@MIZZOU ASKS YOU

Treasured Tiger Decor

At home, I have a framed print of the Columns in my office, tiger tablecloths for meals and an Asian tiger statue on an end table in the living room. At work, my office is filled with tigers – on every flat surface! Of my 29 office tigers, only three were purchased by me. The rest were gifts, including a framed Chinese calligraphy of the symbol for “tiger,” a cookie-jar tiger (look inside to see what Tigers eat!) and a tall tiger for my window, which was recently given to me by another University employee who so enjoyed seeing the tigers in my window that she bought another for my collection.

— Valerie Goodin, BS Ed ’67, M Ed ’75

I show my Tiger pride wherever I can. I have decals in my car windows. I hang Mizzou ornaments on my Christmas tree. All-year-round a Truman bobblehead sits on my TV, a picture of Jesse Hall hangs on my wall and, of course, I display my alumni calendar!

— Marnie Ingle, BJ ’00

My tiger paw banner hangs in the window of my 12th floor apartment in Midtown Manhattan. Did I mention that it’s signed by Norm Stewart?

— Mark Stone, BA ’81

I don’t have a lot of room in my office, so I often have to show my Tiger spirit in “creative” ways. One of my co-workers is a KU alum, so you can imagine the trash-talking that goes on when our teams get ready to face off. Before the last MU-KU basketball game, he decided it would be fun to tape up anti-Mizzou cartoons all over my office when I wasn’t looking – but I got him back. Because I have keys to the photo directory case, I replaced his picture with Truman the Tiger! The only way he could get it removed was to sing the Mizzou fight songs. (You can imagine how long Truman graced our hallways before that happened.)

I have a really small office here at the University of Michigan, but never fear. I have a Mizzou pennant, pom-pom and alumni buttons all over my bulletin board. And, of course, I have a “Go Mizzou - Beat KU” sign on my door. I may be learning to say “Go Blue!” in Big 10 Country, but my heart always says “Go Mizzou!”

— Amy Roust, BJ ’99, MA ’03

Our back room downstairs became my home office when I was laid off from work two years ago, and I knew I would be spending hours in that office free-lancing. After her first year at Mizzou, our daughter decided the room needed to be decorated as the Mizzou Room, and she collected Mizzou bargains throughout the year. In the meantime, we started painting. Because the Mizzou wall border was too expensive, our Mizzou girl painted one black and one gold stripe around the room. We also painted the woodwork and desk black and gold and collected stuffed tigers for the top of the storage cabinet.

I even managed to find the Missouri pendant from the days when my husband and I attended Mizzou along with the black and gold pillow I made for my boyfriend. It helped that he’s now my husband and kept the MU pillow. Every year we pick three beautiful prints from the previous alumni calendar to frame and hang on the wall with a tiger poster and a university map. Various Mizzou cups our daughter has received as “freebies” serve as pen holders. The room makes me smile. We’re getting ready to send our second daughter to Mizzou next year to continue the family tradition of Mizzou graduates.

— Ellen Baker Geisel, BS Ed ’78, and David Geisel, BS, BS BA ’79

My wife, Lois, has always wanted to have a tiger room in our home. When we built our town house, the opportunity presented itself and the “tiger master suite” was created. Everything in the décor is tiger-oriented, including the upholstery and the window valance. When our grandson Edison came along, our son Eric and his wife decided to make the nursery in their home a tiger room also. Eric graduated from the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources in 1993.

— Ed Turner, BS ’62

Better than the pictures hanging in a room, better than having the car decorated with a tiger tail, better than being the tiger mascot like my good friend Mark Kieswetter was in the late 1970s, better than purchasing all of the Mizzou memorabilia at University Bookstore – I have a gold tiger paw outlined in black tattooed on my ankle.

I now live in Florida and all my golf buddies think that I got it when I was going to Mizzou, but they couldn’t be more wrong.

A couple of years ago, my daughter was playing on the Missouri Tigers soccer team, and she wanted to get tattoo. I thought to myself, “What better way to monitor my daughter’s choice of body art than to go with her?” And behold, I now am a 50-year-old, proud owner of a tiger paw tattoo.

