Every New Beginning Starts With Some Other Beginning's End

On the morning of March 15, 2008, I awoke early and prepared to travel to Chicago with my husband and son for a surprise party for my brother Mike's 40th birthday. I took a moment to glance at the Journal Star and caught the notice that seats from the Field House were going on sale at 8:30 that very morning. I had been vaguely aware that the University was planning to sell parts of the Field House to the fans who had made pilgramages to the great site through the years. But that morning--how perfect! My brother Mike had grown up as a boy who lived and died by the Bradley Braves.

I dashed over in the rain to the Field House and the custodian of the myth, Ken Goldin, was good enough to let me have four 3-foot sections of the sacred red bleachers. I wanted one for Mike, one for my dad, Ed, who played for Bradley from 1950-54, and was a starting player on their Final Four 1954 team, one for my husband, John, who was the JV's most valuable player and leading scorer and rebounder in 1973, and one for a friend of ours.

As we presented Mike's section to him that evening, he knew immediately what it was, though some of the guests looked puzzled. Mike reminisced about the famous Bradley-Cincinnati game and its seven overtimes. With each overtime, Mike and his friends were able to move closer and closer to the floor as, unbelievably, practical-minded Midwesterns who had to go to work the next day left with the players soldiering on. The kind of devotion to the Braves that my brother felt is well described in an article from the Sports Illustrated Vault by former Peoria Rick Telander. PJS sports editor, Kirk Wessler mentions this article in his Captain's Blog.

At my brother's party, we talked about the Field House. Like many of the buildings on Maplewood where we grew up, the Field House holds special significance for us. My sister Theresa remembered what a comforting feeling it was when an event let out late at night (or at least after our bedtimes). As we were snuggled under the covers or maybe peeking out the window, hearing the bustle and murmur of the crowd as people walked to their cars made us somehow feel warm and safe inside our house.

In posts on this blog, I wrote about what it was like growing up catty corner from the Field House, the 1975 Louisville-Bradley game, the Campus Carnival, being a Homecoming flower girl, and my husband's career on the hard wood. There's also a post on how in 1950 my dad decided to attend Bradley and play basketball instead of another school in part due to a visit from some Bradley boosters. Well, seeing the Field House sealed the deal for dad. He couldn't wait to play there. The place was cool then, and it's cool now. Given the monsterous, modern arenas that many teams now play in, the Field House must seem hopelessly outdated. And in some ways it is. But it has a charm, a history, and a much commented upon smell about it that I wish could somehow be incorporated into the new building.

Universities have many different constituencies: faculty, alumni, staff, community members. But undoubtably the most important constituency is the students. They are their raison d'etre. At one of the universities I attended, I felt the alumni were rather oppressive. They mobbed the campus on football weekends, which they seemed to think revolved more around them than the students. It was kind of a turnoff and I remember thinking, shouldn't these people have more important things to do than get giddy over a college game? Now as an alum myself, I understand how fun it is to occasionally get excited by games that in the scheme of things aren't that important. Universities can't really tell alumni to lighten up and probably don't want to; the institutions increasingly rely on them for financial contributions. At places with large, powerful, vociferous alumni bases, like Notre Dame and Indiana University, the alums sometimes seem to be calling the shots when it comes to things like firing and hiring coaches.

Hopefully at Bradley, priorities are determined and decisions are driven by what is best for the students. Given that criteria, I can accept and maybe even agree with the decision to knock down the Field House. It will be nice for the players to have a better place to train, practice, and play. I do think it's important to respect and incorporate the past into the University, while moving on to the future.

In my family, Bradley has had the biggest impact on my dad. He came to the University when he was 18 and essentially never left. He got his masters in counseling and then worked as Dean of Men and the Exective Director of Housing, Residential Life, and Student Judicial System his entire career. Today, at 76, he is an emeritus member and continues to teach the Freshmen Orientation class. It is difficult to overstate how much a part of his life Bradley has been. Dad wrote the paragraphs below and I think they are a good way to summarize what is most important about Bradley--and why we will miss the Field House so much--and to end this post and blog.

