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Four for Four

Swan Swan H May 17 2009 10:54 AM

Big day for our family today as my wife graduates from Hofstra with a BA in History. This makes it four for four, as our kids ('05 and '08) and I are also Hofstra alums. She never went to college after high school, so this was quite an effort. She ended up with the highest GPA of all part-time students graduating this year, which just blows me away, as she has a very tough job with a lot of responsibility and still found time to do such good work. I am so proud of her for not only deciding to do this, but for working so hard at it and succeeding so wonderfully.

themetfairy May 17 2009 11:26 AM

WTG Mrs. Swan H!

Rockin' Doc May 17 2009 12:39 PM

Great work by Mrs. H. You have every reason to be proud of your wife and kids.

John Cougar Lunchbucket May 17 2009 12:46 PM

Congrats to you Flying Dutchpeople

Edgy DC May 17 2009 01:37 PM

As four proud alums, perhaps you can lobby to get that nickname restored.

cooby May 17 2009 07:36 PM

Terrific :)

Swan Swan H May 17 2009 08:05 PM

Thanks guys. We had a great day - our son came down from Boston and her parents came up from SC, and we had a whole mob of people at the ceremonies. Edgy, I'd love to get the Dutchmen name back, but the first priority is to get the new theme park-looking signs off of the gorgeous campus.

Fman99 May 17 2009 09:01 PM

Mazel tov to you and your family.

metirish May 17 2009 09:20 PM

Congrats , very impressive. I'm sure she needed a very supportive husband so good for you too.

Edgy DC May 17 2009 09:23 PM Edited 2 time(s), most recently on May 18 2009 07:20 AM

Ten Fact-Like Things I Kinda Think I Remember About Hofstra 1) Dropped the Flying Dutchmen nickname, presumably in support of an effort to rid the nation of ethnic nicknames, though I doubt any Dutchmen ever objected. 2) I inexplicably missed seeing the Clash there, but I did see APB --- Scottish band with a funky-assed bass-playing lead vocalist. We knew it was being taped for WLIR, so we yelled crazy stuff from the crowd, in order to recognize ourselves when we heard the broadcast. Last year, at a bazaar here in DC at the Black Cat Club, I found an APB “Best of” CD that included tracks from that broadcast. The album’s producers did what WLIR should have, and edited us out. 3) The pedistrian overpass was ugly (looked like the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal), but sure beat crossing the road. 4) The high-rise dorms had two names. Dorm A was also called America. Dorm B was also called Bill of Rights. C was Constitution. D was Declaration of Independence. E was Eagle. I don’t know if they were once just letters and were re-named in 1976 or what. 5) Hofstra is in Hempstead, Nassau CC in Garden City, and Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, despite the three institutions pretty much sharing the same parking lot. 6) They supposedly had a famous drug raid in those high-rise dorms in the early seventies, and legend has it that bags of drugs were flying out the windows and raining down on the plaza below. Again, I don’t know when the dorms were named after our founding documents, but it’s pretty goofy to think about arbitrary warrantless searches of apartments in a place called Bill of Rights Hall. 7) I went there for speech therapy when I was about eight. My instructor seemed impossibly sophisticated but I now realize was at best a grad student and possibly not even. She taught me the words to “The No-No Song.” 8) Butch Van Breda Koff was their best basketball coach. When they couldn’t establish any sort of traction in the decades after he retired, they unretired him at about 105 years old. 9) My first professional basketball game was a New York Nets game at the Coliseum with a wrestling match as the opening act. Hofstra was taking on a Canadian College, and the US flag hung at one end of the arena and the Canadian flag at the other. 10) Many colleges and universities take pride in their leafy campi, but their campus is one of the few in the country that has been officially designated as an actual arboretum.

Fman99 May 18 2009 06:47 AM

My dad did a year or two there in the early 60's and then dropped out. At that time it was still Hofstra College. (He went back to school in the 80's.)