— Tim Gibbons, BS PA ’77

Out here in Orange County, Calif. (nobody calls it “The OC,” by the way), MU grads are fairly rare. Oh, I have Mizzou license plate frames on my car, front and back, and I have a large Missouri alumni decal in my back window. But my best exhibition of MU pride isn’t seen. It’s heard. My co-workers know that at the weakest hint of an inquiry about where I went to school, I will break into song – the Missouri Fight Song. I don’t have much of a voice, but that doesn’t stop me. The song is heard at home as well. For a while, I was waking up my 12-year-old son for school each morning with the rousing lyrics, “Every true son, so happy hearted, skies above us are blue.” But then I realized that he probably was learning to hate the song because it meant getting out of bed. And I couldn’t bear that!

— Marcida Dodson, BJ ’74

Although, I am not a graduate of Mizzou, two of my three boys are true Tigers and bleed black and gold. My oldest son waves the flag from high atop the stadium next to the press box at each and every home game and has done so for years.

Our rec room at home is decorated with nothing but tiger pictures and game memories, including pictures of past tailgates that were held where the new basketball arena now stands. My pride and joy is a bronze statue of a prowling tiger that was cast for me by a high school friend and artist. I have more than 100 tiger pictures, all different, plus I have a hanging cloth picture that has a tiger on one side and a mirror image of the same tiger on the other side. It was handwoven in China and given to me by a friend who traveled there.

Away games are watched faithfully each and every broadcast.

— Dennis Cook

My opportunity to promote MU to the neighbors is not too great as my wife Linda Burkhalter McCray, BS Ed ’59, and I live on a not-too-traveled street in Jayhawk and Wildcat land in Olathe, Kan. – and we mothered and fathered two Jayhawks. One earned her master’s degree in business administration and works for Sprint and the other earned his bachelor’s degree in math and is now working toward his master’s degree in math at MU. I keep telling him that he received his BS degree at KU, but is getting his education at MU.

To balance out the Jayhawks around the house, I have a candle stick holder with a Tiger on it, an MU black and gold flag that I fly during game days, many Mizzou self-adhesive labels on folding chairs, which we take to cultural and sporting events in the area, head covers for my golf clubs and an MU Tiger golf shirt. My shirt causes quite a commotion when I play golf with KU fans. I also have the MU alumni calendar on my office wall.

It’s pretty obvious that I’m a Tiger fan. At one time, I had a very attractive, old, gold -colored “pork pie” golf hat, but one of the Jayhawks or Wildcats stole it from me during a golf match – but it didn’t stop the noise.

It’s not much, but I am proud to be an MU graduate, as is my wife, Linda.

— Harvey L. McCray, BS BA ’65

Like many alumni, my husband and I have decorated our basement with lots of Mizzou stuff (it’s the perfect place to watch Mizzou sports if we can tear our Atlanta neighbors away from the SEC and ACC games). We even have a black and gold bar!

We made a great addition to our basement at holiday time this year when we decorated our first Mizzou Christmas tree. My in-laws gave us a 7-foot tree, which we decorated with all of our Mizzou ornaments (we’ve amassed a really good collection over the years). We decorated the tree with football and basketball ornaments, black and gold garland and a Mizzou blanket as our tree skirt. Everyone absolutely loved it! Several of our friends said they plan to copy the idea and decorate trees in honor of their own schools.

— Stacy Salvador Beck, BJ ’93, and Jim Beck, BS ’93

Since I’ve moved to Minnesota and live in the Land of the Big Ten, it’s a little difficult to share my Tiger pride. I have my old personalized Missouri license plate with “MU” and Truman hanging on the outside of my cube. I wear my company ID on a Missouri lanyard. When we are allowed to wear a jersey at work to support our favorite team, I wear one of my Mizzou sweatshirts. In our family room on one of my walls, I have my degree, a sterling silver plate with the Columns engraved on it, my lifetime membership in the MU Alumni Association certificate and the other personalized license plate.

— Bill Middeke, BA ’70

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Last Update: November 15, 2007