Category Archives: Alumni

Research files: From GAW to Tommy

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Any time a student or any member of the community attends an IWU sporting event a constant image and cheerful presence is the IWU mascot of Tommy Titan. Tommy Titan is undoubtedly one of the important symbols of Illinois Wesleyan University, but when did Tommy become the official IWU mascot?

The IWU Titan name was first mentioned in October 27,1927 issue of the Argus. The IWU football team previously had no specific name and they were the first to acquire the nickname Titans. Soon all IWU sports teams chose to use the name of the Titans, but the first name of Tommy did not appear until much later and we can thank a man named Lee Short!

Tommy being pulled onto the field in a chariot.

Click on the image to go to the Argus issue containing Tommy’s debut!

Class of 1944 alumnus Lee Short earned the credit of creating the gladiator-like image of our beloved mascot and giving him the first name of Tommy in 1951.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Tommy’s appearance evolved even more, but you can read the story about Tommy’s origins in the November 2, 2007 Argus. The first image we have of Tommy is at this football game against ISU on September 25, 1965. The student portraying him is Steve Reeser, Class of 1969.

Long before Tommy Titan, the IWU colors of green and white were documented as our school colors in an 1898 report by the Daily Pantagraph. It is interesting to think that before adopting the name of the Titans the sports teams of the past (pre-1927) simply referred to themselves as the GAW (for Green and White) and continued to do so for some time until the Titan name decidedly became the commonplace term.

Be sure to look at the Argus issues linked in this post and all the other resources for IWU history! And check out our campus traditions page for pep songs and more. Lee Short has a long and interesting association with IWU, and he contributed an oral history recording in 2010 that is also available online.

Research files: Famous Commencement quote

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President Myers at the 1993 Commencement

President Minor Myers, jr., 1993 Commencement

“Go forth and do well, but even more go forth and do good.” — noted in the 1993 Commencement files (RG 6-1/2)

People often remember the parting advice former President Minor Myers, jr. made at Commencement each year, and we were recently asked to find out when he first said it and if it had any other origin.

President Myers didn’t read from complete scripts during speeches; the above quote was in the brief, typed outline of his remarks for Commencement 1993.

But how did he come to develop this phrase? We followed the trail back to his first campus speech and found two instances that illuminate a possibility.

An earlier notation we found comes close to the eventual phrase: “We shall both prosper only as we serve well.” This note was penciled in on an “Outline for Talk at Writers [sic] Conference” dated March 28, 1990 (RG 2-12/3/1: Speech Outlines, July 1989-March 2002, folder 3 of 3).

The typed notes directly above this line show an origin: “Anglican / read of Wesley, went to his house, found his bust / example of unremitting effort to do good. / and unending joy in doing it. / that is the satisfaction of what we are doing, // the frustrations, / but the reward is the sense we are contributing to the maintenance of that which is good by unending efforts to make it better.”

And going further back, a note on Myers’ 1989 Inaugural Address also refers to John Wesley’s “devotion to doing good,” so perhaps we can say that the founder of Methodism itself is the inspiration for the quote that Myers crafted over the next four years and made his own!

What does the archives keep?

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Someone recently asked me to create a source that would make it easy for people to know what the archives considers…well…archival! The image linked below leads to a slide show designed to help clarify how YOU can help me save your history for future generations.

Slide2

This slide lists some of our major collecting points, but if you have questions feel free to ask!

Let me know if you have questions about anything in this overview!

New collection of old letters

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Bird Correspondence CollectionDuring the summer of 2013 an Archives Student Assistant processed a donation of letters. Over 900 handwritten letters between IWU alumna Florence Ralph (’30) and Marion T. Bird are contained in this collection. The letters cover a wide range of topics from faith to politics, school activities, local events, family and more — all the details young people might share during a long courtship in a tumultuous time in American history.

The donation of the handwritten documents came from the descendents of Florence and Marion and also included scanned pdfs of all the letters that family member P. L. Embley created. Researchers are welcome to use the letters in the archives or in the online collection we created with the scanned images. Mrs. Embley also selected and scanned photographs from the family albums held by the children and grandchildren of Florence and Marion Bird.

We appreciate the efforts the family has gone through to make these documents available to researchers everywhere. The letters in this collection have not been transcribed at this time. Readers are welcome to contribute transcriptions they create or additional subject headings they identify to archives@iwu.edu.

More Pembroke windows (sort of)

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pembroke lamp2_croppedTerry Garbe of Touch of Glass recently created a lampshade that is now available for use — or just admiring up close — in Tate Archives & Special Collections’ Reading Room.