The Bradley Spirit

Bradley University believes in the development of the human spirit. The process by which the human spirit is developed is through the relationships we have with one another, ourselves, and with God. These relationships are the essence of our identity. It is through communion with one another that we know who we are. The primary cause of unhappiness is not the absence of things or events but the absence of caring relationships.

Therefore, we at Bradley University make one basic statement: we believe in each other. It is through the values we teach at our University that we share this belief. It is through our actions that we exemplify this belief. It is these values that provide us with the foundation for the art of living and loving.

My husband John with his piece of the Robertson Memorial Field House

A Brief and Somewhat Silly Interlude Before We Get to the Final Post

Okay, this doesn't have anything to do with the Field House except that the above tree, which I first wrote about here, was cut down to make way for Bradley's massive expansion program that is also gobbling up the Field House.

There was some effort to save the above copper beech. Now, not only is its trunk being preserved but also guarded; as you can see, it has a chain link fence around it. Am I the only one who finds this flabbergasting?

What I want to know is why? Who is going to such lengths to preserve the trunk of this tree (hauling it to Meinen Field, putting it up on wood blocks, surrounding it with a fence) and what are they going to do with it?

If you know, please tell me. Please! Please! Please!

Once More, With Feeling

They had a funeral of sorts for the old Field House this afternoon.

There were speeches from the Bradley play-by-play announcer, Dave Snell, President Joanne Glasser, and ticket manager Corky Robertson, the son of A.J. Robertson for whom the Field House was named. Their voices bounced off the steel beams as the Field House lights buzzed noisily.

Dave reminded us that the Field House was not just special to the University, but special to the community, special to the neighborhood, and special to the nation. Those of us who've had Field House experiences could easily recall memories summoned by President Glasser's exhortation that if you listened very carefully you could hear the shoes squeaking, the thud of the ball to the floor, the roar of the crowd as it came to its feet as one, the band strike up the Bradley fight song. And besides her majestic words, you have to love a woman who quotes the Wizard of Oz and Dr. Seuss in one speech. How appropriate is, "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

The ever gracious and kind Corky Robertson spoke last. Remembering the gifts of his father, he cited sportsmanship, efforts, fairness, and in his interview with Kirk Wessler, the ability to understand people. This can't be an easy time for him and his family, but as Corky said, "Everything has its time. Everything has its place." Bradley will petition the city of Peoria to rename Maplewood south of Main Street to A.J. Robertson Court. The University is also going to commission a statue of the beloved athletic director and coach.

On this day of farewell to the Field House, all the hoops, save the one at the east end of the arena, were gone. Corky was offered the opportunity to make the last basket, but he said, "We'd be here until August," so he gave his grandson the honor of sinking the last shot in the grand building.

After the ceremonies, the crowd of a few hundred wandered out into the foyer for cake and punch. One of the cakes was an amazing replica of the Field House. Across from it, stood a model of what the Bradley campus will look like when all the new buildings are constructed.

Those of us who've recently had the opportunity to knock around the quonset hut have wondered if all the great games and events are somehow contained in the memory of the building. As Corky Robertson said, "It's all about the memories--I have mine and you have yours."

In the next post, the last post, I'll be sharing just a few more.

A Few Last Baskets

Aside from attending the last official basketball at Robertson Memorial Field House, I, my husband, John, and son, Luke, have had a couple other opportunities to grace the raised hardwood floor on Maplewood. About a month ago, our friend, Mick Kenny, invited us to come watch the St. Mark's 6th graders he coaches play the 5th graders on the Hilltop. Afterwards, we got to shoot around. Luke, at age 4, couldn't get the ball to the basket without an assist from one of the adults. But he's a pretty good dribbler. During John's basketball career at Bradley in the mid-70's, he was a shooting specialist, and he hasn't lost his touch: he made 7 3-pointers in a row.

