Alumni

Lake Forest M0M

By Lindsay Beller

When Casey Reid ’05 stopped by the mailroom one day shortly before graduation, she never expected to receive a large blue and white bouncing ball along with the rest of her mail. Written on the ball in black marker were phrases like, “Congrats! You did it!” and “Reach for the stars and be all you can be!”

Puzzled, Reid peered into the mailroom to find other colorful balls strewn across the floor. But after learning that Patty Waite was behind it, her surprise quickly faded into understanding. “Mrs. Waite probably has more school spirit than anyone I ever encountered,” says Reid, who knew Waite and her husband Peter from tailgating parties before football games, where they watched their son Nick play defensive end until he graduated in May. “She was even more sad when Nick graduated than Nick was.”

Waite, a U.S. postal worker from South Bend, Indiana, sent about 30 balls to her son and his friends. It took her about a week to write personal messages, label, and mail them to the students in Lake Forest. “It was a lot of work but it was so much fun,” Waite says. “I could just see each of them smile.”

She has found other ways to make students smile over the years. After football season ended last year, Waite gave Nick’s teammates football bobble heads engraved with their names and numbers. She handed out candy dispensers with cowboys inside to the mothers and girlfriends of football players in honor of the song that blared after every touchdown, “Save a horse, ride a cowboy” and printed up bumper stickers with a variation on the song title that included the word “forester.”

Her loyalty to the school developed when Nick, the first in the family to attend college, decided on Lake Forest College. “When we dropped him off, I never cried because I knew it was the perfect place for Nicholas,” she says. Over the next four years, the Waites became a fixture on campus and at sporting events, including hockey and rugby.

Nick, who received one of his mother’s patent bouncing balls on special occasions throughout his four years, was happy that his parents were so involved in his college years. “I feel very fortunate to have someone who’s as interested in what I do as they are,” he says. “It’s always been that way.”

Although Nick started law school in Michigan this fall, the Waites will continue to come back for football games. “People told me, ‘You’re the mom of the class of 2005,’” Waite says. “It was like we got to go to college but we didn’t have to do any of the work.”