Tarkington friends return to their dorm rooms for 10th annual reunion
The members of the Wild Bunch packed into a dorm room like sardines.
Facing graduation in December 1981, John White (T’81) made his Tarkington Hall buddies swear that they weren’t going to be like every other group of yahoos who promise to stay in touch, but never actually reunite. And so it was agreed that no matter how far away from campus they may roam, the members of The Wild Bunch (TWB) would return in five years to gather on Tark’s back dock. Things didn’t go exactly as planned.
“We all stayed fairly tight for three years or so after graduation,” says Rick Repp (T’82). “And then everyone moved on.” The men would see one another every few years at weddings, but the first official reunion wouldn’t come until 20 years after the final members of the group had received their degrees. Memories of White’s declaration all those years ago stuck with Michael Becker (LA’84), who often thought about his group of college pals during their decades of physical separation.
“They are more like brothers than they were roommates and friends,” he says. “We were so immersed in each others’ lives. You are living, studying, sleeping, eating, and partying with these guys. We became our own fraternity.”
With the advent of the Internet, Becker and Repp began to track the group down, which by then had spread out all over the country. Everyone was in favor of the long-awaited reunion and excited about returning to campus. That’s when “Friendly” Mike had a wild idea: What if they could spend the weekend in Tarkington Hall in their old rooms on fourth floor, southwest?
“I thought he was nuts,” says Repp. “We’re not as young as we used to be. Do we really want to sleep in the dorms without air conditioning in July? It’s insane!”
Some residence hall administrators thought it was crazy, too. Denton Sederquist (HHS’94, MS EDU’97), manager of Tarkington Hall at the time, recognized something special in TWB and agreed to coordinate their reunion in the hall. His colleagues doubted these old guys would show up, but they did. That was 2007, and TWB has returned for an annual reunion ever since.
“A few of the years they had to move us to some of the newer dorms with A/C,” says Repp. “But we always went back to Tark. That is where we want to be. It is our home. You can’t spend four or five years with the same guys and not feel like a family.”
The return to Tarkington Hall was a homecoming for some of the men who hadn’t visited campus in years. “It’s just as we left it,” says Becker. “It was amazing to me that the floor wax smells the same. Even the paint color. They must have bought 3,000 gallons of that paint, because it looks exactly the same. It really takes you back in time.”
Each year, the members of TWB pick up right where they left off, swapping stories, catching up, and giving each other some grief, just as you’d expect brothers to do. The four-day reunion kicks off with lunch on the Levee and includes various activities such as an afternoon of golf; a cookout in Pickett Park; breakfast in the dining courts; a tour of new campus facilities; visits to Harry’s, Triple XXX, and the Neon Cactus piano bar; and a multi-hour euchre tournament where the grand prize is a faux cow skull.
Harold roaming the halls of Tarkington for Halloween in 1978; the euchre tournament traveling trophy.
The traveling trophy is a throwback to the group’s mascot and party talisman. An actual cow skull that “Cowboy” Mike Sutherlin (A’81) hung in the window of his room, Harold had red lights for eyes and roamed the halls with a blanket draped as a makeshift trench coat. One mention of their college days, and the men begin to crack smiles, exchanging knowing glances as they open up a wellspring of memories. They watched M*A*S*H together on Monday nights. “Everybody went to the same room to huddle around a 19-inch TV,” says Repp. “Fourteen guys to one dorm room. We were packed in there like sardines.”
They took several road trips. A favorite destination was Kings Island at summer’s end. Purdue started later than other schools, so TWB had the run of the park. They partied on the weekends, sneaking kegs up to their rooms and stocking their closets like liquor stores.
They mischievously formed the Purdue Druid Society just for kicks. The short-lived club was an officially recognized student organization serving to “promote interest in the Druidic culture and people of early Brittany,” according to the 1977–78 student organization guide.
Looking for fun on a snowy day, they covered Tark’s SW4 hallway with construction-grade plastic, carted up buckets of slush, and turned it into a Slip’N Slide. When a member of TWB turned 21, he’d be thrown in the back of Cowboy’s truck, driven down to the Levee, ceremoniously tossed in the Wabash River, and left to walk back to campus.
Once, during midterms, a couple of the guys had gone home for a few days. Looking for a stress reliever, the others visited every computer lab on campus, collecting stacks of discarded printing paper and tubs of chads left over from punched card programmers. “We literally filled their dorm room with paper,” says Becker. “It must have been at least 70 percent full of paper.”
Reminiscing about the good ol’ days can be bittersweet, as thoughts drift to the two members of TWB who have since passed away. Rick Kramer (BS’82) was Purdue’s biggest booster, says Repp. Kramer’s death in 2013 at age 54 was a huge blow to his Wild Bunch brothers, many of whom turned up for the funeral. This past May, they gathered once more to mourn founding member “The Beast” Ken Black (M’77), whose obituary included “class of 1977 alumni and member in good standing of TWB.”
A custom shirt is designed to commemorate every reunion. This year, Kramer and Black were both honored on a sleeve. Becker also gave his brothers poster-sized prints of a previous reunion photo of the group standing in front of the Boilermaker Special. AJ Borromeo (-LA’79), official TWB photographer, digitally manipulated the image to make it appear as if it were carved out of metal. “We look legendary,” says Becker. “Both Ken and Rick are in the picture as well. It’s just a great symbol of all of us.”
Members of the Wild Bunch take an annual group photo at every reunion. To mark their 10th anniversary, each wore a commemorative shirt from the first 10 years.
An unexpected trip to the hospital thwarted Becker’s plans to attend this year’s gathering. TWB wasn’t about to hold a 10-year reunion without their leader, so they drove up to South Bend to pay a visit.
“We spent a lot of time finding the group again,” says Becker. “When you’ve got old friends like this, you want to keep them close. Younger people don’t get that. They think they are bulletproof, but the reality is that the end can come quickly. The time goes past.”
The passing of years and the loss of friends marks each reunion with greater poignancy. “Johnny White thanked me in the second year,” says Becker. “John’s not a real emotional guy. But he came up to me and thanked me and said, ‘This is what I have been missing.’”
Now that The Wild Bunch has upheld White’s reunion promise, the group has no intention of stopping. “We’ll continue to meet until we’re all dead,” says Repp. “Even if we’re rolling into Tark with our walkers.”
This story appeared in the Sept/Oct 2016 issue of Purdue Alumnus magazine.
