50 Years Ago Today: Graduation from Penn State

March 13, 2026

By Larry Carlin

On this frigid wintry day in 1976 I graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA, with a BA degree in General Arts and Sciences. Which means, generally speaking, that I am an artist and scientist. Though I ended up becoming a bit of an artist, but nothing of a scientist.

How is it that I graduated in early March of 1976, you may be asking? Good question. Back in the day the university was on a tri-semester schedule instead of the usual two-semester set up. And somewhere along the way I ended up going during a summer session, so I matriculated three months earlier than the rest of my class. There was no big fanfare, no outdoor stadium seating, no famous guest speaker. The event took place in Recreation Hall, an indoor sports complex that was built in 1929 and is still used today for gymnastics, volleyball, and wrestling teams. We sat on bleacher seats, a few speeches were giving, and diplomas were handed out. The ceremony lasted about an hour, and everyone went home happy and relieved that it was all over. But the big question facing everyone was, What happens now?

I wasn’t planning to attend the occasion. I had put in my four years of college after completing 12 years of grade school, and I was exhausted. I cared little about the pomp and circumstance. But my parents wanted to go to it, and they had never been to the town before. We lived in Wayne, PA, a suburb west of Philadelphia, and I guess that they wanted to see where I had been living since I had left home a few years before. So they made the 3.5 hour drive up to town on a brisk 10-degree March day with my sister Donna and her friend Mary Jane with them.

While I do not remember much about the event itself, what I do recall is that I sat next to a guy named Gary Miller who was a housemate of a friend of mine. I did not know him well, but he was a familiar face in a crowd of about a thousand people. He was telling me about a new TV show that he said was going to be the next big thing. I had not heard of this show, as I was hanging out in bars or playing music. It was called NBC’s Saturday Night, and it had premiered in October of 1975. Gary was telling me about some guys named Chevy Chase, Dan Akroyd and John Belushi, who were doing funny skits while a different comedian or actor was hosting each episode. To me it sounded like a lame setup, so I paid little attention to it since I figured that that show wouldn’t last very long.

It turns out that I was wrong about the show’s future.

As a basic liberal arts major, the professional life that lie ahead of me could have been looked at in two ways: wide open or bleak. Since I had not specified one particular field of study, I was qualified for either anything that came up or nothing at all. At that time, I was only glad to be done with schooling, and I was in no hurry to go anywhere, so I just kicked back, relaxed, and did some serious partying. I was living in a big house with five other guys, and my rent was only about $70 a month, including utilities.

In order to bring in some spending money I got a part-time job driving school buses for the State College Area School District. It was a split shift, working for two hours in the morning and two more in the afternoon. I also was playing music every Saturday night in a country band in the outlying area, so I was living quite comfortably and having a good time. “Real life” could wait a while.

Little did I realize at that time that the driving and music jobs that I learned to do in the college town would lead me to an unusual life that, five decades later, I am still doing!

I ended up staying in State College for almost another three years. After two years of school buses I moved up to driving transit buses, getting hired by the Centre Area Transportation Authority in the summer of 1977. It was a decent job, and one of the better-paying ones in town. And, after playing with the country band for nine months I went on to playing in two more outfits, with gigs mostly downtown. It was an enjoyable time.

But tiring of the cold winters and wanting to do more musically than playing in local bars, I packed up my bags and guitars and headed west to the San Francisco Bay Area in early February of 1979, and I have been here ever since.

When I arrived in SF I got a job with a local tour bus company working in an office, and less that a year later, in January of 1980, I was living in West Germany after meeting someone at the previous job who got me a position working for a German tour bus company for a year. That was an incredible time, living and traveling throughout Europe as a young 25-year-old. I then returned to San Francisco in early 1981 where, having tired of the office life, I went back to driving, and tour buses are what I drove for the next 14 years.

Along the way I stayed busy playing bass in a few bands until I landed a gig in the summer of 1981 playing with a country/bluegrass duo called Elmo & Patsy, who were starting to become known for a novelty Christmas song that they recorded in 1979 called “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.” I had heard about the song, as it had been in the news the previous holiday season, so I thought I would check them out. This turned out to be the best musical decision that I ever made, as I played with the duo until they split up in 1987, and then I continued to play with Elmo on his own until 2012. Not only did I get to play with them/him all over the West Coast, but we also played an arts festival in Amsterdam in 1985, and we did a series of cruise ship tours in the Caribbean, Alaska, and Canada in 1985 and 1986.

I was having a great time playing music and driving buses part-time, but when I turned 40 in 1994 I decided that I needed to get more serious about the future, as I was tired of driving buses and living on the edge financially. But again I was facing the dilemma of what I was qualified to do in the next phase of my life.

As it turns out, to use a worn-out phrase, you can sometimes “have your cake and eat it, too”!

By sheer happenstance, I stumbled across an ad in the newspaper for a big company that was looking for an executive driver that had a clean driving record, who knew the area well, and could adhere to strict confidentiality. Curious, I sent off a resume, got hired in April of 1994, and I have been on the job ever since as an executive chauffeur for the CEO of a private investment firm. When I got hired, my boss was not only impressed by my driving history, but he was also intrigued by my musical experiences and writing that I had done, and the fact that I graduated from Penn State. It has been a fantastic position (with a great salary, 401k and health insurance) that I have enjoyed doing for the past 32 years.

And I have never stopped playing music. While I played with Elmo for 31 years, along the way, in 1995, I met a pretty woman who sang the kind of folk and country songs that I liked to do. As luck would have it, she is also from Pennsylvania, and she also grew up about 1.5 miles away from me. We never met in PA, but we had a lot in common. So much so that we have now been together for 31 years (only four of those as husband and wife), and we celebrated the first time we met on March 9th, just four days ago. We have been playing music together ever since that first meeting over three decades ago.

I have to admit that while I have led an extraordinary and fulfilling life, I look back fondly on my formative years spent at Penn State and living in State College. While a Bachelor of Arts degree didn’t exactly lay the groundwork for what I have ended up doing for the past 50 years, I did learn a lot about life in general. And I made countless friends while living back there, all of whom I cherish dearly and am still in touch with today. I have returned to town countless times since graduation day – I visit almost every summer during Arts Festival Weekend – and State College and the Penn State campus will always hold a special place in my heart.

If only that hirsute hippie in the blue cap and gown knew what was to come, maybe he would have smiled in that photo taken on March 13th, 1976!