Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Memorial Stadium Drive Book #2 [PAGE 4]

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Yesterday, when we had the color rush, as exciting as an Indian fight, and almost as dangerous. Yesterday, when Dr. Peabody, speaking in chapel, proudly announced the dedication of the new Military Hall, at a cost of $15,000, "the fittest building for its purpose in the northwest, and, so far as I have seen, in this country/' and added, when the Natural History Building was finished, "if we can have only one more building, it's as much as the University can ever hope to attain!" Yesterday, when you got so excited to find the College of Engineering leaping in growth—adding 250 students to the enrollment! Yesterday, when the main social feature at the University was the annual declamation contest between Adelphic and Philomathean, and when the only real student dance of the year was the Senior Ball, held at the old Walker Opera House, when they put a false floor over the dress circle seats and everybody danced on a level with the stage. Yesterday, when Dr. Burrill took a deep breath and asked the state legislature for $551,000 to build a library, an engineering hall, and a museum, and was delighted when he got $295,700, for it was twice as much as the University had received ever before. Yesterday, when Dr. Burrill complained t h a t there were too few women at the University; when he demanded an auditorium, an agricultural building, a law building, an observatory; when Dr. Draper became our first president and the registration began to leap into the thousands, and the co-ed became an institution. Yesterday, when the names of David Kinley, T. A. Clark, H. J. Barton, A. H. Daniels, L. P. Breckenridge, E. B. Greene, J. M. White, and D. K. Dodge were new names . . . .

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AND TODAY IT SWARMS W I T H VIGOROUS YOUTH

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EE them going to their eight-o'clocks. From a radius of more than a mile around the campus the streets swarm with them. The campus walks are crowded. There is haste; there is laughter; there is life. It is autumn, and the streets are thick with golden maple leaves. (Do you remember the maple leaves in the fall?) The last bell has rung, and the tardy ones are making a last running spurt—and now the campus is almost deserted. Pause under an open window in Uni Hall. Glance in; some of them may see you and giggle, but most of them are absorbed. They are hearing that Robert Louis Stevenson had a brave and beautiful soul; this is known as the study of literature, Stroll over to the Engineering building. Pause outside an open door. How absorbed they are, these youths from farm and suburb and slum! With pencil and paper they are learning to build bridges and homes and skyscrapers, t h a t life may be smoother and better for the rest of us. And in the Natural History building, in Lincoln Hall, in the Ag building and the Commerce building, boys and girls—yesterday's children and tomorrow's men and women—are studying the past that they may be the maker's of the future. Eleven thousand of them . . . . filling 51 buildings . . . . covering 1229 acres of ground / . . .

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GEORGE R. L. (Kink) F R E D E R I C K S O N , '94 S A N D E R S , '14 "The Memorial Stadium "The Stadium is Illinois' and Recreation Field at only? method of giving her Illinois is a wonderful students their just physical undertaking. The Sta- education, to retain her dium must be built and athletic supremacy and to should be the largest commemorate her heroes in and best in the world." the Great War."

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H. H. McCURDY "Building the Stadium is the greatest thing we can do to immortalize in the minds of the students, the alumni, and the people of the State, the memory of the men who made the supreme sacrifice."

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A L F R E D S M A R T , '17 "The greatest incentive for upholding past honors and creating new ones will be the erection of that which will become a byword in collegiate athletics, the Illinois Memorial Stadium."

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ET.MO P. H O I I M A N , '16 "We're all very ready to admit that Illinois has the best teams in the Conference,if not in the country. Why not give these best teams the best Stadium?"

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"Yesterday's children and tomorrow's men and women"