One notable difference interim President Lou Hencken sees in Homecoming today from when he was a student in the 1960s is the absence of house decorations.

Fraternities and sororities would spend three to four weeks before Homecoming decorating their houses for the competition.

“They were very elaborate,” he said.

Unfortunately, the contest fell by the wayside because of high costs and changing times in the 1970s.

At 5 p.m. on Friday of Homecoming week, as the judges visited each of the houses, 70 fraternity and sorority members could be seen finishing their decorations, Hencken said. Long lines of cars would drive through to see the decorations.

Organizations would also spend a lot of money on the float competition as well.

This year’s Homecoming will be quite different from the first one that took place at Eastern in 1915.

In the early days of Homecoming, chapel services, a banquet, a pep rally, a parade and a dance were part of the festivities at one point along with the football game.

Eastern still has a pep rally and a parade, but other activities have disappeared over time.

Hencken said the parade was longer in the 1960s, with more marching bands participating. He served on the parade committee for a few years and said it was hard to arrange the route, spacing the bands out enough so they didn’t drown each other out.

He remembers getting up at 3 a.m. to start lining the streets. Now, he said, he sees the parade committee and wonders how he did it. Now whenever he sees the coordinators looking kind of tired by the end of the day, he said, “I can relate to that.”

Though the parade will not have 15 marching bands, Hencken says the parade is still a good length.

Hencken told of one parade during the time he was a resident director of Douglas Hall when Thomas Hall had spent a lot of money on its float.

“It was a great float,” he said. “They put tons of money and time into it.”

At that time, floats were judged at a judging stand on the parade route. Unfortunately, about 100 yards before the judging stand, Hencken said the axle broke or it got a flat tire, so it could not make it to the judges’ stand.

He said he felt terrible about that, because since the float did not get judged, it did not place.

“I just felt so bad for those guys,” he said.

This year’s Homecoming festivities do include the traditional parade, pep rally and football game. It also includes other activities like window painting, a pancake breakfast, tailgating and tent city.

“I think tailgating is bigger now than it used to be,” Hencken said.

Tent city will offer a variety of activities for returning alumni, Hencken said, noting he thought a large number would return this year.

Two things influence the number of alumni returning at Homecoming, Hencken said: the weather and the record of the football team.

Eastern’s Homecoming did not have a queen until 1930, but did not have a king until 1985.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the title of Homecoming queen was highly coveted, Hencken said.

“People used to spend unheard of dollars to become Homecoming queen,” he said.

In 1973, when Hencken was assistant director of housing, there was no queen because of problems with the voting process.

The girl who won was an African-American, Hencken said, and following the announcement she was accused of violating election rules by putting up posters too close to the voting booth.

As a remedy to the situation, the committee took away a portion of the votes, Hencken said. Enough were put away that the queen was no longer queen.

“The African-American students were justifiably upset,” he said.

The university president at the time decided to cancel the Homecoming queen for that year.

Hencken said rumors were flying following the incident. He said a band director for one of the marching bands participating in the parade explained the situation to students and said people had been shot, which was not the case.

The Eastern News reported that the pep rally also was canceled that year because a group of several hundred African-American students disrupted the activities with a protest.