“It was a goal, when I was your age, to be this age.”

When he was my age, he was dropped off beneath the covered bridge crossing Claremont by a sympathetic Greyhound bus driver who broke company policy to save Ralph Tomassi the three-mile walk from the bus station. 

He got off the bus he rode from Pennsylvania, from the strict yet supportive home he had at the Milton Hershey School. He stepped off, looked up at Kem Hall, and simply said, “Wow.” This was 41 years ago, and with the exception of one year of graduate school at Bowling Green State University, Tomassi has been at Ashland University. He stands as a living AU archive, remembering individual people and their remarkable traits. Tomassi is a storyteller, remembering and recounting the tales of the men and women who made Ashland, Ashland. 

Now that storyteller is leaving Ashland. Tomassi is retiring from AU on Oct. 10.

In the course of a 40-minute conversation, Tomassi punctuates a story with “That’s the Ashland way. That’s Accent on the Individual” at least a dozen times. What is the Ashland way?

The Ashland way is J. Ray Klingensmith, a religion and seminary professor, walking into the development office where Tomassi worked and requesting a gift receipt for the classes he taught, never drawing a salary. He continued to teach up until he entered hospice.

The Ashland way is Giles Kruger, the former director of admissions, where Tomassi found his first job at AU, working in transfer admissions. Kruger, after retiring, continued attending college fairs on vacation in Myrtle Beach, always carrying with him admissions information for any student he might come across.

The Ashland way is Tim Violand, who lives in Florida and sends football tickets to Tomassi. Violand wants to make Ashland football possible for someone who cannot get to the games. Tomassi finds someone in need, and gets them their tickets. 

The Ashland way is taking a day of vacation during the post-Vietnam financial crisis to work for the groundskeepers and clean up the university. Finances were so tight that Kem and Amstutz were empty and for sale, yet Tomassi did not know anything was amiss.

“We worked side-by-side with faculty and staff and in the process developed a better appreciation for each other and the greater task at hand,” he said. 

The Ashland way is what impresses Tomassi, what makes his time at AU worthwhile. It was never what people were paid to do that impressed him, but the countless instances of people going above and beyond their pay grade. Men like Gene Haberman, a retired vice president of development who, in secret, attempted to give back a piece of his salary to keep a single mother employed, were the men who impressed Tomassi the most.

This Ashland way is the path back on track, according to Tomassi. 

“This financial downturn is not new,” he said. “The way we got back is we decided to go over and above what we were expected to do.”

He admits to being disappointed in the past few years at the University, and laments the loss of loyal employees. 

“We have some awfully talented newcomers, but the lack of continuity has certainly had an impact on our appreciation of tradition and, in some instances, level of performance,” he said.

After 41 years of studying and working at Ashland University, Tomassi will retire in a few weeks, ending his labor of love proud of his university, proud of his legacy, and proud to have never hated Sunday nights. 

“I’ve never really worked here…I found something I love to do,” he said.

From the first time he set foot on campus, Tomassi loved AU. As a second baseman on the baseball team, as the director of transfer admissions, as the Phi Delta Theta adviser, as the associate vice president of development and, as a proud alum, Tomassi worked to improve AU, to build and maintain the Ashland way. He still stops every tour he sees, telling students they will always have a friend in Ralph Tomassi, and he means it every time.

That, he says, is the Ashland way.