Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Memorial Stadium Drive Book #1 [PAGE 3]

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The GREAT P L A N

0 express the gratitude and pride of the people of Illinois to the soldiers and sailors by way of a suitable memorial. To build an enduring monument, a tribute to the dead, an inspiration to the living, a joy to all the citizens. To educate our alumni to a sense of obligation and responsibility. To center all these hopes, these plans, these thoughts, about a recreational field and stadium. According to proposals, three great towers will rise from the entrance of the stadium above our prairie, so that the Illini horizon will be far extended. The central tower, which may be a campanile, will be a memorial to the men of the University of Illinois who lost their lives in service. Within will be a memorial room with the names of these men. There will be a trophy room and a corridor. The central tower will be a majestic inspirational structure. es. One subordinate tower will be a memorial to the soldiers, and the other to sailors and marin Plates may be placed on these towers for $1.00 each, dedicated to those who lost their lives. A colonnade will lead from the central tower to the court of honor. These columns will be dedicated to the dead and injured at $1,000 each.

The court of honor, between the central tower and the memorial towers and the entrance to the field will be a spacious quadrangle suitable for mass meetings, open air lectures and plays, pageants, and fetes. Three kinds of memorial seats will be comprised in the stadium. Boxes will occupy the front row on either side of the field. Those in the center will be dedicated as memorials for $10,000, and those near either end for $5,000. The seats in the stadium at $100 each will be dedicated to living service men. These will hold the name of the person who dedicated the seat as well as that of him or her to whom it was dedicated. This will carry the privilege of always being able to obtain a seat in the stadium. The stadium will be merely the heart of an ample recreational field of one hundred acres. An artificial ice skating rink within the shadow of the structure will be a big feature. Forty or fifty basketball courts and baseball diamonds, a hundred or more tennis courts, handball courts, soccer and hockey fields, and a track, are some of the provisions.

A MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT JAMES Dr. Edmund J. James, president emeritus, gave his estimate of the importance of the stadium drive in a letter dated March 9. He said: "I do not think that anything has been done for the University which will result in a more solid advantage to the institution than this state-wide campaign for a really great undertaking. "I wish I were physically able to help. I would come back to Illinois and enlist as a private in your great Stadium army. < "It will make the whole state prouder than ever of the institution."

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