The Honorees

Alice Crosby Editor 1899-1900

The student press at what is now NIU was born the same year as the school itself, 1899. A 28-year-old student and schoolteacher named Alice Crosby became the first editor of the Northern Illinois.

Alice was born April 27, 1871, in Henry County, Ill., the seventh of eight children. Alice's parents, Thomas Crosby Jr. and Eliza Parker Crosby, had moved to America from Yorkshire, England, in 1854 and 1855, respectively. All of the children attended college and most of them worked as teachers at some point.

After attending school in the Kewanee area, Alice began teaching in the Blinn school district in 1887, for $25 a month. She taught in several school systems until 1898, except for two years spent at Normal University for more teacher training. In 1899, Alice transferred her credit from the "old" Normal and became one of the first 173 students at the new Northern Illinois State Normal School in DeKalb. Along with her newspaper duties, she also was captain of the basketball team representing the Glidden Society (a literary group).

Alice graduated in 1901 with a teacher's certificate. Dr. John W. Cook, the school's president, wrote in a letter of recommendation: "She is in every way a most estimable woman. Her work was done with great fidelity and conscientiousness. I wish to be understood as recommending her unqualifiedly as a lady and as a student and teacher. We esteem it a privilege to have had her with us here."

Alice taught at DeKalb High School for a year before returning to Kewaunee, where she taught until retiring in 1918. She also studied at the University of Chicago, either during summers or by correspondence. In 1921, her coursework was accepted by her alma mater in DeKalb, which that year had been renamed Northern Illinois State Teachers College. Alice received her bachelor's degree in education.

Meanwhile, she owned and operated Pine Hill Farm in Neponset from 1914 until 1918. In 1919 she married Frederick Albert Griese, a German immigrant who operated a grocery and general merchandise store. Albert died in 1927. Alice would remarry that same year, to Kewaunee city treasurer Charles R. Lory. But she became a widow again in 1935. Alice died in Kewanee on Feb. 15, 1958.

- Maria Krull
Sources: "Crosbys of Henry County" by E. C. Kellogg
The Norther, 1900

Back to top

Candace Perkins Bowen Reporter, Editor 1971-1972

When Candace Perkins Bowen was a sixth grader in Des Moines, Iowa, she created a summer school in her basement. Neighborhood kids paid a penny a day to come to class - making Candace hugely popular with parents. At the same time, she was publishing a neighborhood newspaper, tackling the weighty issue of the day - dog leash laws.

Years later, she'd realize those passions for teaching and journalism could make for a pretty significant career.
Candace had attended Iowa State University as a journalism major, rising to managing editor and summer editor in chief at the Iowa State Daily. Marriage and a child changed her immediate priorities, and the young family moved to Wheaton, Ill. Candace discovered that NIU offered a journalism education degree, and a terrific student newspaper in the Northern Star. So, despite the fact she was a wife and mom and had to commute to DeKalb, Candace spent a year and two summer terms at NIU and the Star, where she was a police reporter and later an editor.

But she knew she wanted to be a teacher. A few months after graduating in 1972, Candace was hired to teach journalism and advise the student newspaper at St. Charles High School. She'd stay for 22 successful years. In 1989, she was named Dow Jones National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year.

After teaching for a year in Virginia, Candace jumped to Kent State University in 1995. There, she coordinates the Scholastic Media Program, runs two scholastic press associations and organizes various journalism workshops. She and her husband, John, a retired high school journalism teacher, are active in numerous student press organizations. They're concerned about the climate of "general paranoia" that student journalists face.

"Principals are afraid that if it doesn't directly relate to some kind of state test, then why have it in your curriculum?" she says. "And they say if the student press says something bad about your school, why have it at all? I think that's scary.

Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, calls Candace "a great friend to student journalism and to the First Amendment" who has dedicated most of her life to promoting and defending students' rights.

