The Hello That Changed Everything
That's Bananas the Bear.
March 1984. Cover of the Maine Alumnus magazine at the University of Maine at Orono — UMO to those of us who were there before the rest of the world caught on.
The name goes back to 1914. A black bear cub named Jeff was brought to a football rally on campus. When Jeff stood on his head, the crowd went bananas — and the name stuck to every mascot that followed for the next century.
That one happened to be me.
I was twenty-two years old and I had no idea I was learning anything.
I didn't learn hospitality in a tasting room.
I didn't learn it in a boutique hotel lobby or a Michelin-starred restaurant or a leadership seminar about the customer experience.
I learned it on a hill in Orono, Maine — in a fur suit, in front of a crowd, making strangers feel like they belonged somewhere before they'd even found their seat.
There was a tradition at UMaine that most people outside of Orono have never heard of.
The Maine Hello.
It started over a century ago under President Arthur Hauck. Freshmen wore identifying beanies and were required to warmly greet any upperclassman they passed. Fail to do so and you carried their books — often making yourself late to your own class. What sounds like a rule was actually something far more interesting: a forced practice in the art of making a stranger feel seen.
It worked. Because it still exists today.
Not as a rule. Not as an obligation. As a culture.
Walk onto the UMaine campus today and something happens that doesn't happen on most college campuses. People look at you. They nod. They say hello. Not because they know you. Because that's who they decided to be.
And it doesn't stop at the campus gates. The Maine Hello follows you. It shows up at a boat landing, a general store, a reunion weekend in June when someone you've never met sits down beside you and treats you like family before you've said a word.
Working alongside the Alumni Office taught me something I couldn't have learned in a classroom.
Nancy Morse Dysart — Class of 1960 — was our Director of Alumni Activities. Before she came to UMaine she had been Miss Nancy on Romper Room — a woman who spent her career making children feel safe, seen, and celebrated on television screens across New England. She brought that same gift to everything she touched at UMaine.
She was a mentor. A second mom. The kind of person who remembered your name not because it was her job but because she genuinely wanted to.
Nancy understood something I didn't have words for yet. The hello is never really about the greeting. It's about what the greeting signals.
You matter. I see you. You belong here.
Every June the Senior Classes came back for Reunion Weekend.
My job was to be there — to welcome them, hear their stories, connect them back to a place that had shaped them decades before I was born.
I met Raymond H. Fogler — Class of 1915 — already one of the oldest living alumni, well into his eighties. A biology degree from UMaine. Assistant Secretary of the Navy. President of Montgomery Ward. President of the UMaine Board of Trustees. The man whose name had been on the university library since 1962. He didn't have to be there. He chose to be. Every June. Because seventy years later the place still mattered to him.
I met Sam Sezak — Class of 1931 — forty-seven years at UMaine as a coach and administrator, 472 wins across five sports, retired for a decade and still showing up. Before he left that afternoon he reached into a bag and handed me a pair of hand-knitted Black Bear mittens he had made himself.
I still think about those mittens.
Not because they were warm — though they were. But because of what the gesture said about the man. Here was someone who had every reason to be celebrated, received, honored. And instead he showed up with a gift. For a kid in his twenties who was just trying to do his job.
That's not generosity. That's hospitality. The kind that doesn't announce itself. The kind that lands quietly and stays forever.
The places worth remembering work exactly like this.
The winery where the owner remembers your name from two years ago. The inn where the innkeeper asks about your drive before they ask for your credit card. The restaurant where nobody rushes you because the conversation at the table is the whole point.
These aren't accidents. They're choices. Made by people who understand what Nancy Dysart understood. What Sam Sezak understood. What Raymond Fogler understood every June when he got in his car and drove back to Orono.
The hello is never just a hello.
I grew up outside Boston. I have spent my whole life looking for my next Cheers bar — the next Sam Malone, the next Carla, the next Coach. I want to be Norm. I want to walk through a door and hear my name before I say a word.
That's what Vianarra is for.
Finding the places that still do this. And helping the ones that don't find their way back to it.
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— Patrick
patrickdunnintl.com | 650-418-0507