Our other excursion to the Field House was today, on Easter Sunday. We were killing time, driving around, waiting for an Easter egg hunt to start. My sister pulled into the Field House parking lot, and lo and behold, one of the doors was open. Despite the ominous warnings about trespassing taped to the door, and with trepidation, we entered the Bradley shrine.

The floor was lit and the scoreboard read 79-79. All the theater seats were gone and many of the red bleachers had been neatly excised from their moorings. My son, two nieces, and one nephew had fun running up and down the stairs, which had seemed so steep to me as a child, and across the wooden floor. I looked up at the box where countless games had been broadcast by WMBD and WIRL. My brother's girlfriend marveled that she'd never before seen an arena like this. My brother-in-law speculated about how loud it must have been in there, with the roar of the crowd bouncing off the steel beams supporting the ceiling. An orange water dispenser stood by the scorers' table. On the table was a sheet dated March 22, 2008 from the men's Bradley practice. Here's the drill:

11:00-11:15 Stretch
11.15-11:25 Fastbreak Sequence
11:25-11:35 Big/Small Shooting
11:35-11:45 One Man Down
11:45-11:55 Big/Small breakdown- "D"
11:55-12:05 5 Minute Scrimmage
12:05-12:10 Free Throws
12:10-12:20 5 Minute Scrimmage
12:20-12:30 Shooting

I hope that the Bradley men win on Monday against Ohio University and that this isn't the last of their practices at the Field House.

The Field House is musty and old. It was created from recycled materials. Except for the Papa John's pizza signs above the bleacher sides of the stadium, it lacks the advertising that is ubiquitous in other arenas. It honored A.J. Robertson at a time when naming rights weren't purchased by corporations.

There is something a little bit holy about the Field House

A Few Last Looks

I've had the opportunity to be in the Robertson Memorial Field House a few times over the last weeks, and I thought I'd talk about this grand ole' structure, which has served Bradley University so well since 1949. As most everyone knows, the Field House was constructed from two World War II airplane hangers, at least one of which housed B-29 bombers, according to the Historic Peoria website. The marvel of Maplewood also warrants a Wikipedia entry. And if you want to read the most comprehensive information about the Field House, go to the Peoria Journal Star's wonderful series Remembering Robertson: The Field House Project. These reports are written and assembled by Kirk Wessler, the sports editor of the Journal Star and a Maplewood kid himself.

My son's preschool teacher, Sister Elaine, invited us to go to the last official Bradley game as the Lady Braves hosted Northern Iowa on March 8. We sat close to the floor behind the Bradley bench. My four-year-old Luke caught a ball, was given a t-shirt, saw one of his classmates, laughed at the halftime baby crawl race, and munched on free popcorn, so he considered the evening a grand success.

Like the men's game, the women's game has become more physical as of late, and the players are bigger. After President Joanne Glasser acknowledged the seniors, the game got off to a rousing start, with Bradley jumping to a 21-2 lead in the first half. The woman from Northern Iowa never recovered, and Bradley went on to win.

As I watched the Northern Iown players shoot around before the game, I thought how meaningless it must be to them that this was the last game to be played in the Field House. They might look up at dark, drafty-looking, domed space with the metal beams criss crossing below the curved ceiling and down at the perilous, raised floor and think, "I'm glad I don't have to play here again." Heck, maybe some of the Bradley players were thinking this as well. Younger people haven't had the time and the experience to invest the Field House with the kind of meaning that makes some of us sad that it's going.

But anyway, the game's the thing, and for my money, its most thrilling moment came at the end of the first half when Bradley's Devyn Flanagan lofted a shot not far from inside the half court line, which swished through the net at the buzzer. It only extended Bradley's large lead, but still: seeing the ball sail practically soundlessly through the net from such a distance at the same time the horn is sounding: the visceral adrenaline flow such a moment produces, the collective rise to the feet and roar of the crowd is one of the reasons we watch sports and one of the reasons we have such great memories of the Field House.

The above picture is a postcard that was given out at this last offical game played at the Field House.

