 "Photo: Photo by Aaron Katzfey")
On the day he helped open his chain’s 407th restaurant, Craig Culver, UW-Oshkosh graduate and president of Culver’s Butterburgers & Frozen Custard, gave a speech at Reeve Union.
As the helmsman of a growing restaurant empire, Culver had plenty of reasons to boast, but anyone expecting him to take a victory lap at his alma mater was in for a few surprise twists.
Last Wednesday he revealed the man within more than he reveled in his success, showcasing a panoply of emotions. Minutes before he spoke to the crowd, he was beaming.
“The campus looks great,” Culver said. “It brings back memories. It always makes me feel younger.”
Fresh off a blistering week of appearances and ribbon-cutting ceremonies that took him from Austin to Denver to Cincinnati and back home again, Culver returned to his old college to follow the advice he would later give the audience, to give back.
Even with his grueling schedule, he ended his speech with a college-like enthusiasm.
“How cool is that?” Culver said. “Coming back to speak where you went as a student?”
Nearly an hour earlier, University Speaker Series Chairman David Rathsack took the podium to introduce Culver, urging the crowd to make some noise as students from the Speaker Series Committee handed out plastic cups and flung yellow neon frisbees into the audience.
Culver led off with a few quick facts—he graduated from Oshkosh with a biology degree and a botany emphasis, his favorite movie was Caddyshack—before testing the microphone to make sure it was working.
“One, two, three,” Culver said. “I graduated from UW-Oshkosh. I can’t count to one, two, three.”
The audience cheered the joke and Culver, who said he enjoys being around people, did just that, peppering his speech with confessions.
“If you found my grades, you wouldn’t be very impressed,” Culver said.
Though he said the campus had not changed much since he graduated in 1973, he quipped that the bars in town had. Some of the divisive political issues from the late 1960s and early 1970s, though, such asthe Vietnam War and anti-war demonstrations that occurred around campus, were not as comical.
“It was a strange time, but a very interesting time,” Culver said.
A major reason why Rathsack thought Culver was a great candidate for the Speaker Series was because a lot of students likely didn’t know Culver was an Oshkosh alumnus.
“There are so many high caliber students who go here,” Rathsack said. “We’re a very underrated institution. We want to show people you can graduate from here and do something special.”
When Culver graduated from Oshkosh he was far from special, and he had a different career trajectory in mind than emulating his parents.
Culver’s father sat him down and asked if he’d like to take over the family restaurant, Farm Kitchen Resort, but Culver told his father, “I don’t want to be you and mom. I don’t want to work seven days a week.”
So his father sold the restaurant, and Culver floundered for a while.
“There weren’t a lot of people willing to hire me,” Culver said.
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