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Looking Back...
A look back from the pages of The Normalite
Edited by Roger Cushman
25 Years Ago
July 7, 1983
Larry Handlin of Normal, has attended the
United States Space Camp at the Alabama Space Rocket Center in
Huntsville. Next year the camper will attend Chiddix Jr. High School at
home.
The camper learned various techniques used
by the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) to train its
astronauts. Included were computer lessons, rocket building, zero-gravity
simulations, eating freeze-dried food and trying on a space suit.
A highlight came Friday when the camper and
team members were divided into astronaut crews and mission control
personnel for a simulated countdown and launch of a space shuttle. The
outcome depended on how the team applied principles learned throughout the
week.
A professor at Istanbul University in Turkey
has arrived at Illinois State University for a year of research under a
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Grant.
Dr. Gozen Ertem will work with Dr. Douglas
X. West, chairperson of the Department of Chemistry at ISU. The
researcher will study the potential medicinal value of new compounds. One
ingredient the scientists will study is found in a leading shampoo.
Lisa A. Plummer is one of twenty-five
students at the University of Illinois who has been awarded $1,200 in the
10th annual Avery Brundage Scholarship competition for 1983-84. Miss
Plummer is a graduate student in physical education at the
Urbana-Champaign campus. She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Mark
Plummer, 504 Hovey.
The Brundage Scholarship was established in
1974 by the late Avery Brundage honorary president of the International
Olympic Committee and an Urbana-Champaign University of Illinois Alumnus.
He gave the U of I Foundation an initial gift of $343,000 to create a
scholarship for U of I students who have shown exceptional academic and
athletic ability.
When the call went out that the Illinois
Shakespeare Festival needed friends to come to its rescue, Central
Illinois responded.
Budget trimming at Illinois State
University, home of the festival, told ISF officials that sources of
outside funding would have to be improved and new sources developed. With
that idea in mind, College of Fine Arts Dean Charles Bolen created the
Illinois Shakespeare Society last spring, a group committed to developing
the Illinois Shakespeare Festival as a source of artistic excellence and
cultural pride.
The society was created to provide a
long-term funding support system for the festival and, in only its first
year, raised more than $12,500 for this summer’s festival.
50 Years Ago
July 4, 1958
Dr. Earl A. Reitan, assistant professor of
history at Illinois State Normal university, will open a series of three
faculty lectures Tuesday, July 8, at 7 p.m. in Capen auditorium. He will
discuss “Mysteries of History.” The lecture is open to the general public
without charge. The program will last an hour.
The lecture will be concerned with two
famous murder mysteries of English history - the disappearance and
presumed murder of two young Princes who were imprisoned in a tower during
the reign of Richard the Third; and Mary Stuart and the murder of her
husband. Both incidents, according to Dr. Reitan, have baffled historians
and inspired writers through the years.
The Normal Community high school summer band
will present a concert in Normal on Friday, July 11. The Music Booster
organization of NCHS will sponsor an ice cream social before and during
the concert on the Central school lawn.
The social will start at 6:30 p.m. The
band, under the direction of Duncan Miller, will open its program at 8
p.m. The summer band is composed of NCHS band members, former members and
incoming freshmen.
Proceeds from the ice cream social will help
finance the band’s expenses to the state high school band concert, which
will be held in Springfield during the Illinois State Fair in August.
Normal’s pets turned out en mass with their
youthful owners for the first family event of the Normal Recreation
department. The attendance at the five playgrounds totaled 530 people,
with 309 children taking part. There were 118 pets shown, with entries
ranging from dogs and cats to chipmunks, mice, rabbits, ponies and a lamb.
Glenn playground had the largest entry with
35 pets shown. They also ranked first in attendance. Oakdale had an
entry of 27 pets; Eugene Field, 27 pets; Central, 15 entries; and
Fairview, 14 entries.
75 Years Ago
July 7, 1933
Normal broke into the limelight again
Thursday when the Associated Press dispatches carried the news that Normal
was named on the Roosevelt work program for a post office building.
You will recall that Normal’s post office
building has been included in nearly all the talked of building programs
being put on and takes off about the same day. But possibly “the New
Deal” will prove the exception. With everything to gain rather than lose
we may as well proceed with the idea that the new building will be ready
for dedication when the democratic appointee as postmaster takes over the
office if not before.
Naturally the first thing that springs up in
the minds of the people is “where will be the building be built.”
The one most desirable location should now
be available. It is owned by one of the town’s known democrats so F. D.
should have no trouble in securing the site. In fact this democrat has
the opportunity to leave in Normal, the town where he has lived for nearly
half a century, a monument that will endure.
A Federal building at the corner of Broadway
and North streets set back so as to give landscaping possibilities would
be an everyday reminder of the days when Normal blazed the trail to return
to prosperity—when the carpenters hammers again resounded in our midst and
M. A. Brown stood by and saw his home grounds transformed into the
prettiest corner in the city—assured that it would ever be so. What more
democratic feeling could a democrat possess?
Having gone through the last fiscal year
within its reduced budget, Fairview Sanitorium has advanced one month in
the new fiscal year within the same financial limitations, the officers
expecting to remain on the reduced schedule.
There are 50 beds at this institution north
of Normal, of which 28 are now occupied, all that there is money to
maintain. Patients are being treated for tuberculosis. The institution
began with no strict budgeting system, the board of supervisors approving
bills as they came, sometimes more than $50,000 a year, then to $40,000
and then for the year ending June 1, 1933, the budget was set at $31,000.
Appropriations for the following two years
in normal schools have been cut 20 percent. The bill, which includes the
state financing of normal schools, has been before the general assembly
and now awaits the signature of the governor.
It is not known whether or not the teachers’
salaries in normal schools will be cut again. It is expected that they
will not be lowered because of an amendment added to the bill which stated
that the teachers were to receive the same salary as at present.
The reduction of the budget will cause normal schools
to do without improvements and new equipment on their campuses. |