Fall 2015 EditionAlumni & Friends Magazine
We are family, Bobcat-style
This band of Bobcats celebrates New Year's Eve together every year, a tradition they've maintained since the early 1990s.
Jon Greenberg, BSJ ’01 | November 20, 2015
Share:
Bobcat bonanza!
A band of Bobcats—Brad Bush, BBA ’83; Mike Gregg, BBA ’83; Patrick Donadio, BSC ’80, MBA ’81; Sedat Gokcen, BSEE ’82, MA ’84; and his wife, Jeanne Gokcen, BSHS ’82, MAHS ’84—became friends when enrolled on the Athens Campus. They remain pals. One reason is proximity. The Gokcens and Donadios live in Columbus, Gregg is in Massillon, and Bush is in suburban Cleveland.
But there are other reasons, too.
“We are still really close,” said Jeanne Gokcen, founder and CEO of FutureCom Technologies. “Not just us as a core group, but also our spouses, whether or not they went to OHIO with us. Our kids have grown up together.”
Bush, who works in the consulting field, put it this way: “Fundamentally, we’re the same people with a little less hair, a little wiser.” He added, “We still have the same antics, the same sense of humor.”
Their New Year’s Eve parties arose naturally, though there’s playful disagreement about how. Donadio and the Gokcens say the galas started when they invited Donadio, a public speaker and executive coach, and his wife over one Dec. 31.
Bush counters that upon moving to Cleveland in the early 1990s, he hosted a large group of OHIO friends for New Year’s.
“It really took hold once we started having families,” Bush said.
Everyone agrees to that.
However the New Year’s Bobcat shindig began, it’s become a favorite tradition where friends became family and families became friends.
Gregg, a compliance officer for Ameriprise Financial, said the guys still quote lines from Caddyshack and Stripes , movie comedies first seen at OHIO, and tell the same stories.
Don’t their spouses get sick of that?
“If they do, they’re pretty good about it,” he said, “and don’t let us know it.”
Their New Year’s greening custom shows no sign of abating as participants enter their mid-50s.
“Really, all the guys are like my brothers,” said Sedat Gokcen, CTO of FutureCom.
“I wouldn’t give up those New Year’s Eve parties with my buddies for anything,” Bush said. “We’re like family.”
