57 Woodland
In the fall of 1993, one burning question kept Brad Willson ’94, Joe Effinger ’94, Dennis Gilbert ’93, Jeremy Kelley, Aaron Miller ’93 and Kevin Wisniewski ’94 up at night. I-70, Exit 149A, Richmond, Indiana — is it really the most famous exit in Indiana?
It was an advertisement that plagued the Midwest in the ’90s, but no household was quite as bothered by it as the six young men at 57 Woodland Ave., a big yellow house at the corner of Alberta with a coveted second-story porch.
“We heard this commercial 15,000 times,” Miller said.
One night they’d had enough. Miller came home late to his housemates watching Saturday Night Live. As he sat down to catch the last few comedy sketches in hopes of sharing a laugh with his friends, Miller instead heard a familiar voice.
The Tom Raper RV Park and Showroom ad had struck again.
The young men rolled their eyes as the commercial infringed on their shared TV time until someone spoke up:
“Tom seems to want us to go, so why don’t we go?”
A spontaneous road trip suddenly felt like the perfect way to spend what was originally looking like a chill Saturday night in.
When SNL wrapped after midnight, the roommates piled into Miller’s burgundy 1986 Honda Accord and headed west. They were tight for space, but it wasn’t the most riders the car had seen — they’d fit nine before.
The road trip from campus to Richmond takes just under an hour, but around the halfway mark, the young men began to question their intentions.
“We’d kinda forgotten why this seemed like a good idea,” Miller said.
Their burning desire to see what the ad describes as the place “where the roses don’t fade” kept them focused on the mission ahead.
As they took Exit 149A, they pulled over and tried to “find the roses,” but Miller and Wisniewski weren’t convinced they saw any. Then again, it was after 1 a.m., so it was too dark to tell.
They got to their final destination: Tom Raper’s iconic RV park from the television ads. They fulfilled their late-night prophecy. But now what was there to do?
“We didn’t really know what to do so we took a picture with the sign,” Miller said. “It’s the middle of the night so there’s nothing else to do.”
To which Wisniewski replied, “Well, there is checking out RVs.”
After roaming around the RV park and seeing everything they’d only ever seen through their TV screens, the young men had accomplished their spontaneous late-night excursion. Because they listened to Tom, they began understanding the magic located along I-70, Exit 149A, where the roses may or may not fade.
“We had a great little road trip out to the RV park, and I don’t think we’ve ever been back,” Wisniewski said. “You can call it a pilgrimage.”
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Illustration by Kevin Johnson
A version of this article appears in print in the Summer 2025 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 52. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE