking yourselves, what the heck is a Kynewsibok?
The Kynewsibok was DU’s annual yearbook that was produced from 1898-2002 (and a CD version made in 2003). The yearbook featured in-depth sections highlighting the news of the school year, each class of students, the athletics teams, Greek life and other clubs on campus.
The first mention of something similar to the homecoming tradition was in the 1917 Kyneswibok as a “rally day for Thanksgiving game.”
The early traditions of homecoming for DU were centered around the football program and Thanksgiving. Typically, alums would come back around Thanksgiving to see DU take on the University of Colorado and also participate in a rally and parade.
Other traditions have come and gone with homecoming such as Pioneer Day, which was when students and faculty would dress in Western old-fashioned clothing on the Friday of the homecoming weekend. DU has also had bonfires, selecting homecoming royalty and a dance throughout its homecoming history.
October 19, 1922 (vol. 27, no. 5)
It was very hard to figure out when DU changed its homecoming tradition to the month of October and when the word “homecoming” was first used to call the new festivities. But, this 1922 edition is likely the first use of the word “homecoming” in the Clarion. The first lines give an interesting persuasion to attend the festivities.
“Return, O Ye Wanderers! The fatted calf breathes his last, and the stage is set for one glorious Homecoming! Being a brief digest on Homecoming Day, and an appeal to every alumnus to COME HOME.”
The homecoming tradition was centered around the CU v DU football game, so whenever this game was scheduled was likely when DU would schedule homecoming. In this second-page article, it said the game was scheduled for Oct. 28 and alums were invited back for that weekend.
November 20, 1968 (vol 73, no. 24)
When the football program went defunct in 1960, so did the central event of homecoming. For seven years (1960-1967), the university did not celebrate homecoming.
But, it was brought back in 1968, and with it came this Clarion article describing the innovation the university had to go through to bring it back. The main event of homecoming was now the Colorado College vs DU hockey game, which took place on Nov. 22, 1968. Since then, a DU hockey game has been the central event for homecoming.
Funny enough, the 1968 homecoming also featured a concert from Simon and Garfunkel the next day in DU Arena (the former arena that was replaced by Magness Arena). A Clarion article said the tickets were sold out a week prior to the homecoming events.
October 15, 1992 (vol. 100, no. 5)
In 1992, the Clarion published a full spread of the schedule of events for homecoming. The theme for the 1992 homecoming was “The Tradition Begins…”
The theme was in line with the new mission of the Alumni Career Achievement Lecturer program to bring the alumni’s “knowledge” closer to the students. Many DU alumni visited classes throughout the week and provided lectures to students about knowledge in their respective fields of work.
Past alumni who came and visited included Pete Coors, future CEO of Coors Brewing Company, Peter Morton, the co-founder of Hard Rock Cafe and Lewis Kornfeld, the former president of RadioShack.
A special thank you to Will Clary and Kate Crowe of the Special Collections, who helped me this week navigate the history of homecoming at DU. As always, thank you to the DU Special Collections & Archives for digitizing Clarion editions. Check them out for yourself on the Special Collections website.
