Lost wallet found in Benson after 33 years

By Liz O'Brien

Tom Eichenberg graduated from Santa Clara in 1975, but it seems that pieces of his time at the university have been following him around ever since.

Like his wallet, for instance.

Eichenberg, a resident of Oak Grove, received a call in mid-December from the university's alumni office informing him that they'd found something he lost 33 years ago.

"That definitely peaked my interest," said Eichenberg, who recalled that the university didn't say exactly what they'd found, only that it was his, and that it was from his senior year at Santa Clara.

Eichenberg returned the call and learned that his wallet -- the one he carried in 1975 -- had been slowly aging behind a wall in Benson Memorial Center. While remodeling the parlors, a contractor came across the wallet resting, undisturbed for the past 33 years, in a dusty air vent.

Eichenberg made the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Santa Clara the following week to pick up his long-estranged wallet. Once he entered the alumni office and opened the cracked brown leather, he took another trip, this time down memory lane, accompanied by the odds and ends in his old wallet.

"It really lets you know how much time has passed," Eichenberg said.

In addition to his driver's license from the mid-1970s, the wallet held his draft card and both his and his father's credit cards.

Childhood photos of his nieces and nephews, who graduated from college in the early '90s, lay nestled next to a five-cent postage stamp and an old BART ticket. The wallet's contents weren't just a reminder of how he had changed since 1975, but how much the world has changed in just 33 years.

"There were things in my wallet -- my social security card -- that you'd never put in your wallet today," he said. Eichenberg laughed as he recalled seeing his old credit card from Bank of America, which he said doesn't even exist any more.

"It was the credit card that existed before Visa. That really brought me back," he said.

Though 33 years is a long time to be without a missing wallet, Eichenberg noted that it wasn't quite long enough to make the wallet an artifact, but certainly long enough to notice many changes in his alma mater.

"I definitely think when I was there, it was very much a family university," he said. His father graduated from Santa Clara in 1941, and his brother did the same in 1965. Eichenberg recalled that often many students were far from the first in their families to attend the university, and that most students were from California.

"Other than some kids from Hawaii or New York or whatever, I don't think the demographics were what they are today," he said.

For all that he does remember about Santa Clara in the '70s, the day Eichenberg lost the wallet had escaped his memory.

"Before I called the university I had no idea -- I didn't even remember losing my wallet," he said. "But when I told my brother, he remembered. He said, 'It was a Friday afternoon, we were getting ready to go out and hit the bars, but you had to cancel your credit card and get a new ID instead.' Of course," he added, chuckling, "I really enjoyed my Jesuit education, so there's probably a lot I don't remember."

Though Eichenberg had returned to campus several times in the '90s for graduations of his nieces and nephews since that fateful quarter when he lost his wallet, he said that he has not been the most faithful alumnus.

"I've definitely been distant from the university," he said, attributing most of that distance to the frequent traveling he does for work.

Another factor distancing Eichenberg from the university was his time in the army. He attended Santa Clara through an ROTC scholarship, and after earning his master's in applied economics, he spent seven years in the army.

Eichenberg met his wife while stationed in Hawaii, and they later moved to the Sacramento area. Though he is now retired from the armed forces, Eichenberg did serve in Iraq from June 2005 to May 2006, where Santa Clara yet again popped up unexpectedly. Eichenberg recalled seeing another soldier coming from the gym wearing a Santa Clara T-shirt, and the two struck up a conversation.

"When you say you're from Santa Clara to someone else that's from Santa Clara, well, there's not that many of us out there," he said. "Santa Clara's very much like a big extended family."

A family, of course, that returns a missing wallet -- even 33 years after it's been lost.

Contact Liz O'Brien at (408) 554-4546 or eobrien@scu.edu.