Throwback to the “Best Kept Secret on Campus”

By Tim Brillo ’92 

I was fortunate enough to live in the Westfield State College Interfaith Center during my sophomore and junior years. My roommate was Jim Wyllie. We were Davis Hall roommates freshmen year as well as high school classmates at Don Bosco Technical High School in Boston. Jim and I found out about the Interfaith Center opportunity from a fellow Don Bosco grad who was currently living there. He described the opportunity to us as the “best-kept secret on campus”. He was right. The living agreement was that Jim and I would take care of the general maintenance in and around the center and in exchange we received free room and board. 

Living there was certainly a topic of conversation as not many people believed we were telling the truth. Father Dean was great to us, as he was with most students on campus. He would swing a pizza by for a late-night snack or drop us off groceries from a BJ’s run that kept our kitchen stocked. Jim and I are forever grateful for all Father Dean did for us during our time at Westfield. We had a lot of good memories living there.

Friends like Jack Doherty ’90 were able to pop in and out the back. Jack and I would set up shop in the dining room and pack bags of t-shirts that our friends would take to the dorms to sell. So the dining room became the origin of College Hype t-shirt sales. Jack was, and still is, full of energy. He would call me at 2:00 AM on a Wednesday with a shirt idea that would be a big seller. Jack has taken College Hype to great heights, and to think it all started in his college apartment room and the back dining room of the Interfaith Center is amazing. 

Read more about College Hype, an alumni-owned business, here.