Centrepiece Online | Fall 2010

My Dear, I Was at the Game

In the spring of 1971, my husband, John Bond ’62, was hired to teach biology at Appalachian State University, in Boone, N.C. Soon after the contract was signed, we drove up to Boone from Raleigh, where we were finishing graduate school, to look for a place to live.

There was nothing available. Appalachian State—like many universities at the time—was heading into a huge growth spurt, in numbers of both students and faculty and support services. There were virtually no apartments in Boone; university housing for couples without children—like us—was practically non-existent. Soon-to-be colleagues said they’d keep an eye out for us. We returned, disheartened, to Raleigh.

Several weeks later we had a phone call from my mother, who was visiting her niece in Dallas. In the course of cocktail conversation, she’d met a woman who said her 80-plus-year-old mother was moving to Florida and needed to find renters for her home in Boone. She and Mother set up a meeting for us to meet her the coming weekend. We drove back up the mountain.

Mrs. Denny was not a happy camper. She did not want to go to Florida—this was all her daughter’s plan. She had fared very well through all the Boone winters; she was an artist and felt very much at home in Boone. We were stepping into a situation that did not bode well for us. Here we were: young whipper-snappers with no appliances, two cats, a worn-out VW bug, and a one-year contract.

The interview proceeded, but you could see that she was not pleased with any of this. I tried to assure her that we’d take good care of all she was leaving behind, particularly her stove, refrigerator, and piano. After all she intended to return after one winter’s experience “just trying it out” for her daughter. This moving from Boone was not going to be a permanent thing. The longer we talked, the worse it got.

She changed the subject abruptly and asked about us. Just who are you? Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Relieved that we weren’t talking about the depressing rental situation, we told her we were both from Kentucky, went to Centre College, and . . .

And before we could add anything more, she said, “You can have the house.”

We told her how overjoyed we were with her decision, saying again that we’d take care of everything, and that she could return to Boone as planned. But what, we asked, caused this sudden change of heart?

Her reply remains to this day a classic in my memory: “My dear, I was at the game.”

Centre’s victory over Harvard in 1921 continues to accomplish much for her sons and daughters.

We rented her sweet home on Grand Boulevard and had a wonderful first year. When a house two doors away came on the market, we snapped it up and have been working on it ever since. It seems only right that the C6 H0 door mat is our latest acquisition.