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It's Not Easy Being Green | Alumni Interview | Memory Lane

MEMORY LANE (continued) — November/December 2006

Drama Under the Dome ...

By John Franch

The power of words
In keeping with President James' vision, the Auditorium has also served as a forum for a roster of speakers that reads like a who's who of the 20th century's most famous names. In 1909, three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan addressed a crowd that was described as "perhaps the largest audience in the Auditorium since its dedication."

In 1935, Amelia Earhart offered an Auditorium audience a vivid description of her recent record-breaking solo flight between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Oakland, Calif. In the course of her talk, she also made a plea for equal opportunity. "I look for the day to come when individual aptitude instead of sex will be the criterion for holding any job," Earhart declared.

During the Cold War, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Sen. John F. Kennedy each lectured at the Auditorium. Roosevelt discussed "World Concepts of Communism" and suggested a means of combating communist propaganda. "We must demonstrate that what we have to offer to the world has real value," she said. Speaking to a convocation of University seniors on Jan. 27, 1957, Kennedy urged his listeners to enter politics and apply their "talents to the public solution of the great problems of our times." He also said some good words about the University of Illinois: "The high regard with which your education at the UI is held is evidenced by the intensive competition which rages between those hoping to benefit from it."

Pioneering social worker Jane Addams (1915), attorney Clarence Darrow (1918), poets Robert Frost (1926) and Carl Sandburg, hon '53 (1929), activists Dick Gregory (1967) and Jesse Jackson (1992), and Microsoft's Bill Gates (2004) number among other significant figures who have spoken at the Auditorium.

ëHappy memories' for thousands
But above all, the Auditorium belongs to the students. Generations of University undergraduates have spent a portion of their academic lives under its great copper dome ‚ attending classes, taking exams, participating in debates, listening to MillerComm lectures, putting on stunt shows and, in the end, receiving their diplomas at Commencement ceremonies.

Perhaps fittingly then, the savior of the crumbling Auditorium would be a former student: the late Helene Foellinger '32 LAS, a campus leader in the Class of 1932. She decided to donate $3 million for the renovation of the Auditorium after touring the campus 50 years after she graduated.

The renovated structure was rededicated as Foellinger Auditorium on April 26, 1985. On that day, the building's benefactress offered a possible explanation for her generous donation.

"I have many happy memories of this lovely building when I was a student here," Foellinger declared.

The Auditorium continues to bind students and alumni together.

Pandya, a more recent graduate, said her University experience was made more meaningful "knowing that there were thousands of people who came before me and thousands who will follow, and almost all of us have the Auditorium in common."

Franch '89 COM is a freelance writer based in Champaign and the author of "Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes" (University of Illinois Press, 2006).