Blue collared and orange blooded

Apr 18, 2006, 1:17 PM

Late last night, I stumbled upon this post:

http://www.thetigernet.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=2637406

It was in response to Bowden praising our "blue collar" alumni.

Having blue collar alumni is nothing to be proud of?

Blueridgetiger noted that his grandfather was a dirt farmer. My grandfather, a 1935 Clemson graduate, was a farmer as well. He farmed mostly peaches in Boiling Springs. He also taught agriculture at Boiling Springs High School.

He almost didn't go to Clemson. He almost stayed home in Heath Springs, S.C., to take care of his mentally ill younger brother. His older siblings, however, would hear nothing of it and helped foot the bill for him to go to college. He arrived at Clemson via train with nothing but the clothes on his back and a few belongings in a small bag.

There he learned the agriculture skills to start his own farm and pass the knowledge along to other students, many of whom would have floundered in life without the agriculture trade.

All his life, he lived as a blue collar man. I suppose the teaching was about as white collar as he could get. But each year he filed that IPTAY donation, and each year he trucked out to see the Tigers play. He saw his last Orange and White game a few days before he died at the age of 77. Heat didn't stop him from hobbling on his cane to his seats in Death Valley.

We may not have as many "blue collar alumni" as we did back then, but I wager a lot of us know of folks like my grandpa who graduated from Clemson. Maybe it's your granddad, or your father, or your uncle. They tilled the land or worked the construction site or manned the mill. They went off to World War II after they left Clemson. Some came back to keep that blue collar way of life... some lost it forever.

Some were rich, most probably weren't. Still, the color of a man's collar sure doesn't indicate how much money he has... or how much he loves Clemson.

I'm proud of our wealthy, white collar alumni. They've made fine, successful citizens of themselves and they've truly done Clemson proud. Not only that, but they repay Clemson with their generosity.

But I'm very proud of our blue collar alumni as well. They give what they can when they can and they work just as hard with the skills they learned at Clemson. All in all, they scream and yell and cheer and cry for the school just the same as the white collar man.

And that, my friends, is something to be proud of.

Blue collar or white collar, we all have orange collars on fall Saturdays.

Peace,
Cata

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Blue collared and orange blooded

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