From Dads to Grads

By Charles McKenzie, June 16, 2023

Two new alumni took meandering paths through labor, love, and learning

(From left) Peter Walz '23 with his son Thomas and Mike Brindisi '23 with his children Parker and Addison.

(Photos submitted)

Mike Brindisi ’23 is a man used to enthralling fans across the country.

As a comedian, he held court on some of the most famous stages in the comedy capital of the world, New York City, where he also landed two cameos on Saturday Night Live.

As a lead singer, he rocked out on the Vans Warped Tour, both his microphone and tongue stretching out toward the audience as they sang his songs back to him. They were mesmerized.

“That’s something really special,” he remembers. “There's nothing like it.”

That is until last month when he stood on stage in a packed arena and locked eyes with an overjoyed 9-year-old girl who was waving just as fast as she could. “That smile. It just feels different when it’s your kid.”

And it feels different when it’s your graduation.

Brindisi and another father, Peter Walz, donned caps and gowns in Glazer Arena in May. They took their time to get across the stage. Decades in fact.

Both men tried attending college after high school but decided it was not for them. Instead, they pursued their passions: Walz for woodworking and sculpting, and Brindisi for comedy and rock music.

Along the way and in no particular order, they each found love, moved to Ithaca, honed their crafts, got married and had children. Life was good.

Brindisi had married into an Ithaca College family. His mother-in-law is retiring IC physical therapy professor Barbara Belyea ‘82, and his brother-in-law is IC assistant baseball coach Cooper Belyea ‘15. He and his wife Katie Belyea Brindisi ‘06 MAT ‘07 have two children, Addison, 9, and Parker, 4.

Walz is married to Ivy Walz '98, MM '02, associate dean in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance. They have one son, Thomas, 9.

New Challenges, New Solutions

Both fathers had careers that were climbing for a while but not exactly soaring, and soon they would start to stall. Both were burdened by expensive overhead. Walz’s woodworking business required a lot of infrastructure and space. Making furniture and fine art pieces out of high-end wood was expensive, and the number of local customers was limited.

Prior to returning to school, Walz had his own woodworking business. (Photo submitted)

Brindisi was having similar regional problems. Comedic venues were hard to come by, and on the rock'n'roll front, touring and recording were costly, both in time and money. He remembers performing one day in a pre-recorded SNL skit and then bartending back in Ithaca that night.

Both men had chased their dreams and found some success, but too often it was fleeting. And the pandemic had taken a toll as well.

“It felt like I was spinning my wheels,” Brindisi said.

“It felt like something had to change,” remembers Walz.

Each felt they needed something extra to push themselves and their careers to the next level. Also, the pandemic took a toll.

“It became too difficult to earn the revenue I needed while leaning on the practical aspects of my work,” said Walz, who was now building and restoring furniture and working at Historic Ithaca as a teacher and craftsman. "I have trouble separating the artistic side of my life from the professional side, so there developed this gap.”

He enjoyed teaching though, and he was relying on photography more. It became an artistic outlet that required less capital than woodworking.

He knew a lot of faculty members at Ithaca College, and many of them were encouraging him to go back to college. “They could really see I was struggling to find a way through the situation I was in.”

College: Take 1 (A Flashback)

Right out of high school, Walz had briefly attended the New England Conservatory and Pennsylvania State University.

“I would say I was enrolled, but I would not say I attended classes. It was not the right fit or the right time in my life to be doing college,” he remembers.

The same was true for Brindisi. He attended college for two years, “but got only a year of credits," he says. He was too driven by his passion to perform, and his undiagnosed ADHD really hindered him. He ultimately dropped out. His father, who was a musician in his own right, was supportive..

Brindisi had professional success before his time at IC, in both comedy and as the lead singer of the band the New York Rock. (Photo submitted)

“He always told me that no matter what I wanted to do in life, I should try my hardest and do my best. That’s all he asked.”

Brindisi did exactly that. He and his band “Mike Brindisi & The New York Rock” recorded three albums between 2009 and 2015 and would ultimately appear on the Howard Stern Show and open across the country for international recording artists like Gavin DeGraw (who briefly attended Ithaca College) and John Popper of Blues Traveler fame.

To promote themselves, the band began recording their own comedic skits, he remembers: “I started to realize I was looking forward to those more than to actually performing on stage.”

