FORT MYERS, FLA — Don Chapman has been to a few alumni events since graduating from Northeastern in 1956, when he earned his degree in engineering. These days, he splits his time between homes in Port Charlotte and Cape Cod.
Yvan Pilette, on the other hand, spends his winters enjoying the South Fort Myers sunshine. Until recently, he hadn’t spent much time in Husky Nation since graduating in 1965 with his bachelors in chemistry. The pair had plenty of opportunity to catch up last month when they joined more than 650 Northeastern alumni who were on hand to watch the Huskies take on the Boston Red Sox on a brisk night at the City of Palms Park.
Chapman finished up on Huntington Avenue in the same year Fats Domino turned “Blueberry Hill” into an international hit. Before the game, a keyboard player was singing the classic tune as Northeastern President Joseph Aoun sauntered between rows of round tables, crowded 10 deep at each spot, and introduced himself to alumni who had gathered for a barbecue before the game.
“How are you sir?” President Aoun asked Chapman. “What program did you study? Have you visited Northeastern recently?” It was a different face than former president Jack Curry, who Chapman said he knew from his days in class.
“Very friendly guy,” he said afterward about his conversation with Aoun. “He says he’s president of Northeastern. I said, ‘Oh, I better take a look at this guy,’ but he was very nice.”
The spring training match drew the largest alumni crowd since Northeastern began playing the World Series champions five years ago, said Jack Moynihan, vice president for alumni relations and The Northeastern Fund.
“I think it was a great blend of alumni and friends that lived there,” Moynihan said afterward. “We’ve started getting our message out there to Husky Nation and the message is resonating and peaking people’s interest.”
Tickets went quickly; Northeastern offered its alumni mailing list the chance to purchase a seat at the game and a spot at the barbecue for $50, Moynihan said.
“Any time we see new alumni coming out to get involved, that’s a great sign,” he said. “In Florida, that was a nice blend. There were a lot of faces that I recognized and a lot of people that I was meeting for the first time.”
Red Sox owners Larry Lucchino and Tom Werner joined the festivities.
“It’s just remarkable that this group grows every year,” Lucchino said.
Werner added, “We were talking last night about how we’re in the depths of Red Sox Nation, but Red Sox Nation holds nothing over Husky Nation.”
Northeastern board of trustees chairman Neal Finnegan, who would later throw out the first pitch of the game – high and outside – introduced the president to the alumni as “one of the finest leaders and academics in the nation.”
It was a long day in the sun for Aoun, who early in the game gave an interview on WEEI radio. Picking up the rhythm during pitches and plays, he filled listeners in on recent Northeastern trivia, noting that the university has students participating in co-op in 52 cities around the world, from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Singapore, and that the school received nearly 35,000 applications last year.
As they chatted between innings, Joe Castiglione, the longtime Red Sox announcer who has taught broadcasting at Northeastern in the past, asked about the percentage of students who lived on campus.
“It’s overwhelmingly residential now,” Aoun began to explain.
“Oh,” Castiglione said, seeming surprised. “In my time, it was a commuter school.”
