On May 16, 1922, thousands of Ohio University alumni across the country gathered in small groups for dinner, and to mark a landmark occasion. Dubbed “Ohio University Day,” this event 100 years ago kicked off OHIO’s fundraising campaign to build what is now Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium—the first alumni campaign of its kind in the University’s history.
The desperately needed auditorium would require the University to raise $300,000, or $104 from every graduate. And that’s what happened: Small gifts from more than 3,100 alumni brought the campaign over the finish line, and in 1928, “MemAud” forever became part of College Green and the OHIO experience.
This April, almost exactly one century later, Bobcats around the world celebrated OHIO Giving Day and another first, raising a record $865,877 from 2,041 donors in just 24 hours. These generous gifts will go on to fund experiential learning programs, research, internships, co-curricular activities and more for the next generation of Bobcats, experiences that will endure long after their time at OHIO.
In this way, today’s gifts will have an impact as permanent as the walls of Memorial Auditorium, named in honor of John Templeton and Martha Jane Hunley Blackburn, OHIO’s first Black male and female graduates, respectively. It is not just the shared halls, brick pathways or even the buildings that connect us. It is the shared OHIO experience that every Bobcat knows forever bonds us to each other and to OHIO’s past, present and future.
As OHIO President Elmer Burritt Bryan wrote in the May 1922 Ohio University Bulletin:
“The University is a spiritual thing, born of the spirit and nurtured by the spirit. If the buildings of Ohio University should be destroyed in an hour by fire or earthquake, the University would live on. It dwells in the hearts of men and women in the form of ideals, loyalty, and the spirit of sacrifice. Without this spirit, an institution may exist as a temporal thing; with it, it becomes immortal.”
Feature photo: From hosting U.S. presidents and world dignitaries to Commencement ceremonies and Concerts Under the Elms, Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium is the keeper of many OHIO alumni memories and a testament to a spirit of alumni giving that has endured for 100 years. Photo by Ben Wirtz Siegel, BSVC ’02