Dear Clemson (The End)

(Dedicated to the Class of 2016)

Dear Clemson,

I hope you’re proud. Even though it would go against your nature to gloat, I hope you’re secretly really proud.

The whole nation has been talking about you. Not the huge schools, not the city schools — you.

And it’s the funniest thing. They just can’t seem to figure you out. With every Sports Center segment, with every scenic shot of campus, with every interview, the national fascination just increases. Everyone’s curious. They feel the pull. You’re attractive in a magnetic kind of way. And those of us that heard the call and answered it couldn’t imagine a better decision.

It was a gentle tug at first, a spark deep within the soul that made us look twice at Crayola orange and wonder why that paw had a hook at the bottom.

And then the irresistible pull swelled and grew into a steady resolve that this tiny corner of the South was a place we needed to be, a place we needed to invest and be invested in. You got ahold of us, and the rest was history.

And now it’s your time. Not for football, not even for athletics, not for any achievement in particular. It’s time the nation recognized that there is just no place like Clemson. And we, your Clemson people, will just keep smiling with hearts so full that sometimes they just overflow.

It’s not about the wins and losses. It never was.

It’s about the floods of orange overtaking the country. It’s about the smiling nod of recognition when we pass a fellow fan in a faraway city and know we just saw a kindred spirit. And most of all it’s about the onlookers who shake their heads and laugh almost in spite of themselves.

Even if it’s never stated, we can hear the age-old question: What is it about you Clemson people?

And the funny thing is that we don’t exactly know ourselves. All we know is that we have encountered a place that is unforgettable, a place that is more than just a place. A place that grinned excitedly when we came and beamed proudly when we left as different people. A place that simply by being what it is made us better, deeper, stronger. A place that is incredibly unique but one we found to be the hometown we never knew we had.

You see, in Clemson, sweet tea-drinking front porch-sitting still exists. It just looks like to-go cups on the benches on Military Heritage Plaza.

Spring fever and running home from school to play outside still happens — it just looks like volleyball nets and Frisbees on Bowman Field.

The old man full of stories still lives at the end of the culdesac — he just happens to be a tall brick bell tower with a kindly old clock face who has watched the young’uns grow up around him for generations.

The neighbors still look out for us — they just look like a regal matron named Sikes, a stoic sage named Cooper, and many others.

Family lunches still happen weekly. They just consist of Friday meat-and-threes at the Esso Club.

The small town hasn’t left you, Clemson. You’ve managed to forge ahead toward the future with the accomplishments of academia while offering a winsome smile and the morals of Mayberry. You’ve willingly opened your arms to thousands — the fearful, the skeptical, the prideful — and every time you have exceeded expectations.

We aren’t surprised when people fall in love with you. We’ve come to expect it because we know you, Clemson. You’re a sacred pocket of unhurried, simple living that still pushes us to rise up and become.

So, like our moms taught us, we want to make sure to write you a thank-you note before we leave.

Thank you for being you and not trying to be anybody else.

Thank you for not running out the last traces of the small-town feel by buying into the lies of rushing and running and climbing and schmoozing.

Thank you for embracing your farmland, your old trees, your faded bricks, your uncorrupted and unassuming beauty.

Thank you for not letting the flaws of your past dictate the actions of your present.

Thank you for teaching us, shaping us, correcting us, loving us.

Thank you for giving us something to hope in, to believe in — win or lose, pass or fail, rain or shine.

And thanks for still having a little bit of smiling mystique about you. It keeps us in awe of what an amazing place you are and keeps us constantly trying to describe what it is about you that has captured our hearts.

Thank you, Clemson. Thank you for everything.

Ever loyal,

Haley