It’s Homecoming, and thousands of alumni are traveling across state lines, but some simply walk out their door.
Students typically attend OSU for four years, graduate and race out of town to start their new lives; others stay and build their futures in Stillwater.
Take a walk down the famous, or infamous for some, Washington Street a.k.a. The Strip, and you’ll discover a family-owned and alumni-owned business, DuPree’s Sports & Screen Printing.
The store is a staple of OSU and is recognizable by its iconic ducks adorned in OSU crewnecks, ready to cheer on the Cowboys.
OSU alumnus Jeff Watkins and his brother, Chad Watkins, took over the store in 1998, 16 years after Watkins’ parents bought the store from the original owner, and former Cowboy football player, Gordon Dupree.
For Watkins, taking over the family business meant staying close to home.
“Being in Stillwater was important to us,” Watkins said. “My brother and I have lived here for most of our lives. It’s a pretty good-sized town, but if you take the college kids out of the equation, it’s a pretty small community.”
Family is a common theme in Stillwater, and down the street from DuPree’s on Knoblock Street, sits another family owned shop and OSU classic, For Pete’s Sake.
Once a bar, For Pete’s Sake, an apparel shop appeared on the scene when Mary Causley and her son saw an opportunity to go into business together.
Causley attended OSU a little later in life as a mother of two OSU students, and wife to an OSU graduate, and she didn’t want to wait around to get the ball rolling on her career.
“I just wanted the accomplishment of getting that (college) done, and then I realized, ‘I don’t want to go through all that interviewing; I don’t want to move; my family is here,’” Causley said.
So Causley and her son, an artist for DuPree’s set out and opened their own store, For Pete’s Sake. Thirty-two years later, Causley is happy to be in Stillwater.
“We came here to put my husband through college, and my kids were just babies then,” Causley said. “We moved away for a few years and we realized, it’s a good place to raise them so we came back and we’ve been here ever since.”
Next door, nestled between Eskimo Joe’s and For Pete’s Sake is another alumni-owned business, The Endzone, an official OSU spirit store.
Walk through the door and you’re greeted by a wave of orange and black and owner Garrett Shubert.
At 21, Shubert dropped out of OSU to go into business, opening The Endzone in 2002 before returning to OSU in 2007 to finish out his degree.
“I just wanted to open this business up,” Shubert said. “I didn’t want to leave, and I always liked Stillwater, and I always wanted to raise a family here. I just enjoyed Oklahoma State, the fans, everybody’s friendly, loyal and true.”
Shubert and his wife, a teacher, stayed in Stillwater to run The Endzone and raise their three sons – potential future Cowboys and have witnessed the town change a lot in 22 years – but not the traditions.
“I think it’s (traditions) continued to get stronger; the family is growing,” Shubert said. “It’s grown up a lot, just the tradition and the tailgating. I remember when we first opened up there being 10 tents outside for tailgating. Now each year it has continued to grow.”
As the decades go by, things change and evolve, but the notion of the Cowboy family and Stillwater community stands strong in the face of progress. Causley said there has been a lot of innovation over the years, but Stillwater has never lost its charm.
“Everything has changed, but the friendliness is still here,” Causley said. “When I first came on, we truly had never faxed something to somebody, and we were not computerized and all of that has changed.”
Ever loyal and true, Homecoming is one of OSU’s biggest traditions, but change is inevitable. Watkins, a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity in the ‘90s, remembers pomping with multiple sororities.
“It was fun. We did Homecoming with four different sororities at the time,” Watkins said. “One of my roommates was Homecoming director for two years, so he made sure I was out there working.”
Today, Watkins is still helping the Greek community pomp. Dupree’s helps the Greek community in a symbiotic relationship, purchasing and delivering the pomp to the community at a lower price in exchange for apparel orders.
“We put a lot of work into keeping the house dec cost down for them, and then we asked if they’ll do some apparel orders through us for Homecoming,” Watkins said.
Watkins said he has noticed a change in the style of pomping and the amount of pomp needed by soriorites and fratenrites has increased.
“From when I was in the Greek community, the house decs are getting smaller,” Watkins said. “But it seems like they’re having to order more pomps to get the details going.”
OSU’s Homecoming theme is “Innovative Visions… Timeless Traditions” and Watkins, Causley and Shubert encapsulate tradition, but they are also innovators of their time. The trio worked hard to open and run their own business and are learning every day.
“When you start your own business, you have to be prepared to work lots of hours, because no one’s going to care about the business as much as you,” Watkins said. “Lots of long hours, lots of stressful nights, but the good thing about my brother being down here is we employ a lot of college kids, so it keeps us young getting to work with them.”
Causley said the key to starting a business is to get a good accountant, and Shubert believes that writing down a list of goals and working toward them is the recipe for success.
“I just always go back to hard work, you know, just having the mentality to chase your goals and achieve them,” Shubert said.
The business owners are excited, if not more than the student body, for Homecoming. In honor of the occasion, Dupree’s stays open late on Walkaround. The apparel store also has its own tradition made sweeter by the 6 p.m. kick off.
DuPree’s, For Pete’s Sake and The Endzone are close to campus and the students are apart of their daily lives. For Causley, Homecoming means seeing her former employees.
“I get to see old employees that worked for me 25 years ago, and they’ll come and say hi,” Causley said.
Shubert is excited for his favorite tradition, the Sea Of Orange Parade, but his favorite part of Homecoming is reconnecting with friends and fans as alumni flock to Stillwater.
“We get to see the fans that we have gotten to know and become friends with, you know, that eventually move away,” Shubert said. “It seems like this weekend everybody comes back and its great to see old friends and faces and seeing their kids getting older and coming to Oklahoma State.”
These Cowboys of entrepreneurialism stayed in Stillwater and built on the tradition of OSU with each passing year. They took the idea of the Cowboy family to heart and made it their own.
This post was originally published on here
