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: Neat As a (Homecoming) Pin
It couldn’t be simpler. A bit of paper, a bit of plastic, a piece of metal, ribbons in orange and blue. These are some of the raw materials that make up the U of...
Six Generations
This past May, 9,200 students graduated from the U of I, joining a network of nearly 500,000 alumni around the world. One of those graduates, Mariah Jean Guyot, FAA ’21, was already part of...
Quad Day
Quad Day. When you read those words, what comes to mind? A sea of people stretched from Altgeld to the Auditorium, browsing tables and booths? A rock band on an outdoor stage, the Quad’s buildings...
Memory Lane: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones!”
It was tucked away on pg. 12 of the Oct. 22, 1969, issue of The Daily Illini—a brief notice, just above the classified ads, about one of the biggest rock bands in the world....
Memory Lane: Matinee Idol
In the 1950s, two decades after the end of his legendary football career with Illinois and the Chicago Bears (1923–34), Harold “Red” Grange was still an icon for kids all across America. But not...
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...
The Big Picture: Welcoming normalcy
Alma Mater’s welcoming arms are ever open, even as the campus remains in flux due to the corona- virus pandemic. The 10,000-pound statue, created by sculptor Lorado Taft in 1929, is flanked by attendant...
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: Not Your Dad’s Rec Room
It was an underground scene like no other. Young people, by the dozens—over time, by the hundreds and the thousands—stopping by between classes, skipping classes entirely to be there. Flowing in at all times...
