Write it down.

Bruce Wald, Cal grad and longtime staff member for sports and communications, will lead this year’s Homecoming parade.

This year’s Homecoming grand marshal came to what was then California State College in the fall of 1980 and, except for a couple of summers on the Jersey shore, he has never left.

Bruce Wald ’85, who spent 40 years promoting others as a student and longtime employee, will lead this year’s Homecoming parade, which begins at noon Oct. 14 beginning at the Convocation Center on the California campus and proceeding down Third Street.

Homecoming events

Wald was sports editor of the California TIMES as a student and then served as the school’s sports information director for 14 years before working in the Office of Public Relations/Communications for 21 years. He retired in fall 2020.

“This is a tremendous and certainly unexpected honor,” Wald said. “For many years I never even saw the Homecoming Parade because I’d be at Adamson Stadium three hours before the game to help make sure everything ran smoothly. Then in public relations I would spend a great deal of Homecoming getting quotes from those who attend and participate in Homecoming. Now being in the front of this parade kind of blows me away, and I’m glad I’m not driving!”

Wald received the Alumni Association’s Pavlak/Shutsy Special Service Award in 1999 and for his support he was inducted into the honorary theatre fraternity Alpha Psi Omega in 2004. In 2007 he was inducted into the University’s Athletic Hall of Fame, which he helped create in 1995.

These days, he is biography chairman of the Washington-Greene County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.

“I was very fortunate and am quite grateful of Cal and the many awesome opportunities I have had there,” said Wald, who still lives in California with his wife, Lori. “It does not matter if it is called Cal State, Cal U or PennWest California – this is a school you can come to and will achieve success and have a lot of fun if you just apply yourself.

“What’s most important is that Homecoming Day ends with a football victory over Seton Hill because Vulcan Mania must prevail.”