The Places that Hold Our Memories Winter 2025

Last winter, I visited my high school for the first time in nearly 30 years. It fills an entire city block of downtown Nashville — a four-story limestone castle among high-rises and honky-tonks. Walking in the doors, I was hit by the familiar smell of worn floorboards and a century’s worth of dust. Locker doors clanged shut just out of sight.

And then, like a series of camera flashes popping: There was the staircase where I timed classmates with a stopwatch as they raced up and down the steps for a physics project. There was the office where I’d been summoned by the secretary, cradling the receiver to my face as my boyfriend, calling from college, told me a classmate had died. There was the corner where my girlfriends and I spent every lunch hour, cross-legged with half-eaten sandwiches in hand, laughing and singing Beatles tunes. The happy, painful and mundane crowded in — all of it forgotten until I walked those halls.

It’s a particular magic trick of place that a building can hold our memories — fragments of our past selves. And for 75 years, Gill Coliseum has done just that for generations of Beavers.

Since it opened in November 1949, it’s hosted graduation ceremonies; concerts and dances; registration (back when it was done with physical cards); lectures and memorial services; a turtle race or two; and athletics events aplenty, from the stands-shaking mayhem of Orange Express games to last year’s unforgettable women’s basketball buzzer beater.

Records have been broken, friendships forged and minds changed, all in the shadow of its steel girders. As former Beaver gymnast Mary (Ayotte) Law, ’82, says: “When I walk into Gill Coliseum — and it can be empty — I hear people cheering for me.  … There’s something about the way the sound of that happy cheering just kind of remains in there.”

Though we can’t quite summon the smell of Gill’s particular mix of floor wax and popcorn in these pages, I hope you enjoy the memories in “Where Beavers Gather” And please write in to share your own.