Hello everyone! I hope you had a fantastic weekend! I definitely did as my husband, his coworker, his coworker’s wife (both of whom are without a doubt awesome), and I drove down to Greensboro, North Carolina to attend North Carolina A&T State University’s Homecoming. Known among Aggie alumni as #GHOE for Greatest Homecoming on Earth, we drove down on Friday and made our way back yesterday. Guys, it was a great trip.
Friday, after an early morning baseline monitoring and U/S for our FET #1, we loaded the car and headed down to our hotel. I should tell you first that EVERY hotel in Greensboro, NC was booked OR was ridiculously overpriced and this was MONTHS before Homecoming. S. and I managed to find a hotel about 15 minutes west of Greensboro at the Sleep Inn in Kernersville. I know what you’re thinking, but it was really a great stay. The rooms were clean. The beds comfortable and the breakfast was hot and yummy. We’ll definitely be back.
After arriving and taking a quick nap (because we were ALL drained), we met with some friends of S. for dinner at Olive Garden. I met them before S. and I got married and they have been praying for us ever since. It was wonderful seeing them again and we actually shut the place down reminiscing and laughing.
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| I love yummy food! |
It was super late when we finished and so, we decided to take a few drinks to our room, sit down and hang out for a while before each couple called it an evening….at 2 AM. LOL!
Saturday morning, we had our YUMMY breakfast (Seriously, blueberry waffles are my fave thing) and returned to the room to get ready to hit the campus. I donned my Aggie attire, waited for my S. to get ready, and we were OFF!
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| Aggie Pride! |
The very FIRST thing we did upon arriving was take a walk down memory lane. My husband’s coworker, M., is an Aggie like me. We both graduated from the same school within the university and had some of the same professors though we excited a few years apart from one another and never crossed paths. He and I both knew we wanted to see the YMCA that the city was tearing down beside the school. The “Y” was a great staple in the community. There were several mentoring and community service opportunities through the Y and the kids there always seemed in awe of the college students that came in as coaches and Big Brothers/Big Sisters. It was admittedly a little sad to see the walls crumbled, but the space is being cleared to make way for a new Engineering building.
After reminiscing about the fun had at the Y, we stepped next door to my very FIRST dorm—Barbee Hall. Here, my uncle dropped me off on a warm August day in 1998, helped me unload my stuff, told me to remember that my college was a “city within a city”, and drove away. M. and I shared some of the funny stories of the dorm—mine as a resident, his as a guest, and then held an impromptu photo shoot in front of the building’s sign. I SO LOVE the photo bombs!
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| Barbee Hall-My freshman dorm |
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| Best photobomb EVER! |
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| Best dorm ever (aka Oz) |
We continued to walk around the campus taking in the crows and the memories before stopping by the bullet hole memoriam for Willie Grimes. Willie Grimes died after a student protests over social and racial injustices. There are several stories as to what happened that day and as to who fired the deadly shots, but it is known A&T history that as Willie Grimes, an Aggie, and several friends were walking to Summit Ave to buy food from a restaurant (something lots of us Aggies did), gunshots were fired. Willie was hit and rushed to nearby Moses Cone hospital where he was declared dead on arrival at 1:30 a.m. We wanted to honor his memory and remember the history of that day, so we stopped at the memorial in his memory and that of the other students rounded up and injured during the “Uprising”. For more information on the events of that day, please feel free to click on links from the NC A&T archives and from user contributor site Wikipedia. Please note that while Wikipedia notes this event as an uprising, numerous reports from that era from numerous witnesses dispute accounts of violence from students.
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| Bullet holes from when the National Guard opened fire on Aggie Students while placing them in “protective custody”. We remember. |
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| Touching history |
After visiting the new Student Center (which is phenomenal!), we headed over to the building M. and I spent most of our time –Crosby Hall and had another shoot there! I love this campus!
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| Absolutely the best place EVER! |
At this point, it was time to separate from our friends. We had tickets for the game and I wanted to see the battle of the bands as I am a huge marching band head. We agreed that we’d text the others when we left and S. and I headed to the line to get inside the stadium. Due to upgraded security, lines took a little longer than usual, but we were in without too much delay. We surmised pretty quickly that the sold out stadium had NO seats on the Fan General Admission section, so we walked over to the guest side to look for seats. In front of me I noticed the beautiful bob of a young lady and immediately recognized her as my cousin! I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years! We screamed, hugged, and then S. and I followed her to her seat where I ran into my other cousins—her mom and daughters. I love how Homecoming becomes a family reunion!
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| FAMILY!!! |
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| Of course, our Aggies did a great job! |
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| Rival band halftime show. |
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| When the NC Governor comes to present the Aggies with a sign, it’s kind of a big deal |
The game was pretty good, but S. and I were starting to get a bit hungry. We’ll tell you how that worked out in Part 2 of our Recap! Feel free to click over to part 2 or leave your own memories of Homecoming! See you soon!!
-K
