“We always like to wear some form of ISU gear — shirts, hats, gloves, etc. — when traveling. Fellow Iowa Staters tend to notice and speak up so it’s a great way to meet people. The most interesting places we’ve met fellow alumni are on a boat ride in Alaska, waiting in line at the Louvre, and, most recently, at Cerro San Cristobal in Santiago, Chile!”
— Megan (Raffety) (’90) and Lance (’89, ’92, ’94) Veldboom
“A stoplight in Ohio! We had just moved to the state from Ames and ended up meeting another couple that also had gone to Iowa State. We had an ISU license plate frame and they had an ISU decorative frontplate. We ended up pulling into the same restaurant, walked in at the same time, then sat and talked with them for two hours. Now we’re best friends and we tell that story whenever we can.”
— Emily Frerichs (’22)
“We were hiking at the beginning of the pandemic while my daughter was doing an exchange semester in Hawaii. I had on an ISU T-shirt and a group of kids started cheering for me! They were all Iowa Staters on spring break. One of them was the kid who ran the flag around at Hilton at the time.”
— Tonja O’bannon Jenkins
“I served in the Army in the Berlin Brigade and two American girls saw me in uniform and needed directions. It turns out both were ISU students.”
— Dan Conrad
“My unexpected meeting was not in a far-off place, but in the bleachers at Wrigley Field in Chicago. My family, avid Chicago Cubs fans, traveled from Maryland to Chicago to experience the thrill of finally seeing a Cubs game in person. We were seated in the bleachers at Wrigley Field when my sorority sister, a teacher from small town Illinois, climbed the steps beside us! Her class had won a statewide competition with the prize of a trip to Chicago. What an unexpected, delightful mini reunion it was!”
— Barbara Blumenschein Stam (’59)
On the KU campus! I met lots of parents who were ISU alumni and we bonded over shared memories and cried that our kids chose KU!”
— Gail Scrymiger Racelis (’89)
“Giotto’s Bell Tower in Florence, Italy!”
— Jeanne Summy
“Deep in the Atacama Desert of Chile! Three ISU grads randomly met two ISU grads and we’d all graduated during a similar time frame many decades ago!”
— Chris Roules (’79)
“My wife and I were on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park in the early ’70s. We were going up the trail, and the only others we saw was another couple going down the trail. We chatted enough to know that the four of us had been or were Iowa State students! And here we were hundreds of miles from Ames and on a mountain! It’s a small world!”
— Ken Brown (’66)
“For me, it was the Dhahran Airport in Saudi Arabia. I had just arrived and one of the first people I see in the terminal was wearing an Iowa State T-shirt.”
— John McWilliams (’78, ’10)
“I was recently a lighthouse keeper on a remote island in Canada’s Fathom Five National Marine Park. We welcomed guests to the island during the day and did education activities as part of a working vacation exchange program. I was out weeding the lighthouse keeper’s garden at the lighthouse cottage when a family came up. They were so excited about food and agriculture and surprised to see someone gardening. Yes, they were ISU grads currently living in Michigan. The daughter in middle school had been part of the World Food Prize Youth Institute research paper project, really hoping to make it to Des Moines to meet the scientists and global leaders. We had so much fun talking about our connections to Iowa.”
— Amy Proulx (’07)