Mr. Garbe and his staff were responsible for the restoration of the Pembroke Windows that accent the library’s 4th floor rotunda. Pieces left over from that restoration still remain, but pembroke lamponly enough for one complete shade containing many of the windows’ motifs were available.

Stop by, have a seat, enjoy the new shade and the view; and you can also ask about the other treasures hidden in Tate Archives & Special Collections!

Yet another time capsule building identified!

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While looking into the history of the Alice Millar Center for the Fine Arts last week, I came across a photo taken in 1973 on the day the date stone was placed in what we now call the Joyce Eichhorn Ames School of Art Building. If anyone reading this has details on what might be in it, contact the archives because all we have is a photo!

With all that have been previously reported, we now can confirm a total of eleven campus buildings with time capsules:
Hedding Hall (1870; time capsule removed in 1966)
Science Building (1910)
Memorial Gymnasium (1921)
Buck Memorial Library (1922)
Memorial Center (1946 and 1947 dedications and 1965 addition)
Shaw Hall (1954)
Dolan Hall (1955)
Sheean Library (1967; time capsule removed in 2011)
Mark Evans Observatory (1969)
Joyce Eichhorn Ames School of Art Building (1973)
State Farm Hall (2013)

New Access to Old Sources

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IWU history texts are now available in the Internet Archive! Through our membership in the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) we were able to digitize the seven published histories on Illinois Wesleyan this semester. CARLI funded the scanning and they are now available online through an agreement with The Internet Archive, a non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library.

internetarchiveThe Internet Archive hosts this and any other content we choose to add in the future with a customized homepage available at http://archive.org/details/illinoiswesleyanuniversity, but of course all of the texts are fully searchable and discoverable through any search engine.

Tips and links for researching these and other historical IWU sources are available at http://libguides.iwu.edu/IWUHistory.

New acquisitions in the sciences

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A “herbarium,” a plant specimen book, was recently discovered in a lab in CNS. This book has significance for IWU’s history: it was compiled by Alfred O. Coffin, the second African-American to graduate from IWU. Coffin received an M.A. in 1888 and a PhD. in 1889 from IWU’s non-resident degree program. He was first African-American in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D in Biology.

Alfred O. Coffin, Ph.D., 1889

Alfred O. Coffin, Ph.D., 1889

A. O. Coffin signature

 

 

Plant speciman page

 

 

 

 

 

 

A text that belonged to former Biology faculty member (1958-1978) William M. Darlington was also donated this winter. It bears an inscription dated 1898 and contains notations on plant varieties.

These two volumes and other material related to the sciences are now on display in The Ames Library. The exhibits, titled “The Sciences in Special Collections” will remain in two exhibit cases on the entry level until the end of January. After that, as is the case with all archives and special collections holdings, they will be available for use in Tate Archives & Special Collections on the library’s 4th floor.

 

Another time capsule

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In a previous post, a list of buildings containing time capsules was provided. While looking into a request for information about the Buck family today, we came across a copy of the local newspaper, The Pantagraph, dated June 15, 1922 that described the Buck Memorial Library cornerstone laying in detail. A line reading “After the contents of the box contained in the cornerstone were read by the president of the board of trustees, benediction was pronounced by Bishop Hartzell.”

Sadly, the “Laying of the Corner-stone” program held in the archives only mentions that a “Reading of Contents in Box” was planned; no separate listing of the contents is available and no photographs of the dedication are in our files.

But with the recent creation of a time capsule for the nearly complete “New North” classroom building, we now have a total of ten campus buildings with confirmed time capsules:
Hedding Hall (1870)
Science Building (1910)
Memorial Gymnasium (1921)
Buck Memorial Library (1922)
Shaw Hall (1954)
Dolan Hall (1955)
Memorial Center (1946 and 1947 dedications and 1965 addition)
Sheean Library (1967)
Mark Evans Observatory (1969)
“New North” (2013)

New research source available online

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The Bulletin of Illinois Wesleyan University was published to convey news and images of the campus to alumni, faculty, staff, students and prospective students. We’ve recently concluded a preservation and access project on all available issues. The paper in many of the early issues was brittle and crumbling, so we had them professionally digitized to make them searchable online; preservation microfilm copies were also made.

This collection spans the years 1902-1986 and represents the entire holdings of the University Archives. If you have issues not shown in the collection, please contact us at archives@iwu.edu to discuss a loan or donation so we may secure copies for our historical record.