"It's so important for kids to learn by doing," Candace says, "and you're not learning by doing if people are telling you what to think."

- Jim Killam

Back to top

Phil Kadner Sports Writer, Sports Editor, News Editor, 1972-74

Phil Kadner was working his turf on Chicago's South Side, investigating corruption in the Dixmoor Park District, when he visited the woman who had blown the whistle.

Her name was Alice, and she was a 65-year-old grandmother raising her grandson. Alice was poor and on welfare, an asthmatic with an oxygen tank.

Kadner, a Daily Southtown columnist and a 1974 Northern Star alum, knocked on her door. Alice called for him to come in. To his surprise, there were no locks. He stepped inside and climbed the stairs, finding his source in bed.

"Alice," Kadner scolded, "whaddya doing leaving your door open?"

"If I hadn't seen your bald, little beady head comin' up those stairs," she answered, revealing a concealed gun, "I would've blown your head off."

Her courage - and Kadner's columns on the theft of $1 million from the now-dissolved district - resulted in prison sentences for two former district presidents and a park district police chief.

"It's an amazing thing, this job," Kadner said. "The greatest satisfaction is the people you get to meet, and I don't mean people in high places. I mean the average guy who does extraordinary things, and there are more of them out there than you'd expect."

Kadner, whose column has appeared five days a week since 1985, started at the then-Southtown Economist in 1975. His countless honors since include the 2003 Freedom of the Press Award, a 2003 Chicago Headline Club ethics in journalism award and the 2002 Studs Terkel Award.

Ironically, a life in news began near the end of collegiate career devoted mostly to sports. Kadner briefly served as news editor before taking the police beat.

His mission remains simple: inform, entertain and have fun.

"I have almost unprecedented freedom for a columnist. People might find that hard to believe, but I think I've gotten less interference from my bosses over the years than almost any columnist in town. I write what I see fit," he said. "I'm very lucky to have a job you like going to all the time. I'll probably retire in this job, and I don't see that happening for maybe 40 or 50 more years. They're going to have to ship me out."

Kadner and wife Jeannie live in Orland Park.

-- Mark McGowan

Back to top

Phil Luciano Reporter, Managing Editor 1985-1987

Ask Phil Luciano his secret for success and longevity as a columnist, and he'll talk baseball.

"Greg Maddux is the greatest pitcher of his generation because he moves the ball around," he says. "If you're a one-trick pony and you're always (complaining) about Democrats, or Republicans, people get tired of that. So I keep moving it around."

Phil has written a column for the Peoria Journal Star four times a week for the past 15 years. Even figuring for vacations and holidays, that's close to 3,000 columns. He writes what he wants, sets his own family-friendly schedule and realizes how few journalists get that kind of freedom and impact on a town.

"Once in a while you get to help people," he says. "That's the appeal of a small city, that everything I do can change things - running a city manager or two out of town, or just helping people with their problems. There's a lot more immediate effect."

He's won a long list of awards, including being named the best columnist in Illinois three times by The Associated Press and twice by the Illinois Press Association. So what's the appeal?

"I'm a very average person. I like pro football, I drink beer, I smoke cigars. But I know how to use semicolons. So my tastes are very average. A guy like Mike Royko - what was his genius? He was a regular guy who could write. Those two things normally don't hook up a lot."

Shelley Epstein, a fellow Northern Star alumnus and associate editor at Peoria, adds: "Phil has the primary quality every columnist needs. He's a great reporter. He asks the right questions and doesn't stop asking them until he gets the full answer."

Phil learned those skills at the Northern Star, during one of the most contentious periods in the paper's history. In 1986, Phil was part of the reporting team that helped oust NIU President Clyde Wingfield. This after he'd entered NIU as a business major and quickly realized he was in the wrong place.

"About two years later I wandered into the Northern Star and thought, hey, this is interesting. People kept showing up all the time, even when they didn't have to be there. The paper came out five days a week. That blew me away. I thought, you know, this is a good way to really be a pain in the a--."