In 2004, he appeared on SNL for the first time. He was briefly in a live skit with Amy Poehler, Lindsay Lohan and Usher. In 2010, Brindisi appeared in a pre-recorded SNL skit featuring Scarlett Johansson, Bill Hader and Andy Samberg. He also landed a national Pringles commercial and an appearance on MTV2.

The success was great, but he compares it to being called up to the Major Leagues a few times while toiling away in the minors. The glimpses of fame were tantalizing but rare. Wondering when he should give up on his dreams or change them, he felt like he needed the skills and connections a degree could offer.

By then a father of two in his mid-30s, Brindisi enrolled at Tompkins Cortland Community College. This time around though, college felt different, and not just because he was bringing a baby to class sometimes. He was coping better with his ADHD, and he carried a 3.9 GPA, earning him a prestigious Park Scholarship at IC.

College: Take 2

Despite all of his success in the entertainment industry and at TC3, Brindisi was intimidated by the prospect of attending IC. It felt like a bigger stage, and he worried that his age and his past academic failures would haunt him.

By this time, another 30-something father had also found his way to IC Before Walz started his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art, an IC student worker called him, extremely concerned that he had not yet signed up to live in a residence hall, as required.

Both Brindisi and Walz overcame the challenges of going to school full-time while raising a family. (Photos submitted)

“I told her I was an adult, and there was this long pause. She asked, ‘So you’re like, emancipated?,’ and I said, ‘No, I’m like 35 years old.’”

Then on his first day of class, he walked into the classroom and immediately noticed all of his classmates tense up. One student nervously asked if it was OK for students to eat in his class.

They thought he was the professor.

Eventually, on the first day of his courses, Walz would have some fun during the inevitable get-to-know-your-classmate icebreaker activities.

“I have been in a coma for 20 years, and I just got out,” he would tell them. When they asked what that was like, he would respond, “I wouldn’t know. But here I am.”

Take Your Child to Class Day

Brindisi remembers one day when he had to bring his daughter to school. The session was on the effects of media on children, so his daughter even chimed in with her own insights, the proud father remembers. It was not lost on him that she was much closer to his classmates’ age than he was.

Walz also had to take his son to class at times, and sometimes his coursework meant missing his son’s events, but both fathers said their professors were remarkably flexible.

At first, college was a series of hoops.

“You could get through them,” Walz said, “but not always gracefully.”

“You just had do it though,” Brindisi added.

Their maturity helped them focus and ultimately appreciate the work their professors were doing. As a craftsman, Walz in particular learned to appreciate how carefully crafted the courses were.

“These are thoughtful people who are putting together their courses and syllabi in a really thoughtful way,” he says.

As a comedian, Brindisi thanked Park professors and staff not just for how helpful they were but how funny they could be, especially associate professor of Television and Digital Media Production Peter Johanns, then-interim Dean Jack Powers, and associate deans Rob Gearhart ‘82 MS ‘85 and Bryan Roberts.

“They are always on,” he says. “So sharp.”

Dad Grads

Ultimately, Brindisi and Walz agreed that their age never seemed like an impediment or a source of prejudice from the students or faculty. Walz said the perspectives he learned from both groups will one day inform his own teaching. He has already started on a low-residency Master of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

Brindisi is working local production assistant jobs at Cornell and ESPN+ while looking for work in comedy and sports broadcasting. He has also returned to stand-up comedy, mostly at winery gigs, where he recently opened for Kevin Farley, brother of late SNL comedian Chris Farley. It felt good.

“I was still knocking some of the rust off,” Brindisi said. “But I’m close. I got a lot of great feedback from the audience.”

Although they took unconventional and unique roads to being college graduates, Brindisi and Walz both found themselves in the same place in May of 2023.

(Photos submitted)

But nothing as special as those smiles and proud waves of the jubilant 9-year-old girl and her almost 4-year-old brother at graduation. Another excited 9-year-old in attendance was Walz’s son. “He was very cute and excited. He said, ‘I’m very proud, Dad. I’m going to do it too.’ It was very sweet.”

Ultimately, two fathers felt like rock stars that day. Both want their children to go to college, but only when they’re ready. They hope they’ve demonstrated to their children something about the power of education and about not giving up on their dreams—but knowing when to change course.

It’s an important lesson whether you’re an 18-year-old headed to college, a dad pushing 40 or a proud daughter.

“It was amazing seeing how excited she was,” Brindisi remembers. “Just in that one smile, it made all of the adversity worth it. That smile was the equivalent of 80,000 people singing my song back to me or a roomful of people laughing at my joke. I will never forget it.”