The Wuensche family at a Texas Tech football game, where they were honored for their record holding achievement.
There is an art to mingling that I haven’t even begun to perfect.
Mingling is that act of engaging in casual, informal conversations with different people in social or professional settings. Fast risers as great networkers are skilled minglers.
I read about someone who compared mingling to dancing — stepping into and out of conversations. It’s about finding that delicate balance between not overstaying your welcome and not vanishing like a social Houdini. That is, the Irish exit.
Rather than dancing, you could compare me to the term “balter,” which is to dance gracelessly without particular art or skill.
That’s what I am as a mingler, a balterer.
However, it is amazing the things you learn while mingling.
Last month, we gathered with finalists for the Fort Worth Inc. 2024 Entrepreneur of Excellence program for a boot-fitting cocktail party at Wild Salsa in downtown. Fort Worth Inc. is our sister magazine, published quarterly.
Winners in each category, unveiled at a black-tie gala event on Nov. 21 at the Fort Worth Club, will be featured in the Winter issue of the magazine.
Moreover, each winner will also receive a pair of custom-made boots from Justin Boots. In order to do that, the bootmaker, as skilled a craftsman as you’ll find, has to take precise measurements to accommodate comfortability and support.
That’s what we did at Wild Salsa, while nibbling on the restaurant’s scrumptious fare. Nibbling probably isn’t the right word. More like a hyena dining on Cape buffalo. The ceviche was out of this world. They also have this green salsa that comes with a delicious kick. And it stands to reason that I couldn’t remember the name of the spicy margarita that bit me like a testy water moccasin the next morning.
But sip on adult beverages we did, while mixing — and mingling — with the great innovators and thinkers of this year’s cohort.
And, again, it’s amazing the things you find out while circulating.
Take, for example, Haley Mitchell, an audit senior manager at Fort worth-based Whitley Penn, our presenting sponsor of the Entrepreneur of Excellence Program. She is a CPA with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, the Hub City of the South Plains.
She is also a member of the Wuensche family.
So, you ask, what?
Well, the Wuensches hold the record for most family members to graduate from the same university. That number is 44, all from Texas Tech. It’s etched on a page in the Guinness Book of World Records, presumably right next to, or near, the records for longest time lying on a bed of nails and tallest stack of hats worn at once. (It’s more than 3 feet, by the way. That guy also holds the record for most tennis balls caught blindfolded — 11.)
These are handy things to know when mingling, by the way.
The Guinness entry reads: “The most family members to graduate from the same university is 44 and was achieved by members of the Wuensche family (USA), who graduated from Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, Texas, USA, as verified in July 2022.”
Amber Wuensche Parker, Guinness goes on, read an article on the previous record-holders, which was 40. She posted it to a Facebook group the Wuensche family use to keep in touch.
They began counting.
There are also an additional 14 spouses who earned degrees from Matador U. Moreover, there are a total of 108 Wuensche family members who have attended Texas Tech since 1953.
Francis Wuensche Holden was the first of the Wuensche family, originally from Wilson, located just south of Lubbock, to graduate, in 1953.
In 2022, there were family members enrolled, including three who were freshmen.
Six other Wuensche family members had expressed an interest in attending Texas Tech in the future.
So, now we’re talking about running up the score, as if a good team playing the Dallas Cowboys. Cheap shot, I get it.
Texas Tech graduate Norris Wuensche, Amber Wuensche Parker’s first cousin, said in a video produced by the school: “I didn’t want to go to Vietnam, so I went to Texas Tech. And enjoyed it.”
School officials honoring the family at a football game last year, the 100th year of the university that Fort Worth’s Amon Carter worked so hard to establish in West Texas.
While on the field being recognized, however, they were upstaged by a restless possum, who, undoubtedly emotionally unsettled (what possum isn’t?), we picked that very moment to come out of his hidey-hole, not play dead, and scamper across the field in front of approving fans seeking an underdog that wasn’t the football team.
I can say that. I went there, too. But with that remark, I went looking for another conversation.
