North Central College parade brings back memories

After seeing where his mother once lived on the campus of North Central College, 3-year-old Braden Bogda asked if he could live there someday.

Katie Bogda, who earned her degree in marketing from the school in 2006, said she would be OK with that. The Montgomery resident returned to campus and spent Saturday afternoon watching the 150-year-old school's Homecoming parade.

“It was great to be able to walk the campus and show him where I used to live here,” she said. “It brought back memories.”

The parade included the usual fare: Homecoming kings and queens, present and past; students representing organizations on campus; and the school's bands performing at various stops on the parade route, which ran from the intersection of Brainard and School streets to Championship Plaza.

But the short procession honored the past just as much as the present. Some vehicles in the parade were adorned with signs that read, “We are 150,” a nod to the school's celebration of its sesquicentennial.

In that time, the school has managed to foster relationships with its students effectively, leading to “legacy students” following their relatives to the school.

Chemistry professor Paul Brandt, who sat along the early part of the route, said he ran into a woman at a reunion dinner Friday who said North Central College ran in her family. The woman, he said, was from Buffalo, N.Y.

“It's pretty impressive to be pulling people from New York and having the family still come here,” he said.

Although Katie Bogda did not have to come from that far away — she lived in Huntley before enrolling — she said her time at the school made her and her then-fiance appreciate the city.

After graduation, Katie stayed in Naperville and was hired at a marketing agency in downtown Chicago. She and her husband only moved to Montgomery when Braden came along.

“We got an apartment here,” she said. “It was hard for us to move out of Naperville.”