Otis Kyechee would sign up for every event on campus.
He’d attend musicals. He’d order whatever suited his fancy. A Cherokee Indian from Snakenavel, Utah, his indistinct glasses didn’t stop his long, slender face from standing out among his Delta Tau Delta fraternity brothers, all of whom wore bowties for their 1967 class pictures — all except him.
Many seemed to have heard his name, but no one ever saw him. Kyechee was the most famous ghost on campus.
But he never existed. He is just a story.
On Thursday, 71-year-old David Christiansen, the man who invented Kyechee, gathered with dozens of others to reconnect and share stories before being honored at the Silver and Gold Awards Ceremony in the Vandal Ballroom.
The ceremony was just one piece of the two-day Golden I Reunion hosted by the University of Idaho for alumni who graduated in or before 1967.
“We have a party and say your Vandal family is so proud of you,” said Kathy Barnard, a 1981 UI graduate who now serves as executive director for the Office of Alumni Relations (OAR) and the University of Idaho Alumni Association.
The party began Thursday morning, when alumni boarded a trolley for a tour around campus. For most, it looked a bit different than when they were students.
“The open fields we had have found themselves growing buildings,” said Joe McCollum, a 1967 graduate.
The tour climbed toward the Arboretum and descended past the Kibbie Dome as Mike Ryan, a current student, talked about new buildings, different majors and interesting programs around campus.
One particularly popular building was the library, which Ryan said is the largest in Idaho.
“It is a whole bunch bigger,” said alumna Cathryne Mullen. “I wish we could have had that.”
Mullen, who majored in elementary education and Spanish, said some of her favorite memories of UI were made in the library.
“It was such a neat experience to be able to sit and read children’s books and not be ridiculed, because people knew my major,” she said.
She graduated in 1967 and taught for two years before raising a family that moved from California to Alaska to Iceland. This was only her second or third time back on campus, she said.
“It’s changed so much, for the better,” she said.
After the tour ended, the alumni gathered in the alumni relations building to have lunch. They sat in circles, looked at old “Gem of the Mountains” yearbooks, and laughed as they shared memories.
“I like to talk to these old people and remember the old days,” said Paul Barnes, who graduated in 1959 with degrees in philosophy and anthropology.
Christiansen, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 15 years, said he and his friends would explore a network of steam tunnels that ran under campus and go swimming in the Memorial Gym pool.
“Things were a little looser then,” he said.
He couldn’t help but share some details about Kyechee — the man he made up.
Preparing for a Delta Tau Delta dance, he and some of his fraternity brothers found a man’s ‘30s-era picture on a wall and decided to bring him back to life, he said. They gave him a name, Otis Kyechee, and signed him up for every event they could. To keep up the ruse, they’d tell anyone who was looking for him that he’d just left for class, Christiansen said.
“I’m sure there are some outstanding warrants,” Christiansen said. “Because he never paid for anything.”
Unlike Elaine Bennett, though, Kyechee was never a daredevil.
Bennett said she would spend time during the winter at a frozen lake before graduating in 1963. She had a friend with a motorcycle, she said, and he would drive them across the lake on sleds attached to the bike.
“Now that I think of it, that might have been a bit dangerous,” she said. “But we’re all still alive, so none of us drowned.”
Also in attendance was Leo Jeffres, who said he thinks he was the first junior to be editor-in-chief of The Argonaut.
“When I was editor I think I lived there,” Jeffres said. “It was a wonderful experience.”
Jeffres said he knew about five others in the room, which wasn’t the case for every visitor. Some of them said they didn’t know anyone at the reunion. Nevertheless, they struck up conversations easily, smiling and laughing as the stories unfolded. Several of them said that reconnecting, regardless of who it was with, had been great.
“Within 10 or 15 moments, if you get a group of Vandals together who’ve never met each other, they’ll start sharing stories about going to the Perch or slogging up the hill in the snow to the admin building to class,” Barnard said. “It’s because we’ve all shared those experiences that we all do consider ourselves members of the same family.”
McCollum, who attended law school after graduating, said most of the time he can’t think of a better place to go to school. He said he and almost every alumnus he talked to felt equally satisfied with their decision to attend UI.
At the Silver and Gold Ceremony Thursday night, the alumni were honored with Golden I pins to commemorate what they’ve done for themselves and the university over the last 50-plus years.
“They’re a very vibrant remembrance and example of the importance of our work,” said UI President Chuck Staben. “To see the impact that the university has had on their lives 50 years down the road is an inspiration to all of us who work here.”
Staben shook the hand of every Golden I alumni in attendance. Every hand but, of course, the hand of Otis Kyechee.
Ian Hahn can be reached at [email protected]