Baptism by fire
The train from Champaign lumbered through the black Illinois night, just past the witching hour, en route to a city on fire. Nineteen-year-old Dillon Brown, Class of 1875, sat in his seat, smelling the...
Memory Lane: Field Day
It’s a Saturday in October, about 100 years ago. The trees are starting to change, there’s a chill in the air, and the stands at Illinois Field (1891–1986)—all wooden bleachers—are starting to fill, as...
Memory Lane: It’s Showtime!
At Illinois, going to a movie theater in town was once nearly as common as going to class. Chris Alix, ’88 RNG, fondly remembers the high spirits at a midnight showing of Blue Velvet...
Co-Education
In her later years, Frances Potter Reynolds, Class of 1874, recalled the day in 1870 when the Illinois Industrial University’s Board of Trustees voted to admit women as students. Unlike the 14 other “young...
Ingenious: The magician of BCL
When Heinz von Foerster was a child in Vienna, his grandmother hosted artists, philosophers and politicians, and von Foerster soaked it all in. He brought that same multidisciplinary spirit to Illinois in 1949 as...
Memory Lane: Mother and Child Reunion
Jeff Wiener, ’99 BUS, made sure that Moms Weekends were memorable for his own mom. Like the year she saw him cackle and wear a pointy black hat onstage as the Wicked Witch of...
Memory Lane: The Stunt Show
On a Homecoming weekend in the mid-1960s, Bill Lewke, ’66 BUS, gamely played an elephant before thousands of amused parents, students and alumni in Assembly Hall. His fraternity and a sorority staged a funny...
Winning Ways
On a clear day you can see forever. And where better than from the sidelines of Memorial Stadium on a crisp autumn afternoon, as Orange and Blue players swarm the field and the fans pulse...
Ingenious: The best
When organizers of the Armour Institute in Chicago were seeking “the best man” to head their new library in 1893, they sought the advice of librarian Melvil Dewey, who created the Dewey Decimal Classification...
Ingenious: The nation’s oldest
In October 1969, students protesting the Vietnam War charged toward the Morrow Plots located in the heart of the UI campus. In a bit of guerilla theater, they planned to run through the historic...