- Jim Killam

Back to top

Lori Olszewski Reporter 1976-1977

"I'm not one of those people who does the same thing or stays in the same place for 25 years," Lori Olszewski says.

No kidding.

Check this resume: Grew up on the South Side, the daughter of a Chicago cop. Attended NIU ("It's a great school for people without a lot of money," she says.) During a study-abroad year in college, lived with a countess in Austria and went to school on the campus used as "The Sound of Music" set. Spent 11 years as a reporter in northwest Indiana, for the Hammond Times and the Gary Post-Tribune. Moved to the West Coast in 1988. As a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, did some of the earliest reporting on the AIDS epidemic. Reported on human rights abuses in Romania - "the worst thing I've ever seen in my life" - in stories the United Nations cited when leveling sanctions. Took six months off the newspaper to work on "School Colors," a PBS Frontline documentary about race relations that won the DuPont award. Won a national award for education reporting, for her coverage of the Oakland school district. One of 12 journalists selected for Harvard University's prestigious Nieman Fellowship in 1999-2000. Returned to Chicago in 2001 to become an education writer for the Chicago Tribune. A mile-long list of achievements and awards.

And it all started at the Northern Star, which she says is still influencing her journalistic life. "It's the reason I'm a reporter. It's where I learned how to be a reporter - to interview, to manage a beat. Most important, I learned the values. There's no point in doing this unless you believe in the public service aspect of it. I think there's more than enough entertainment in the world. We bring that watchdog function. And we create a sense of community. I believe that what we do can make the world a better place if we do it right."

That, along with the variety, is why Lori's never thought seriously of a career change.

"For me, it's knowing myself and what keeps me jazzed. A lot of people get into habit trails, where they just keep doing the same thing. What keeps my passion going is, I try to challenge myself and get new experiences every couple of years. Each new thing opens your eyes."

- Jim Killam

Back to top

Jerry Smith Reporter 1961-66

Jerry Smith's life in publishing has touched nearly every corner - newspapers, yearbooks, public relations, radio and, of course, printing - without ever straying from his adopted hometown.

Now he's in the business of giving back - as executive director of the DeKalb County Community Foundation, which grants more than $750,000 annually to local non-profit agencies.

"One of the joys I've had over the years since I got out of school," said Smith, who worked for Castle-PrinTech for three decades and served as its president for the last 16 of those years, "is that I never left DeKalb."

His devotion to the Barb City - interrupted only by a two-year military tour of Germany in 1967 and 1968 - keeps him near his alma mater and the Northern Star, serving on the alumni board and allowing him to meet scores of students who've passed through its pages.

The Dixon native arrived at NIU in 1961, working for the Star "on and off" until his graduation in 1966. During those years, though, the campus journalists were multi-taskers before the word existed.

"The newspaper and the yearbook and the radio station were all housed in the same building, Kishwaukee Hall," said Smith, who also logged time in NIU Sports Information. "My recollection was doing a little work for the Star, then going to the yearbook, the Norther - I was sports editor for the yearbook - and then doing a little for the radio, WNIC."

Smith was hired in 1969 as editor of the daily DeKalb County Journal. It lasted only a couple of years - the Journal was sold - but Smith remained with the company by moving onto the printing side.

"One of Castle's major focuses over the years was doing newspaper-oriented printing - television booklets, that kind of stuff," he said. "I was calling on newspapers for many, many years."

He became Castle's president in 1983, spearheading company growth and national recognition as a leading provider of newspaper inserts and advertising material. His 1999 retirement came when he "really wanted to do something different."

Hall of Fame recognition joins other recent honors, including the president's award from the NIU Foundation and the Donald R. Grubb Journalism Alum of the Year award.

Smith and his wife, Ging, are parents to Eric. All three hold NIU degrees.

- Mark McGowan

Back to top

Northern Star Alumni main page