Memory Lane: Wintry Mix
Snow day snowball fight on the Quad, March 25, 2013 (Image by L. Brian Stauffer)
“One must have a mind of winter,” the poet Wallace Stevens wrote, and at Illinois, that state of mind is unavoidable.
Whether we’re plagued by ice-slicked walks or blessed with balmy, breezy days, winter rears its discontents and pleasures here in equal measure.
Just ask the hundreds of thousands of Illinois alumni who’ve called this campus home.
For many, a U. of I. winter is filled with beautiful memories of walking past Alma Mater, the Altgeld Chimes playing “Let It Snow” as the flakes fall and the streetlights glow.
But for some, an Illinois winter means one thing: misery.
A sample Daily Illini headline from January 1982 says it all: “Hell Freezes Over, U. of I. Stays Open.” Until recent years, the university rarely took a snow day, and students would “trudge through knee-deep snow” and subzero temperatures to get to class, recalls Rita Fox Beck, ’65 FAA—all frozen hands, frosty ears and apple cheeks.
Nevertheless, Illinois alumni fondly remember the fun activities a college-aged winter could bring—both sanctioned and not.
For basketball fans such as Doug Arenberg, ’86 LAS, winter meant “walking to Assembly Hall” to cheer on the team and “sitting in Orange Krush.”
For thousands of others, it was all about playing in the snow, from the friendly confines of the Quad, where mobs of students built giant snowmen, to the hinterlands of Orchard Downs, where Gary Cinnamon, ’67 BUS, challenged land-speed records on the sledding hill.
Meanwhile, over at Presby Hall, Karen Richards, ’78 AHS, and her friends made snow ice cream, “back when we thought snow was safe to eat,” while Guy Allen, ’82 ACES, traversed the campus on his cross-country skis.
While today’s winters may be milder than in decades past, Illinois alumni recall that a U. of I. winter is not to be trifled with. “It was so cold and the air so still that your breath crystallized, and the air sparkled,” says John Matras, ’70 LAS. Left: Huff Gym, 1963; (right) a snow-day keg, 2007. (Images courtesy of Illini Media; UIAA)
Elsewhere, there were snowball fights galore, from the old Illinois Field to Illini Grove and frat park.
The Six-Pack was a particularly popular spot, with “dormies” and nearby frats doing battle, year after year. “It was huge,” says Cari Parker Hogan, ’02 FAA. “Hundreds of people who didn’t know each other, all outside playing together!”
Naturally, some years the fights took a turn. Rich Schroeder, ’77 BUS, survived one that involved not only snowballs but also bottle rockets, while Robert Kauffman, ’82 ACES, recalls leaving another “just before things got out of hand” and his friend got brained by a chunk of ice. (He was OK.)
On the Urbana side of campus, Brian Galley, ’80 ENG, remembers leading PAR against Sigma Nu in some truly glorious scrums that sometimes resulted in citations. “I got fined,” he says, “and I was the Babcock 1 floor president!”
Of course, students also found other, more liquid ways to deal with the cold, especially on the rare occasion when classes were canceled.
Patty Gorman Hahn, ’77 LAS, will never forget the day in January 1977 when there were “no classes, but Pork and the Havana Ducks were playing at KAMS!”
“I remember it well!” says Rebecca Nelson, ’81 ACES. “Too dangerous to walk to class, but not too dangerous to walk to KAMS, Dooley’s and Boni’s!”
Others spent that storm in their dorm rooms, albeit with libations of their own.
“At 8 a.m. we grabbed a sled and went to the liquor store and brought home a keg to the third floor of Bromley Hall,” says Jim Andrews, ’79 MEDIA.
It was “a great day on campus!” recalls Maddie Kelly, ’78 AHS—a great day in a long line of grand Illinois winters.
Still, it was not everyone’s cup of tea.
That day is “the main reason I live in Texas now!” says Mary Artz Chitty, ’82 ACES.