Requiem for a Requiem

When I started this blog, I thought it would run for a few weeks. A few weeks turned into a few months, and close to 40 posts later, I am finally wrapping things up. Not that I’ve said everything I wanted to say on the subject. For instance, I’d like to tell you more about:

-How I believe the house at 841 N. Maplewood was built in 1911 and after a discussion with realtor and west bluff resident Pat Kenny, we decided the house was a modified Craftsman

-The long crack in the living room ceiling that looked like Abraham Lincoln sitting in a chair

-How we could hear the thunder of the races at the Speedway on Farmington Rd. like the cars were zooming down Western

-Making regular trips to Convenient to gorge myself on candy—to say nothing of Mr. Donut or Baskin Robbins. What a trifecta!

-The issues of development, land use, conservation, historic preservation (Maybe Cooper, Rebecca and the Uplands should consider trying to become a historic district.)

-Hitting tennis balls against Morgan Hall

-How far you can trust institutions, even institutions that are practically encoded in your DNA

-The day Maplewood changed its one way direction. I think this happened in the middle of the day with all the cars that had parked for the day facing the wrong direction when it came time to go home.

And, of course, I could go on, but requiems must end. I thought finishing this blog by the first day Bradley starts classes would be appropriate. Here are just a few more thoughts.

Before 841 N. Maplewood was knocked down, my brother Jim and I visited the house. We are only 18 months apart so our memory pools are similar. One of my earliest recollections from our home was bedtime. Jim’s room was at one end of the hallway and mine was at the other. From his baby bed, he would call out, “Wee-a!” the syllables and vowels in my name being hard for a toddler to say.

On the day we visited the house, we went down into the basement, the least changed part of the house. The musty smell was exactly the same. We walked through the room where the ping pong table had been and poked our heads into the small, dark room where we took refuge during tornado warnings. Jim pointed out a cutting board from our old kitchen that was propped up against a wall. My parents had later used the cutting board as a base for the Christmas tree stand.

“I think that’s the spot where we left it,” said Jim.

Out in the front yard, in the light of day, I talked about the sadness of the house going. Jim thought for a moment. “It’s good not to get too attached to things that aren’t permanent,” he said. This is true, and as a priest, he keeps the truly important things more in mind than his older sister.

A couple of weeks ago, West Peoria councilman Tom Dwyer told me he enjoyed reading my blog. “Yeah, it’s sad. The old neighborhood is gone,” I said.

“But the spirit stays alive with you,” he said.

A major part of my childhood occurred in the seventies, so I’ll close with the words from the following song. Sing along if you know them.

“I’m so glad we had this time together.

Just to have a laugh or sing a song.

"Seems we just get started and before you know it,
Comes the time we have to say ‘So long.'

"Good night everybody!”

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My mother gave us the above drawing after we moved from the house. The inscription reads:

"You never really leave a place you love: part of it you take with you leaving a part of you behind."

The Souvenir

Way back in late May, I showed up at 841 N. Maplewood on the day the students were to vacate the house. The front door was open and my husband, son, and I walked right in. I wandered around the house in an indignant state. I called Ken Goldin at Bradley to apprise him of the situation.

“Anyone could walk in here,” I said. “What if someone vandalizes the house?”

Now, you really are kind of a case when you’re concerned that a house that has an imminent date with a wrecking ball will be vandalized. But Ken was patient and told me that he would send Bradley security over to lock up the house.

I had another question for Mr. Goldin. “Would it be possible for me to take something from the house?” Again, more patience from Ken as he explained to me that Bradley had contracted with salvagers who would strip the house of things could be recycled.

“What is it that you want?”

I hesitated knowing that it would sound strange but in keeping with the whole tenor of the call, I said, “The front door door knob.”

Almost all of the door knobs in the house, including the one I wanted, were made of cut glass. This one had special significance. In the later years that we lived in the house, the door knob would simply not stay on. Often when we went to open the door, it would come off in our hands. When an unsuspecting guest was leaving and this would happen, my dad would pretend that they broke it. It was the set up for a never ending joke.

