If you follow Cyclone Fanatic on social media, you may have noticed our shout out last week for Cyclone Fanatic Super Patrons Eric and Kristi Wittrock. I’m guessing what caught your eye about their shout out is the same thing that caught my eye: their family’s long and sustained history of attending Iowa State.
More specifically, someone in Eric and Kristi’s direct family line has attended Iowa State in every decade since 1920.
The first was Eric’s grandfather, Alfred Mahany.
“So my grandfather came over from England in about 1905 with a sixth grade education,” Eric said. “He went through some preparatory school and then attended Iowa State College in 1920. He got his diploma in 1923 in agriculture and manual training.”
But Alfred wasn’t just a farm kid. He was musical too.
“He was hired by the Registrar to climb the Campanile stairs, manually wind the clock mechanism and play tunes on the bells—there were only 10 bells then—by pulling ropes,” Eric said. “For this...
