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Spotlight on the Atlanta, Georgia Alumni Club Marshall alum John Gilmore not only answered our questionnaire about the Atlanta Club, he wrote the entire article for us! Thanks, John, for a great story. Original Atlanta Club group. Click photo to enlarge.
Front Row (Steel Magnolias of Marshall Atlanta) L-R:
Jane Foster, Alta Eblin, Cathy Owens Peeler, Anne Lipham The MUAA Atlanta Club began in October 1984 when MUAA Director Linda Holmes hosted a Marshall Alumni dinner meeting at a local Holiday Inn. A small group of 12 Marshall alumni volunteered to be the organizing committee, which later became the MUAA Atlanta Herd Club board of directors. After that, the organizing committee met monthly at the home of Alta Eblin. Her living room became the club’s “board room” where members met to develop recruitment strategy, plan events and have a good time getting to know each other. A few of the original members are still around and active. MUAA provided a list of Marshall alumni in Georgia, so the club met a number of times at the office of Loren Cook for recruitment telethons. Before game watching parties, the club grew by sponsoring at least one bus trip a year to a Southern Conference football or basketball game; UT-Chattanooga, Western Carolina and Georgia Southern were most memorable. When Marshall football telecasts became a regular, almost weekly, event in the early nineties, the Atlanta club group really took off. Football game watching parties have been the major piece of our club’s event strategy since 1991. Perhaps the most memorable for Jim Summers was a game-listening party at Alta Eblin’s house for the first Marshall I-AA playoff game (Nov. 28, 1987) vs. James Madison. Loren Cook made arrangements for the club to tap into the Marshall Sports Network broadcast through a radio station in Logan. Summers brought a desk-speaker to hook up to the telephone. The members sat on the floor in Alta's kitchen listening to the game, eating hot dogs and drinking beer. Three weeks later they crammed a large crowd into a two-bedroom/two-television suite at the Embassy Suites to watch the National Championship game, hence our club’s first game-watching party. Some of the club’s other successful events have been spring dinners with Marshall Presidents Dale Nitzchke, Dan Angel, Steve Kopp, Provost Sarah Denman and Coach Bobby Pruett as featured speakers. Our annual Golf Tournament for Scholarships has become a successful annual event with the proceeds benefiting the Big Green Scholarship Foundation and the new Alumni Center construction. Our newest event, an annual West Virginia Day Picnic, is quickly becoming a favorite summer event. Perhaps our club’s most successful events centered on the We Are Marshall movie. Many of the scenes for the film were shot in the Atlanta area with many of our club’s members having roles on screen. One of the most memorable events associated with the filming was a morning tailgate party and pep-rally at the Georgia Dome parking lot prior to afternoon filming of the “Oliver-to-Gardner” game-winning pass. Many of the actors stopped by the tailgate to meet the real-life people they were portraying in the film, while fans, tailgaters, alumni and other extras listened as Reggie Oliver, Jack Lengyel and Red Dawson spoke about there time at Marshall. Of course the culmination of the We Are Marshall experience was our club’s movie premier on December 9, 2006. More than 350 alumni and fans attended our premier, including Ellie Zellers who portrayed Jack Lengyel’s daughter Julie. Following the premier a local radio station hosted a “WAM” premier party where we could all reflect on the movie and listen to the tales of the people who were in Huntington during the tragic event. According to Jim Summers, one of the best things about the club for many of us is that “We Are Marshall, and We Are Family.” Marshall is the common kelly-green thread that ties us together as Sons and Daughters of John Marshall. It is always good to gather with friends and family from home.” Jane Foster, the club secretary for the past 24 years, thinks it terrific getting together with Marshall people so far away from the university. “Right off when meeting new folks you have something in common – West Virginia, the university, a hometown, and a lot of the time all three in one!” Like many other clubs, one of the biggest challenges the Atlanta club faces is recruiting new members. In the beginning the club relied not only on mailing and phone lists from the alumni association, but also meeting fellow alumni around town by wearing Marshall logo gear or seeing others wearing the same. Recently Summers recounted, that he “was on the train at Newark airport back in March and was wearing a Marshall shirt; a couple in the same car, ironically from the Atlanta area, said they had a friend who played football at Marshall. I got his name and e-mail address. Relative to referrals from business contacts, I was on a sales call two weeks ago and mentioned Marshall as part of my background. The guy I was calling on told me of a close friend who was a Marshall alumnus. I got his name and e-mail address. Other club members have similar stories.” Now, as the club has matured and technology has changed, many of the newest members have found us through word of mouth, other friends and acquaintances and the university’s website or the club’s website at www.AtlantaHerd.com Currently the club has members ranging from the Class of 1957 to the Class of 2004 and is a very diverse club. Foster says that her experience with the Atlanta Club has been nothing but a fun, rewarding experience, and believes that most of the other members of the group feel the same way. “Twenty-four years have brought marriages, children, some deaths, a few divorces and so on. What is really encouraging is that we’ve watched our children grow up over the years and some of these adult children also come to our parties and our game watching parties.” If you live in the Atlanta are, please contact John Gilmore about becoming a member of the club listserv.
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