“Maria, your family lived there long enough. If you want the door knob, you can take it.”

So I did.

The Sleepy Visitor

Let me recount an incident that was scary, funny, and sad all at the same time.

By 1995, all of us had blessedly moved out from our home at 841 N. Maplewood, except my brother Joseph, who was out this particular evening, leaving my parents to enjoy some domestic tranquility for the first time in 35-odd years. My brother Mike, a new Bradley graduate, lived in an apartment not far away and was a frequent visitor at home to catch a meal or do some laundry.

On this particular evening, my parents, who were reading the paper and watching television in the family room, heard the back door open and close. As my mom turned the pages of the newspapers, she called out, “Mike?” and received no reply. Not thinking much of this, my parents continued their evening recreation activities. About a half an hour later, my mom said to my dad, “That’s strange that Michael hasn’t come in to say hi.” My dad probably shrugged, and my mom set off in search of him.

She went upstairs and checked his old bedroom. He wasn’t there. She went to the door of her large bedroom. Now my parents’ bedroom was actually composed of two room, connected by a French door way. She flipped on the light in the first room. In the back room, where their king size bed was, she saw a head come up from the pillow.

It wasn’t my brother’s.

Not believing what she saw, she turned off the light and then turned it back on again. Once again, what she thought was a head raised up from my dad’s side of the bed.

At this point, my mom hastened downstairs to summon my dad, who initially had a hard time believing her account of events. After he verified that the head coming up from his pillow was indeed happening, dad called Bradley security, who came to the house in a matter of minutes.

A couple officers carefully approached the figure in my parents’ bed. As they drew closer, one of them exclaimed, “Cornelius! What are you doing here?”

They aroused the man, who reeked of alcohol, from the bed and tried to ascertain why he was in my parents’ bed.

“I was tired, and I wanted a place to sleep.”

As it turned out, Cornelius was a—I don’t know what the politically correct term is now—transient? vagabond? occasionally homeless man?—local person who was familiar to the Bradley police.

I don’t know if this was the last day my parents ever kept the back door unlocked, but it might have been. My mom and dad didn’t press charges. I’m sure my mom prays for Cornelius—the tired trespasser.

The picture above is of the door to the furnace room in the basement of our house. Boo was painted there before we moved in in 1964.

The Long Good Bye

One time, more than a decade ago, I was visiting a friend who lived on the other side of Maplewood, the side that still exists. Her neighbor was obsessed with finding out how many unrelated adults lived in a certain house on the block. He had his suspicions that it was more than allowed. “Wow,” I thought. “He seems a little anal about this.”

I didn’t understand then, but I do now.

Ever since many of the houses became home to students--about ten years before this summer's destruction--the 800 block of Maplewood made for a sad ride. Now, I don’t have anything against, students, God love them, and have aspired to remain one all of my life. But those in the 18-23 year-old category aren’t really concerned about property values and curbside appeal, nor are their landlords.

It took an act of will not to speed up and avert my eyes as I drove past the bushes with the little white flowers in front of 841 N. Maplewood. We used to dive into those bushes and shake them, pretending the white flowers were snow. After awhile, the bushes were ripped out, exposing the brick base of the house.

The screens on the attic windows were out and I wondered how many bats had gotten into the place. My mother always said that summer hadn’t really started until we had a bat in the house. The screens were also off the side porch, which was perhaps my mother’s favorite part of the house. With the white wicker furniture on the cool maroon tile, she and my dad like to take their breakfast out there and watch our part of the world go by.

At least there were no couches in the front yard or no German shepherd poking his head out of an upstairs window with a beer can in his mouth on a Sunday morning, as my mother once saw at another student residence.

My parents moved out of the house in 1996. My dad was retiring from Bradley and four of their five children had moved on. The three-story, six-bedroom house was more than they needed. A few weird things had happened, too. Laundry was stolen off the clothesline in the backyard. And there was a scary but ultimately harmless visit from a man named Cornelius that I’ll describe in the next post.

