Each year on April 15, something happens at Carroll College that is easy to miss if you’re looking for bright lights, a stage or a crowded event.
There isn’t one.
Downsy Day doesn’t gather in a single place. It moves. It shows up in a hallway conversation, a quick note left on a desk, a moment of eye contact that might otherwise have passed without notice. It is, in its way, a kind of quiet choreography spread across campus and far beyond it. It’s an accumulation of small choices that together say something larger about who we are.
For those who knew John “Downsy” Downs, this feels exactly right.
John Downs, a beloved psychology professor at Carroll College who passed away in 2002, is remembered each April 15 on Downsy Day by inspiring acts of kindness.
Downsy is remembered not just as a professor, but as someone who had a particular way of being with people. Students often talk about feeling seen by him, sometimes in ways they didn’t fully understand until years later. There was nothing performative about it. He paid attention. He made room. He connected.
After his passing in 2002, the Carroll community began honoring his birthday in the most fitting way possible. Not by trying to replicate him, but by practicing the thing he gave so freely, everyday kindness.
More than twenty years later, that instinct still has a hold on Carroll’s heart. In episode one of the new podcast Lives of the Carroll Saints, Director of Student Engagement, Pat Harris describes John’s impact on the way he shows up to work and why he doesn’t mind getting emotional about how much he loves Carroll College.
“It's funny because John Downs… one of the people who had a big effect on me, often would be in class or at a community gathering. And when he would talk, he would get emotional and cry a little bit. And so, anytime I get emotional and cry a little bit, I always think, “I'm doing okay, John Downs did this and I really respect him.” and so I've always thought that, with losing John to cancer early, I wanted to be somebody who just really took on who he was. And I know I can never be a John Downs, but I definitely… I wanted to be someone who was like him. And made a difference.”
Downsy Day has become less of an event and more of a shared understanding. It is a reminder that the character of a place is not built in our biggest moments, but in the little ways we impact one another. It asks, quietly, what it would look like to move through a single day with a little more awareness of the people around us.
For John’s family, that question still resonates.
His widow, Barbara, and his daughter, Lisa, have watched this tradition continue with a kind of gratitude that feels both personal and communal.
“The Downs family continues to be grateful to the Carroll community for remembering and honoring John Downs on his birthday,” Lisa shared recently. “Honoring him through random acts of kindness is the most authentic way to honor the way he lived.”
This year, the Downs family has a few simple practices that they are attempting as a starting point for their own celebrations.
These are things John Downs did often and the way he lived his life.
- Take a moment to look people in the eye, especially those whose work often goes unnoticed, those who prepare your food or care for the spaces you use. Offer a genuine thank you so they know they are seen.
- Write a short note to a family member or friend and share one thing you are grateful for about them. Mail a letter or write a post-it note. Handwritten is best.
- Give an hour of your time to help someone, a neighbor, coworker, or fellow student, in whatever way is needed. (gardening, fixing something, tutoring, cleaning…)
- Choose to forgive.
These are not grand gestures. They are the kinds of decisions that shape a life over time. They are also the kinds of decisions that, taken together, begin to define a community.
What is remarkable about Downsy Day is not any single act, but the way those acts accumulate. A thank you changes the tenor of a conversation. A note strengthens a relationship. A small moment of care interrupts what might otherwise be an ordinary or difficult day. The impact is rarely visible all at once, but it’s real.
For the Advancement in St. Al’s, this day also serves as a useful reminder. Generosity, in its truest sense, does not begin with a gift. It begins with attention. With care. With a recognition of one another’s humanity.
That is the foundation. Everything else builds from there.
On Downsy Day, small opportunities for kindness are never far away. A conversation. A thank you. A moment of patience.
Choose it.
And in doing so, you participate in something that has outlived one man’s time on campus, but continues to carry his heart, quietly, steadily, and with a kind of grace that feels, unmistakably Downsy.
