Yes, There Is a Little Rock in Little Rock. Clinton, too!
During my break from the expedition, I got to fly back to Williamstown with Prof. Dudley for a beautiful wedding of Anna (Bennett) and Mark Robertson ‘02 in Williamstown. Anna was a CLC in the campus life office and Mark was an admission officer!! Woohoo!
Congrats!
Post the wedding, I flew back to meet the expedition team in Little Rock, AR~ The Little Rock’s airport was…little. Apparently, just a few years back, they had golf-cart-sort-of-things that bring you your suitcases and you get to retrieve them that way! It reminded me of my second home, Santa Barbara, CA. I love little airports and friendly TSA reps.
Emily and Jason then rolled in to the airport just in time from Nashville, and I managed to find myself a sitting spot in the ever-so-messy Toyota Siena. Play by play recaps of the past days that I missed was established, and we headed to meet our hosts, Dennis Kuo ‘93 and Katherine (Foster) Kuo ‘93. The Kuo family and their youngest daughter, Amanda, welcomed us in their driveway with purple cow chalking.
Turn here!
The evening’s event was located at the Flying Saucer in downtown Little Rock. This place is covered with ceramic plates walls to ceiling and is very comparable to the beloved Ye Olde Forge with over 50 beers on tap. Oh, and might I mention, they were $2.45 per pint. For the evening, we gathered a decent group of alumni chatting over cheesy dips and beer and wine. It was lovely and fun to talk about art history professors we all loved.
Jay Hellmuth '82, Emily, Jason, Dennis Kuo '93, Bob Riley '92, Katherine Kuo '93, Murry Newbern '84, Richard Lippincott '51
After the event, Katherine and Dennis treated us to some deep fried catfish at the Flying Fish (noted, there are a lot of ‘flying’ ventures in Little Rock). We truly enjoyed our dinner, although our heart was certainly suffering for more less-than-healthy food.
"I never saw a purple cow..."
Another one of our biggest excitements of the event was a visit of the Purple Cow! Purple Cow is an ice-cream place that knows what’s up! We collected purple milkshakes and lots of stickers before heading back to the Kuo’s domain. We spent the rest of the evening hearing about Dennis and Katherine’s Williams days and looking at photo albums. This couple met freshman year, except Dennis did not truly capture Katherine’s attention till Junior year. After being close friends and frequent Ben & Jerry’s visiting partners, they fell in love; now Katherine is a graphic designer and Dennis is a pediatrician and they have two beautiful daughters. Although a few years have elapsed since their Williams days, their photo albums closely resemble today’s Williams: crammed entry-hallway photos, beer cans, and random adventures around Williamstown. It was awesome.
Amanda Kuo and antique WCFM sticker!
The next day we proceeded our over 8, 9 hour drive to Baton Rouge. It was so long after two weeks of driving. There was basically nothing but corn, rice, soy bean fields. Oh, and our awful GPS Magellan took us on a super long detour by accident to Charlotte’s Cafe in middle-of-no-where Star City and got some $2 cheese burgers! For the evening we got hosted by wonderful Myron Minn-Thu-Aye ‘08 and his roommate Susan, who are both studying for their PhD in Math at LSU, another school with purple and gold school colors! How convenient!
The owners at Charlotte's Cafe with our expedition hat!
The team and Myron!