It was a hard decision for my parents and one made with mixed emotions. On the day they moved out, my mom went around to each room to say good by and think about all the things that had happened there over the years. She insists the house was creaking and groaning as they left.

In Memoriam of a Maplewood Boy

Danny Dahlquist grew up on Maplewood. He lived with his parents and six siblings north of Main Street on the blocks of the Avenue where the cool Arts and Crafts houses and the maple trees still stand.

It was a life of sports and school and church, and I’m sure, a lot of fun. Danny started his adult life on the Hilltop playing soccer at a place that he grew up with, that employed both his parents, that has fielded nationally ranked teams with players that went on to the pros.

As his obituary said in sweet, heart breaking, haunting lines: “Danny was a sophomore at Bradley University and was living his dream. He was where he wanted to be, being a Bradley soccer player.”

How many of us can say this of ourselves now? Of any time in our lives?

Dreams often seem the province of young people, those who haven’t become hardened by life’s difficulties or weighed down by its debts, those whose lives stretch out before them with a myriad of glorious possibilities. How wonderful that Danny was living his dreams.

Along with dreaming, risk taking is also often a feature of early adulthood. Several years ago, I was talking with some people from work about the risky behavior that young people engage in. I made the trenchant observation that many, many people were lucky to get out of their early twenties alive. A week or so later, the son of one of the women I was talking with died in an alcohol-related accident.

I have always hoped that my comment didn’t cause my friend extra pain.

In 1995, Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich addressed the subject of risks much more eloquently. She wrote about a 22-year-old man from Champaign-Urbana who was killed while running with the bulls in Spain.

She writes, “We all tell stories of the crazy things we did in our 20s, at least all of us do who were lucky enough to have done crazy things in our 20s and luckier yet to have survived them. From the safety of later adulthood, we reminisce fondly about the risks we took in those days, back when we were greedy for sensation and bold enough to seize it. . . The rides we took as hitchhikers. The rides we gave hitchhikers. The weird places we slept. The dangerous streets we walked alone. The strangers we accompanied to even stranger places. These are our purple hearts of foolish courage, our badges of experience, cherished souvenirs. We are proud of the reckless things we did at 20, 21, 22 even though at this age we would be too smart to do them, or maybe just too scared.”

I once read that one of the best ways to find the presence of someone who has gone on is by seeking him out in what was the best about him. In other words, if a person was friendly and welcoming, we will meet him when we act the same. Certainly Danny had a lot of virtues to emulate.

Danny’s family has their faith to help them deal with the loss of their boy who was living his dreams. It has to be a searing reality. But it isn’t complete. As smart as we are, the universe is still more filled with mysteries than explanations. A better place beckons all of us.

A place with great soccer fields.

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming. . .

. . . to comment on the new Bradley president, Joanne Glasser (and may there please be a moratorium on referring to her as “a little lady”).

This is an appointment that almost everyone seems to be raving about. I’ve polled many of the BU people in my life, and they all think she is a smart choice.

My biggest hope is that she is as good as she seems. My greatest fear is that she is as good as she seems and won’t be here very long. Well, this isn’t my greatest fear, but she does seem to have been in demand over the past several years.

Three years ago, she took her name out of consideration as one of the finalists for the Illinois State University presidency. Before that in 2001, she withdrew her candidacy from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas after the board of trustees unanimously chose her as the president. Despite this disappointment, here is what one SFA student prophesized according to Towerlight, the student newspaper of Towson University, then Glasser’s current employer:

“SFA graduate student Jason Gomez, who served as the only student representative on the University’s presidential search committee, said Glasser was well received at SFA, and many admired her choice to explore the campus on her own rather than take a guided tour like the other candidates.

“‘She was very, very charismatic,’ Gomez said. ‘A lot of people commented on her being inspirational. Although she is not president of our University there is a lot in store for Joanne Glasser.’”

