KT Days bring MC alumni home to reinvest time and energy into their alma mater
June 2, 2023
Today, Maryville College is a bucolic jewel in East Tennessee’s crown, an academic oasis in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains where students have earned degrees for more than two centuries.
Lauded for its immaculate grounds and ornate historic buildings, the campus and urban forest on it — known as the Maryville College Woods — draw local hikers and walkers, school groups, business organizations, athletic teams and so many others whose only association with the College is sheer admiration for its stately beauty.
Many of them, no doubt, would have difficulty believing that almost three decades ago, financial hardship and years of wear and tear had left the College in dire physical straits … to the point that even dedicated alumni, men and women whose blood runs the orange-and-garnet colors of the Maryville College tartan, felt a sense of dismay whenever they returned to their alma mater.
“The first impression one would get driving onto campus would be, ‘This is an institution on its way out,’” recalled Dan Ellis ’60, former chair of the Maryville College Board of Directors. “The International House, which was the first building people driving in were likely to see at the time, looked like a building about to collapse. It was shabby and needed painting. The wood around the doors was rotting away, or at least appeared to be. It just did not give a good favorable first impression of Maryville College when you drove onto the campus and encountered buildings like that.”
And so Ellis and other members of the Class of 1960 embarked on a mission to revive and resuscitate the first impression of MC, launching an initiative that cost little to implement but is credited with helping the College return to aesthetic greatness. KT Days is a Maryville College tradition that celebrates 25 years later this month, and the return of alumni to campus isn’t just a reunion: It’s a transaction of physical labor and activity on the part of lifelong Scots who still feel indebted to the institution that gave them so much.
“The tradition of KT Days is a beloved part of the alumni experience and just one example of what makes Maryville College such a special place,” said Jennifer Phillips Triplett ’07, director of Alumni Affairs at MC. “KT’ers complete projects based on campus needs, which can range from identifying photos and cataloging memorabilia in the MC Archives to planting annuals, building picnic tables, and maintaining and improving facilities. Projects are planned by our KT Days volunteer leader, Reggie Dailey, in partnership with Facilities Operations, the MC Archives, MC Athletics, Dr. Drew Crain and Dr. Jay Clark.
“We have a full slate of projects planned for KT Days 2023, and we are excited to include work in the Campus Woods this year. The beauty of this event and the types of projects planned is that alumni can participate for a few hours, for one day, or for all three workdays. There is always satisfying, meaningful work to get done!”
A brick-and-mortar legacy of doing good
KT Days, which takes place on the MC campus June 13-15 this year, is named for distinguished alumnus Kin Takahashi, who graduated from the College in 1895 and remains a legendary figure in MC lore. According to the College’s Founding Story, “Takahashi pulled students together for the construction of a large building to house both a gymnasium and an auditorium to serve what is said to be America’s first on-campus YMCA. Takahashi, along with fellow students, manufactured 300,000 bricks in an on-campus ‘brickyard’ during the summer of 1895.”
That building, Bartlett Hall, serves as a monument to Takahashi’s determination, ingenuity and loyalty to Maryville College, and the story of its construction serves as an inspiration for Scots giving back to the institution. When members of the Class of 1960 gathered for their 35th reunion, one member — Tom Eberhard ’60 — approached classmate Dan Greaser ’60, another member of the College’s Board of Directors at the time — with a proposal.
“Tom said, ‘A lot of us don’t have a lot of money, but a lot of us are at the point in our lives where we have time and talent,’” Greaser remembered. “He said, ‘For instance, our daughter owns a landscaping company in Cincinnati, and I help her, so I understand about planting trees and mulch and that sort of thing. So if you have some way we can contribute time and talent instead of just dollars, maybe we could help more as a class.’”
And that sparked an idea by Greaser and Ellis: Why not, they mused, bring together the men and women of the College’s Facilities Operations (known then as the Physical Plant) with alumni volunteers to take care of challenges that didn’t require professional expertise but could make a profound difference?
“There was mold on the buildings; the sidewalks were dark black instead of gray; the shrubs were overgrown; the trees had no mulch,” Greaser said. “There were a lot of problems, but a lot of them were labor intensive. It was low-hanging fruit, and if somebody had time to address it, you could change the look of the campus.”
And so the two Dans, as they’re known, presented Eberhard’s proposal to then President Gerald Gibson and Andy McCall, the director of the Physical Plant. Those conversations took place during 1996, during which time Greaser, Ellis and other members of the Class of 1960 worked with McCall and Ron Appuhn, then the vice president and treasurer of the College, to lay the groundwork for a give-back program that would bring to campus 43 participants as wide-ranging as current students to alumni from the Class of 1933. Invoking the spirit of Takahashi, they christened it KT Week, and from June 16-20, 1997, the foundation stones were laid for a tradition that continues to this day.
KT Days 2023: The legacy continues
In those early years, KT Week included as many minor construction projects as it did ones involving landscaping and beautification. And for many participants, Ellis said, the ability to return to campus to give of time and talent renewed their relationship with the institution that had been, at one time, such an integral part of their lives.
“There was a camaraderie that developed among those who got involved with KT Week, and that continued,” he said. “People began to look forward to participating in it. As it went on, they looked forward to coming back year after year, and it was like a week-long alumni gathering. You had a certain group of people who came back every year, and others who may have only come for a year or two, but it benefited the College in ways other than them digging deeper into their wallets.”
Within the next decade, KT Week began drawing more than 100 volunteers, many of whom returned annually. They may have been unable to work at the pace or the demand of their younger years, but every year, they gracefully and gratefully gave back in whatever ways they could. By 2019, because the need for regular maintenance and upkeep projects had eclipsed the need for labor-intensive ones that require more time, the project was rebranded as KT Days and reduced in number from five days to three.
“I think we will have another list of meaningful projects for KT Days 2023,” said Reggie Dailey, known in KT Days circles as the “Volunteer in Chief.” His annual presence is another sign of just how far and wide the KT Days reach is: He’s not an alumnus, but his daughter (Brynn Dailey Everett ’09) is, and her experience as a Scot led to an allegiance that eventually landed him as the director of the Physical Plant when McCall retired. In a serendipitous turn of events, Dailey and other volunteers will be joined for KT Days 2023 by McCall as well.
“The light construction projects will include repairs to the soccer stairs, continued work on the softball stairs, construction of an additional information kiosk for the College Woods, repairs to the current College Woods kiosk, and others,” Dailey continued. “The painting projects will include continued efforts to stain the outdoor furniture items that have been ongoing KT projects in recent years, staining the portions of the softball stairs built last summer, and others.
“There will be a change in the landscaping projects this summer. KT’ers will still have the option of working on campus landscaping projects such as weeding, trimming and planting. And, this year, KT’ers will also have the option of working on College Woods projects such as invasive species eradications, trail maintenance and plantings. All of these efforts contribute to the betterment of the campus outdoor spaces for students and the local community.”
And the betterment of the MC campus, he pointed out, makes that East Tennessee crown shine a little more magnificently. That it’s done under the auspices of an alumni gathering of what amounts to a family reunion held every summer makes it all the better.
“KT Days provides a connection for alumni across decades that is very tangible and real,” Triplett said. “We all have something in common that made us choose Maryville College, that connects us to the story of Maryville College, and that connects us to each other. What a beautiful way to demonstrate our love for the College by continuing to come back and ensure it’s as special a place for future generations as it is for ourselves.”