G-Fafif May 18 2009 07:29 AM

All the Swans go Dutch! Congrats! Technically I live closer to Molloy College, but Hofstra's the largest major university near me (no offense Flying Molloyvians). Joe Namath waved at my camp group from way across the practice field once.

Edgy DC May 18 2009 07:38 AM

How did I leave out memories of Jets camp? Joe Namath. Nuu Faaola. Good times. My best camp memory was of Mark Gastineau inexplicably losing a bunch of weight --- under the premise that linebackers were leading the league in sacks, so he should weight as much as a linebacker even though he was a 6'5" end. We're looking at the lineman working out and somebody asks, "What's that wide receiver doing there?"

themetfairy May 18 2009 07:55 AM

We took our older son on a tour of Hofstra during spring break. We were very impressed with the program of studies and the facilities - it's his presumptive first choice at this point.

MFS62 May 18 2009 08:06 AM

Good Job by all the Swannies. Nice to hear something like that. Thanks. Later

Frayed Knot May 18 2009 08:14 AM

[quote="Edgy DC":2ldm85cm]How did I leave out memories of Jets camp? Joe Namath. Nuu Faaola. Good times. My best camp memory was of Mark Gastineau inexplicably losing a bunch of weight --- under the premise that linebackers were leading the league in sacks, so he should weight as much as a linebacker even though he was a 6'5" end. We're looking at the lineman working out and somebody asks, "What's that wide receiver doing there?"[/quote:2ldm85cm] Only went to one Jet camp training session in all the years they were there (seemed overly geeky to me in the same way I'm sure ST does to most football fans) and the one guy I remember was Nuu Faaola. Probably a combination of all those vowels plus his Samoan afro that was worthy of Nino Espinosa or even (dare I say it) Oscar Gamble. My only other Jet encounter in that area was the time I was in a nearby restaurant one weekday afternoon when about 8 enormous dudes walked in together. The only one I recognized was Klecko ... on account of he was pretty damn ugly (don't tell him I said that).

Swan Swan H May 18 2009 09:14 AM

There are now three of those lovely overpasses, with the two new ones flanking the original. The old courthouse is now a new facility primarily for the School of Education, and parking is pretty tough on that side, so an overpass was installed to encourage students to park on the North Campus and walk over. The other is at the west end, connecting to the off-campus dorms.

Edgy DC May 18 2009 09:37 AM

I don't know why I associated these two things when I posted last night. Probably in part because they're both 30 year-old memories that I haven't really thought about in 10-15 years. The funny thing is that, looking them up, neither look quite like I remember them, but they do, in fact, seem to look alike. Was 20 degrees the happening angle in architecture at the time both of these went up? Hofstra University Pedestrian Overpass George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal

TheOldMole May 18 2009 07:53 PM

This is wonderful news. My middle daughter graduated from Hofstra.

DocTee May 18 2009 08:36 PM

I once worked in a bar in NYC, which Faaola frequented. He was too big for the standard barstools (with arms) so we had to get him a plain one. The cost of being 300+ pounds. He was so srunk that we put him in a cab, but he never paid the tab, even after we wrote the Jets. The benefit of being 300+ pounds.

metsguyinmichigan May 20 2009 11:36 AM

CONGRATS!!!! My father and sister are Hofstra alum. Some memories: My buddy went to Hofstra when I was a NCC freshman, and the drinking age at the time was 18. We discovered a place on campus called the Rathskeller, and also discovered that they were selling melonball shots for 50 cents. We had many. Too many. I haven't had a melonball shot since that night. That same year, I saw the B-52s and the Ramones on a famously mismatched bill. Edgy was there, too! What's the new team name?

Edgy DC May 20 2009 12:09 PM

I wasn't at the Ramones/52s show. My famously mismatched brother was.

Swan Swan H May 20 2009 12:25 PM

They call Flying Dutchmen the Hofstra Pride. Call me Deacon Blues.