Hopefully, Mr. Gomez was unwittingly talking about Bradley.

Since she’s interested in hearing from stakeholders and with two degrees from the Hilltop (for a total of seven in my immediate family), I consider myself one of them, here are my top ten unsolicited suggestions for Madame President on how to improve Bradley University.

1. Do something radical, trend setting, and right: pay adjunct (a fancy work for part-time) faculty the same—or close to the same for teaching a class—as full-time faculty.

2. Watch the tail: yes, basketball is great and from a president’s perspective, wonderful for keeping the alumni financially involved. But we have to make sure we don’t allow Bradley’s recent success to turn the team into an NBA farm club. I think we have the right people in place to prevent this from happening, but cheating is a constant temptation.

3. If you are looking for a three word motto for your term, here’s a suggestion: excellence with diversity. Let this apply to Bradley’s faculty, student body, and board of trustees.

4. Private money might be the lifeblood of Bradley, but academic freedom is its oxygen. Lots of times, there’s tension between money and truth. Large corporations and wealthy individuals don’t always like the messy, rabble rousing process that accompanies the search for the truth.

Let me quote from my own alma mater the University of Wisconsin’s 1894 Board of Regents: “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the Great State University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”

Let the sifting and winnowing continue unabated (i.e. if you have to err, please err on the side of academic freedom).

5. Promote Bradley’s graduate programs. Bradley will likely always be primarily an undergraduate institution, but its graduate schools are excellent and unheralded outside of central Illinois.

6. Do what you can to insure the survival and prospering of Cooper and Rebecca. It’s good to have faculty and staff live near the university, and the beautiful houses on these streets make ideal homes. Don’t knock them down to put up a parking deck. If you somehow find yourself unavoidably having to do this, please be upfront about the University’s intentions so that home owners and residents have fair warning.

7. Strengthen Bradley’s ties with St. Mark’s Grade School and other neighborhood schools. Okay, this is a little shameless of me, as my husband and I are graduate’s of St. Mark’s and our son will likely attend there. But I think a closer relationship would benefit all institutions.

8. Before students graduate, require they pass a test on the life of Lydia Moss Bradley. Knowledge of her life inspires compassion and humility.

9. With a few exceptions, Main Street around the University looks terrible. There is no way a lot of Campustown can be considered progress. I know this is asking a bit much, but anything you can do to help make this area safer and more aesthetically pleasing would be a boon for the area and Bradley.

10. You have used your one chance to publicly utter the phrase “play in Peoria.” I now charge you with coining another, less annoying motto for your new home.

Welcome to Peoria and Bradley Madame President, Joanne Glasser!

More Field House Memories

I’ve been in a little bit of a posting slump since 841 N. Maplewood came down. Now, except for the big machines and a huge mountain of dirt where the old house used to stand, what were formerly the 800 and 900 blocks look barren. The whole scene seems a bit like “The Road,” the apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy. I’m sure that comparison is overstating the case, but, on the other hand, how do you describe destroying charming, quality—the kind of quality that’s not built any more—100-year-old houses to put up an undoubtedly unaesthetic, concrete parking deck for fossil fuel burning vehicles? It’s definitely not the New Urbanism.

Dirt and destruction aside, I do have a few more memories and thoughts to share before I rap things up.

Not by my design, both my dad and my husband played basketball for Bradley University. My dad was a starting player on a Mt. Vernon team that won back to back state championships in ’49 and ‘50. His inclusion on the role of Bradley basketball players is a little more obvious than my husband’s.

John barely made his freshman team in high school and didn’t play in any games. His sophomore year was basically a repeat. However, he kept working and growing, and by his junior year, he started some games for a 1970 Spalding team that finished fourth in the state. He had a strong senior year, and as a freshman at Bradley, tried out for the frosh team and made it. After his first year on the Hilltop, he received a scholarship and played on the JV team his sophomore and junior years. He was voted the most valuable player his junior year and led the team in scoring and rebounding.




