One hot summer day in August 1977, a naïve young man of 18 hugged his mother, watched her drive away, and then turned and walked into Longden Hall, realizing the cozy life he had become accustomed to in southern Indiana would never be the same. While he came to DePauw to play football and receive a respectable education, he soon realized his Old Gold experience would be derived from experiences at Blackstock Stadium and the Sigma Chi fraternity house.
Jay True was a Rector Scholar and one of DePauw’s most outstanding football wide receivers. By the time True had completed his four-year career, he had been selected NCAA Division III All-American twice, First Team Academic All-American, M.V.P. three times and named M.V.P. of the 1980 Monon Bell Game. He set seven school records: most receptions in a game-16, most receptions in a season-65, most receptions in a career-195, most receiving yards in a game-201, most receiving yards in a season-941, and most receiving yards in a career-2,573. Although all but one of the records has been broken, he was very happy that at least one of his records was still around when his daughter (me) enrolled at DePauw.
“I have had four jobs in my life,” True said. “I was hired in each instance as a direct result of knowing someone from DePauw. Following graduation, I was hired to teach Math and coach football at St. Francis-DeSales in inner city Chicago on a recommendation from the father of one of my teammates.” True left St. Francis-DeSales to earn his M.B.A. from Indiana University in 1985. “I was hired at Cadillac Motors Car Division of General Motors,” where he worked for eleven years “because the recruiter was a Sigma Chi and felt like helping a brother out.” True was then hired by Fleetwood Enterprises as Retail Marketing Manager, “by my pledge trainer, and I was given an opportunity to become the Assistant Principal at Bloomington High School South by one of my best friends from DePauw and Sigma Chi.”
True’s All-Time Top Ten DPU Experiences:
10.) Pizza King’s BBQ Pepperoni Pizza—He still has the phone number memorized: 653-3184.
9.) Marvin’s burritos—He has his picture up in the entryway. He had a lot of Sigma Nu’s on the team and on picture day they wanted to take a Sigma Nu picture. While they were all primping for the picture, I snuck in the back. So, Marvin’s hangs an all-SNU-and-a-Sig picture.
8.) “Being handcuffed to the toilet in the Sigma Chi house when I got pinned to a Pi Phi. I had to stay there until she could drive up from IU to release me.“
7.) “Meeting some wonderful friends who I still stay in contact…not as much as I should.”
6.) Graduation
5.) “Having the Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Seattle Seahawks, and the Dallas Cowboys come talk to me about the NFL…they all said I was too small.”
4.) Hall of Fame Induction—1997
3.) “The Sigma Chi Pledge Class Stealing the Bell and having the entire Wabash campus invade campus. They showed up Thursday evening before the game, took over the Theta House, and then proceeded to walk across East College in a huge mass of Walbania. They stopped outside the Sigma Chi house and demanded we give back the bell. Of course, as good DePauw Men would do…we told them to go **** themselves…or their favorite sheep. The Dean and the President came over to take control and told us that if we didn’t give back the bell they would cancel the game. We called their bluff and told them if they canceled the game they would never see the bell again. We then came up with a brilliant idea: we told them we would meet them on Friday at high noon at the Circle in downtown Indianapolis and we would deliver it there. So, we showed up with it in the back of a pick-up cruising around the Circle ringing the bell and got all kinds of coverage on the Indy T.V. stations.”
When his pledges took the Bel,l they also took the fancy Wabash mat in front of their gym. For the last thirty-one years that mat with the Wabash emblem has welcomed any and all who enter his mom’s house through her garage. Sweet!
2.) “The Monon Bell Game senior year (1980) – After beating up on Wabash the entire afternoon, our hopes for pulling off a huge upset were derailed in the second half with a couple of Tiger interceptions, and one that went for a Little Giant touchdown. With a minute and a half to go we found ourselves down to our last chance, 80 yards away and trailing by 8 points. My last chance to beat our most hated rival. We started out with a conservative down and out for about 11 yards. After I caught the ball, I made sure I got out of bounds to stop the clock. We called the same play to the other side, but when I turned to the sideline I saw that Robbie had been flushed from the pocket, so I turned up field and got behind the defense. Robbie found me for a big gain, which brought the ball across midfield with less than a minute to go. Robbie threw a fade pass to Scottie Welch, who made one of the most amazing catches you will ever see—the kind of catch that could only happen in a Monon Bell game. He stretched out perfectly horizontal and pulled it in. Now we are only 17 yards away with 42 seconds to go and down by 8.
“The next play called for the running back to flare out in the flat, to clear the linebacker for me to curl in behind. It worked perfectly. When Tommy Kleinschmidt went to the flat, the backer went right with him. I curled in directly behind him, caught the ball and scored the touchdown. Now, for the last two weeks my mother had been hounding me about catching one more touchdown because I was one away from setting the school record for touchdown receptions in a career. While I was getting mobbed I realized that I got her touchdown, so for the first time ever, I normally just gave the ball to the ref and tried to act like I had been there before, I held the ball up to my mom and said, ‘There it is. You don’t have to bug me about it anymore.’
“Well, we can’t celebrate too much because we are still down 2 and need the conversion to tie the game. We call the same play to the other side. This time Robbie was looking for Tommy, but he was covered. I was very surprised when I saw the ball coming my direction. I really didn’t even have time to think about it. I just instinctively caught it, and not a moment too soon, because just after I pulled it in I got demolished from a sexually frustrated caveman. It tied the game and I left the field for the last time in my career on the shoulders of my teammates. It was kind of a story book ending.”
Yes, this amazing alum is my father. He coached my basketball, soccer, softball and flag football teams growing up. I played soccer for one season my freshman year, and now am involved in Wamidan on campus. He named “coming to my games and performances” and seeing me happy here at DePauw as his number one experience, but my meager two years here are a candle in the Sun compared to his accomplishments. This is an ode, not only to a great DePauw alum, but to my father, who passed on the lessons of hard work to me, which have allowed me to accomplish many things as well. I am so proud to be his daughter and to have been able to learn from his unbelievable work ethic.