“A HOME FOR ME, FROM THE BEGINNING”: HOW THE BLAIR FAMILY HAS FOUND THEIR PLACE AT UNION UNIVERSITY SINCE 1988

Union is “as unremarkable as a house,” Seth Blair said. He meant it as a compliment. Union has been a constant in his life, as consistent and present as the house he goes home to every day. 

We often call Union a home, but it is not a home, at least not in the way we usually mean that word. The people who live at Union are not here permanently, and the people who are at Union permanently do not live here. Students come and go every four years. Faculty and staff clock in and out every morning and every evening. 

Seth, a sophomore communication studies major, is the younger of the two Blair siblings, and the eldest is Madeline, a senior nursing major. Their parents, Ashley and Chris Blair, have both been professors in the communication arts department at Union for over 20 years. The family’s connection to the school is older than that, though — it began in 1988, when Chris Blair stepped on campus as a freshman art major. Two major changes later, he found himself in the communication arts department. Ashley Blair arrived two years later, but meeting each other would take time and several stories involving balloons and Taco Bell and a history class with Terry Lindley, retired university professor of history. 

Two professors and two full-time students in one family means that the four of them are busy, but that does not stop them from finding time to sit down together and talk to me. We sit facing each other in their living room, three on one side of the room and two on the other. The dynamic is conversational, collaborative and easy. Having all four in one place makes every question more than the sum of its parts because they answer together and with different perspectives on the same lived experiences. We start at the beginning: where their Union journey started.

“When I toured, we were in the area behind Union Station,” Ashley Blair said as she began the story of the first time she saw Union. “And we were standing in front of Carol Griffin's office. He had gone to get something, and we saw behind one of the dividers there were balloons — we'd see balloons overhead — and the person working there was like, ‘Oh, it's students. They're waiting for Carol Griffin ‘cause he got promoted today.’”

As Ashley tells the story, Chris sits beside her on the couch with a wry little smirk. She finishes what she is saying.

“So, I was holding those balloons,” Chris said. 

But they did not meet then. In fact, neither of them knew the other was there for the balloon story until years later, but it is part one in a miniseries of near misses and meet cutes. 

“Well, the first class we took together was world history with Terry Lindley, who just retired,” Chris said. 

As he talks, Ashley nods her agreement and then joins in, “I was in the class and Chris was into me. I did not know this yet.” 

Classes together were a recurring saga in the early stages of what was not yet a relationship. (Both of them note this as an encouragement to any student out there right now who may be struggling in that same boat.) Their next class together would be in the department they now teach in.

“I was a senior, and I needed a minor,” Chris said. “So I took a communication arts class to be with a girl.” 

Ashley smiles and picks up where he left off, “And he liked the girl and the class.” 

Ashley and Chris Blair sometimes finish each other’s sentences, or at least jump in with the last bit of the puzzle, just to help each other out. They have conversational chemistry, which makes them fun to interview. She speaks quickly and excitedly; he speaks slowly and deliberately. They have a yin and yang balance to them. So, too, does the whole family — Madeline and Seth spar a little, verbally, the way siblings do. 

Madeline shares the final meet cute of her parents, and the most cinematic one. Growing up, she says, Union was always “the place from the stories they tell.”  

“(They talked) about how their first date was because mom was too impatient to wait in line at the Lex, and she was like: ‘I'm gonna go to Taco Bell, is anyone coming?’ And she was talking to her friends and dad was standing behind them and, he was like: ‘I'll go,’” Madeline said.

That was the beginning, the opening chapter, of the Blair family at Union but also as a family in the first place. 

For Madeline and Seth, their story at Union started earlier in life, as early as it could. They were born and Union was there, right there, every day. 

“To some extent, I didn't know what it was, this Union,” Seth said. “You worked there, you also worked there,” he gestured to each of his parents. “I didn't know what you did. Union was for me, this large area surrounding this one brick building where after school, five days a week, I'd go up to the com arts office and watch PBS kids.”

For the first years in their lives, Union was a fixture for the Blair kids, and they were a fixture at Union. 

“I would say, I guess kind of similarly to Seth, mine, my relationship with Union, was something that evolved,” Madeline said. “So I'd say it probably started more as the place from the stories, you know? ‘Cause I took naps there in the (publication) lab as a baby.”

As they got older, that connection stayed just as strong. There are memories from elementary school years and teenage years in those same rooms in Jennings Hall, where their parents work. The third floor communication arts suite was a hub. 

“We had great advising parties,” Chris said. “We would have an advising party that started at four or five o'clock in the afternoon and went till everybody was advised. And so we brought the kids and we would order pizza and there's the desserts and everything.”

These parties were department-wide affairs. Every semester, students gathered in the lobby just outside their professors’ offices for food and movies. It worked like a doctor’s office: you sit there until your name is called, then you go back and have your session, then you rejoin the lobby. Grade school Madeline and Seth were there the whole time.