The Daily Orange

Media Credit: Photo illustration by Carly Piersol

Ensconced in the shadow of the Hall of Languages, there's a bench that always seems to be unoccupied - almost as if it's waiting. Its stone matches the typical gray Syracuse skies, and snow buries its surface each winter.

As its only ornamentation hints, the bench's relationship with SU began in 1912. According to Daily Orange records, Eldon Miller, chairman of the Senior Memorial Committee, proposed on March 8 of that year that a "rather plain" bench be placed on campus to commemorate the senior class. University trustees and students hoped it would be the first of numerous annual gifts seniors left the school. During graduation ceremonies that May, the senior class president, Harry Kallet, and Chancellor James R. Day led the formal dedication of the bench.

No one seems to know when it became the "Kissing Bench" and earned a variety of legends, including its present: a couple's kiss on the bench will ensure marriage.

The legend has also been that people who kiss on it will become engaged before graduation, said Mary O'Brien, reference archivist for Syracuse University Archives. "It's just little different things that people have sort of evolved, you know," O'Brien said. "Someone starts a legend and someone adds on to it, and before you know it you have a whole tradition."
With time's passing, the school relic witnessed nearly a centennial of changes for not only SU, but also the many lives it has encountered and entwined, for better or worse.

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Jon and Helene Cincebeaux will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009. The couple sat on the bench after dates at Varsity Pizza and trips to the library during their junior and senior years at SU.

"It was just so romantic and so special, and in the fall all the leaves were golden all around it. It was just beautiful," said Helene. "You had to kiss, it was part of the fun."

She was a cheerleader at the time, and Jon was a star basketball player.

"He saw me and asked one of the other cheerleaders to fix us up," Helene said. "We're a Syracuse match."


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Stuart and Kathleen Sacks met in marching band. He was a bass drum player and she was a flag girl.

After graduating in 1983 and 1985, respectively, Homecoming brought them back to SU on Nov. 7, 1986. They stopped to sit on the Kissing Bench after walking around campus, giving Stuart the perfect opportunity to propose.

Continued...

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