John came by his basketball success through hard work and perseverance. In basketball and many other areas of his life, especially his work providing medical care to Haitian children, he reminds me of the following Calvin Coolidge quote:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

When we were dating, John said, “Let’s go shoot baskets at Haussler.” We both loved to shoot around. As we walked down Glenwood toward Haussler, the side doors of the Field House were open. We could see a lot of activity going on around the floor. “Hey,” said John. “Want to shoot baskets in the Field House?” Now, you have to understand that I view the Field House much like the Ark of the Covenent. Even though I had passed the open side doors of the quonset many times, I would never think to step foot on the sacred floor. But with John leading the way, we hopped up on the hardwood. There were seemingly about three different teams, including the woman’s volleyball team, practicing, which I know attests to the need for a new facility. No one seemed to mind the two interlopers, so we shot around for about a half an hour. It was a lot of fun.

Princess For A Day

You would think that since I’m writing these posts, I would spare myself the embarrassment of relaying hokey events from my past. Well, you would be wrong. Out of respect for the historical record, I’m including everything, including the fact that I was the flower girl at Bradley’s 1966 Homecoming. You didn’t know Homecoming necessitated five-year-old flower girls? Well, read on.

The ceremony at which the Homecoming Queen was to be coronated was held in the Field House. This was such a big event that it required a rehearsal. At the rehearsal, the grownups explained to me that each member of the homecoming court would be announced and would step on the stage. My name would be announced last, and I would make my entrance carrying an armful of flowers. While we were being announced, the Bradley Brave would be doing a Native American dance on the stage in full war dress. (Very strange writing about those non-PC and in many ways offensive times in PC language). At the end of the dance, he would throw the headdress off his head.

At this, I would run to the young co-ed they pointed me to, hand her the flowers—thus designating her queen—pick up the headdress and run off the stage. I am aghast at the responsibility they gave a five-year-old. What if I handed the flowers to the wrong girl?
Anyway, we practiced this routine a couple of times. It seemed easy enough to me.

I got a special Indian princess/flower girl costume for the occasion, which was later recycled as a Halloween costume.


Above is a picture of my sister Theresa and I wearing part of the costume along with my brother Jim. I should add the disclaimer that my siblings did not give me permission to post any of the pictures I've used in this blog. They are helpless bystanders.

On the big night, my dad stayed by my side the whole time. When they announced my name, I didn’t want to go on the stage. I wasn’t really suffering stage fright. But the Bradley Brave was thumping around very energetically and I was afraid he would step on my bare feet. I need to remember this line of reasoning when I can’t understand why my four-year-old is refusing to do something.

My dad, whose priorities were always straight, did not insist I go on stage. He didn’t even act like my refusal was a big deal. After a few moments, I must have figured out my tootsies would not be pounced on, and I stepped up on the stage. The rest of the routine went swell. The right gal got the flowers, though I can't remember which one. My main motivation was to get my hands on that headdress. It was probably bigger than I was and with all the colorful feathers, it was beyond cool. Sadly, the Bradley Brave retrieved it almost immediately.

Thus began and ended my career as a homecoming court member.

How the Demise of a Neighborhood Sounds

PeoriaIllinoisian has a sad, beautiful short film portraying the houses and neighborhood of Maplewood in their final stages. The music makes it seem like a prayer.

Ghosts of Faculty Past on Maplewood

In 1964, when my family moved to 841 N. Maplewood, the John Shroyer family lived in what at this writing is the sole remaining house on the 800 block of Maplewood. Dr. Shroyer was Head of the Chemistry Department and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The Shroyers lived in the house less than two years after we arrived. However, when my sister Theresa was born in the Spring of 1965, they gave my parents a silver spoon as a gift. The south wing of Bradley Hall is named the Shroyer Academic Hall.

My family and the Shroyer’s are just two examples of the Bradley employees who lived on Maplewood. A very partial list of the family names includes: Cummings, Deliniski, Hurd, Keating, Wessler, Dusenberry, Nothdurft, