Marilyn Margolis Maughan was too excited to be sad when she helped her daughter Mandy move into Syracuse University — her alma mater — as a freshman.

Watching her daughter’s first-year transition wasn’t emotional for Marilyn until she closed the door to Mandy’s empty room before she left Flint Hall for the summer. The door tag Mandy’s resident adviser had placed there at the beginning of the year caught her eye. She read the words “Welcome, Mandy!” and began to cry.

“Up until that point I was just so excited for her. I was just so happy and I never really had time to have any other thoughts. Just in that moment it brought me back to so many other places,” she said.

To Marilyn, Flint Hall wasn’t just her daughter’s home-away-from-home as a freshman. Flint was the same place she had called home more than 30 years earlier during her own freshman year. It was the place she met the people she still calls her best friends and the place she met her husband, Tom Maughan.

This Friday through Sunday, SU will host this year’s Family Weekend, with events planned on campus for students, siblings, parents and grandparents. Some families, like the Maughans, include generations of Syracuse alumni who share similar memories of campus and a common passion for the Orange, building SU into their family histories.

Tom lived across the hall from his future wife, then Marilyn Margolis, during their first year. The two met and became friends early in the year. In the spring — April 24, 1980, to be exact — Tom asked her to go with him to a Frank Zappa concert on campus. She said yes.

“We may not be able to remember exactly what our anniversary is, but we never forget that date,” she said.

Marilyn and Tom began dating after that concert. They played tennis together at the Women’s Building, and traveled to watch the SU lacrosse team play. They went to every concert that happened on campus, and the two didn’t miss a sporting event.

The couple has been together ever since that first Frank Zappa concert, with the exception of the spring of Marilyn’s junior year when she studied abroad in London. During that time he sent her a letter every week. She still has each one tucked away, all tied together with a red ribbon.

She fell in love at SU while she was falling in love with SU. “You go to a lot of colleges and you meet a lot of people, but when you go to Syracuse, it’s pretty hard not to fall in love with everything. The buildings, the people, the atmosphere­ — it’s the iconic collegiate experience in so many ways.”­

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Michael Margolis’ love for SU started with his older sister Marilyn.

“I found it a very diverse school and I had a lot of fun, so Syracuse was my first choice. I really enjoyed all of the activities and the combination of academics, and social life just seemed really well-balanced,” he said.

Michael fell in love with SU for many of the same reasons his sister did. But unlike his sister, Michael did not meet his future spouse, Nancy Appel, during his freshman year: He’d met her the summer before his freshman year at a summer camp where they both worked as camp counselors.

They stayed in touch as they went their separate ways in the fall. Nancy visited SU several times during that first year, and said those visits helped convince her to transfer to SU for her sophomore year.

“Everyone was so much fun and so nice. Syracuse was just so fabulous, and I just thought I was wasting my time where I was, ” Nancy said.

As students, Nancy and Michael took part in many of the same traditions that SU students maintain today. The two would sleep outside at the Dome for three or four nights to buy season tickets. They would go down to Marshall Street to eat wings at Varsity Pizza or to drink out of a fishbowl at Maggie’s Restaurant and Sports Bar, now DJ’s on the Hill.

They stayed busy as active members of campus Greek life, Nancy as the treasurer of Chi Omega and Michael as the president of Delta Tau Delta.

“There were just so many different traditions between Greek life and just the regular college. There was so much spirit at the school and there were so many nice people and they were so diverse. I always called it the bubble, but the bubble was open for everybody,” Michael said.

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It has been more than 30 years since Marilyn and Tom Maughan and Michael and Nancy Margolis graduated from SU, but their Orange pride and their love for their alma mater hasn’t wavered. The experience, friendships and Orange pride they formed at Syracuse have helped them form a special family bond.

They all live in Connecticut now, where they are known around town for constantly sporting Orange clothing in the heart of UConn territory. Nancy says her 16-year-old son is especially known for only wearing orange.

“People see him and just call him ‘Syracuse.’ People in town know that we’re just die-hard Syracuse fans,” she said. “Syracuse holds a really, really big place in our hearts. Even to my parents, Syracuse was a family affair. Syracuse is one of those schools you can really get behind and you can just love.”

Although they call Connecticut home now, the Maughan and the Margolis families still make time to come back and visit campus. Each time they come, they keep the same traditions, like going Dome-stomping, eating honeybuns and wings from Varsity, walking around campus and purchasing Orange apparel.

“We just love coming. You know you drive up 81 and you see the Dome in the distance and everyone in the car gets chills,” Michael said.

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Mandy Maughan grew up watching Syracuse basketball with her parents. Although Orange pride runs deep in her family, she says her parents weren’t an influential factor in her college search process.

“They actually didn’t really want me to come here because they knew it was such a big party school,” Mandy said. “They were worried that I’d get distracted.”

The junior biomedical engineering major debated between Syracuse and other schools with more emphasis on engineering, but she ultimately chose SU after visiting campus.

“I came and I fell in love with campus. It was a perfect spring day. The snow was gone, the sun was out, and I just loved all the professors I met,” she said.

Since then, Mandy has fallen in love with SU on her own. She has had her own experiences at SU as a member of Gamma Phi Beta, Phi Eta Sigma and the club swim team. She loves going to basketball games and the diversity on campus.

There’s another experience Mandy shares with her parents: She met her boyfriend during her freshman year in Flint— the same place her parents met.

“My parents think it’s funny and cute. All my friends jokingly make fun of us,” she said.

Looking back, Mandy says she wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere but SU.

“Hearing about the history and stuff…I just feel connected to my family. I can start talking about basketball or whoever was here back then and I feel really connected with them. I just feel at home.”

Published on October 31, 2013 at 3:07 am

Contact Michelle: mlsczpan@syr.edu