Some of the best ideas are spontaneous.
Thirty-six former Northern Star staff members from the late 1950s and early 1960s, along with their spouses, gathered on the NIU campus last fall (Oct. 7-8) for their first reunion in four decades – some returning to campus for the first time since they graduated.
The idea for the reunion germinated from a small kernel. After a lapse in communications of some four decades, former Star colleague Al Erisman, now living in Bellevue, Wash., and I began corresponding in 2005. During one of several e-mail exchanges, in which we caught up on what had been transpiring in our lives, Al said, almost wistfully, that it would be fun to get together again.
Although still just toying with the idea, Al and I began digging into musty and long unused corners of our memories and into equally old and musty issues of the Northern Star and Norther yearbook. We assembled a list of names of the people we had worked with those many years ago.
One of the things that struck me, as we cobbled together street addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers, was that we had sure scattered to all corners of the nation. Would people be willing to travel – in many cases thousands of miles – just to shoot the breeze for a few hours with people they hadn’t seen in 40 years? The answer from those we could locate was a resounding “Yes.”
As a result, we descended on DeKalb from California, Washington, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as the Chicago area.
The two-day event kicked off with a Friday night welcoming reception at the Best Western hotel near campus. Saturday, we toured the current Northern Star offices – a far cry from the old Star offices we remembered in the old Army barracks that once stood where Anderson Hall is now located – and toured the campus. A reunion dinner Saturday night at the Fargo in Sycamore capped off the weekend. In addition to former classmates, we also were honored by the presence of Ruby Grubb, widow of former journalism department chair Don Grubb; and former faculty members Hallie Hamilton and Don Peterson – plus the memory of faculty members Bob Baker and Roy Campbell.
We also owe a special debt of gratitude to Star adviser Jim Killam and current student staff members who welcomed us to the Star offices, listened to our old yarns and demonstrated their latest editing equipment and skills.
One of the things that struck me during the weekend was the wide variety
of careers and experiences enjoyed by our small band of graduates from a
very small school (then less than 5,000 enrollment) situated among the cornfields
of Northern Illinois. Those who chose careers In newspapering worked on
such prestigious publications as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune,
Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Herald, Detroit Free Press and WGN-TV. In the public
relations field, grads worked for United Airlines, the Chicago Cubs, the
Chicago White Sox, the American Medical Association, the University of Chicago
and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, just to name a few. Also among our ranks
are several authors, a novelist and screenwriter, several teachers and instructors
– and even a county prosecutor.
But the most important part of the weekend was seeing folks we hadn’t
seen in many years, renewing old friendships and reliving fond memories.
Jack Heafey, a retired journalism teacher who lives in the Chicago suburb of Palos Hills, summed everyone’s feeling when he said his time at Northern and on the Star “were the best years of my life.” Another former classmate, George Stoltz of Barrington concurred, adding, “This was a great weekend.”
I think we all feel a little bit like pioneers. The journalism department was founded at Northern in 1958 by Dr. Grubb and among those attending the reunion were the first three students to receive journalism degrees from NIU: Jim Price, Dick Nelson and me. We hope we blazed a trail, although at the time we didn’t realize it. We were learning to be journalists, we were searching for our way to make a small mark in the world and, along the way, we formed some very close and lasting friendships.
Hallie Hamilton probably said it best as he watched us laughing and retelling old “war” stories: “It took them all of five minutes to feel comfortable with each other again and bridge the 40-year gap.”