Episode 4: “Once an Aggie, Always an Aggie” (originally aired August 1970)

“We’ve been buddies since we were 18 years old,” Williford said.

August 1970. Williford played saxophone in the Aggie Band and soon became friends with the trumpet behind him: Robert Gaeke.

“There’s so many memories — some of them we can’t tell you,” Gaeke said. “We’re lifelong friends, man.”

Across the quad lived Squadron 6, where Chuck Friesenhahn, Don Henson and a group of fish bonded over their shared interest in agriculture. When they returned to campus, the dozen or so of them spent hours in the Century Ballroom laughing and catching up until early in the morning — and staff had cleared every table but theirs.

“We were Squadron 6,” Friesenhahn said. “We had some renowned folks. We did good. We made good enough grades that we had this many fish stay on. Just a few years later, they did away with Squadron 6 —”

“They did away with 6 because their blood alcohol and their GPA became the same,” Henson added.

Like the Scotts, members of Squadron 6 found lifelong love as undergraduates. The opening of the first women’s dorms in 1972 meant couples could spend more time together outside of class — especially when they weren’t supposed to, if you ask an RA.

“We had restricted hours, which meant the guys had to be out of the dorm by a certain time,” McNeely said. “The RAs back then were required to go to every room and make sure there were no guys anywhere. Can you imagine what we encountered on Friday and Saturday night?”

McNeely came across scenes from a number of reruns from the Class of ‘74. Connections made and the hijinks enacted — sorry, the hijinks theoretically enacted — while seemingly insignificant when they premiered, became memories that extended throughout every season after.

“We’re 72 years old, and we were at A&M for four years,” Gaeke said. “What’s unbelievable is how — and that’s just a blip in the 72 years of our lives — but how profound those four years affected the rest of the 72. We live that every day.”