David Hawthorne didn’t set out to build a streak. He’s just a proud Coug who kept coming back.
This October, when the Cougs take on the Boise State Broncos for homecoming, Hawthorne (’79 Busi.) will be in his usual spot near the 50-yard line, high enough up to stay dry, watching his 51st consecutive homecoming game. His half-century run would be even longer if WSU hadn’t paused football for a year during the COVID-19 pandemic. The streak began in his freshman year, and Hawthorne hasn’t missed a homecoming game the university has played since.
A WSU family tradition
WSU runs through three generations of the Hawthorne family. His mother, Marilyn Hawthorne, attended what was then Washington State College in 1946 and 1947 and spoke warmly of her dorm and her roommates for the rest of her life. His father, Doug Hawthorne, a University of Washington graduate, also pushed him toward the Palouse. “He said, ‘ You’ll get a better college experience from going away,’” Hawthorne recalls. Decades later, three of his children earned WSU degrees, and both sons pledged his fraternity, Delta Tau Delta, where he has actively served on the House Corporation board for some 45 years.
Ask Hawthorne why he returns every fall, and football is only part of the answer. “I see people there every year that I never knew in college,” he says. “People that I know from my business work, and I never knew they went to WSU. You wander through where all the motorhomes are, and you see people that you know, and you get connected again with them—only you never knew they were a Coug.”
At one alumni reception, he bumped into the personnel director who had interviewed him for his first job out of college, reconnecting after nearly 40 years. Through the WSU Foundation’s Seattle Planned Giving Advisory Board, where he has volunteered to advise on tax-wise charitable giving for about 15 years, a fellow advisor’s law firm ended up hiring his son. “Just a little connection here, a little connection there,” he says. “So many connections through WSU. It’s just amazing what happens.”
Homecoming 51 at Washington State University
Those connections shaped Hawthorne’s own career, too. A marketing major until a recession dried up the job market his senior year, Hawthorne finished his business degree in accounting and joined his father’s firm in 1981. Today he is president of Hawthorne & Company CPAs, where he spent years recruiting WSU accounting graduates at the program’s annual awards dinner.
Those relationships have kept him close to students over the years, close enough to watch tuition rates nationwide climb far past anything he recognized. David recalls paying about $10,000 for four and a half years at WSU, room and board included. “You could work a summer and pay for a whole year of school,” he says. “Anybody that can pay for a whole year of school now is making $30,000 in three months.”
That math is why, in 2016, he and his family established the Hawthorne Family Endowed Scholarship through the WSU Foundation. The need-based award supports certified accounting students in the Carson College of Business, including those pursuing the 30 additional credit hours required for CPA eligibility, and may be renewed for up to two years. The endowment funded one scholarship in its first years and currently funds two annually. Hawthorne plans to grow it to four or five after he retires and include the endowment in his estate plan. “The program over there was so instrumental to my career,” he says.
His 50th homecoming, last fall, was the one to remember. Thirteen family members made the trip. His six-year-old granddaughter danced her way onto the Jumbotron. A college friend arranged a surprise scoreboard message congratulating him on the milestone. And the Cougs won.
His advice for students echoes his own path from shy freshman to fraternity leader and campus radio DJ: “Get involved in as many things as you can.” And his advice for everyone else? “Learning doesn’t end with college. That’s just the beginning.”
Come October, he’ll be back in section five or six. Right where he belongs.