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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.

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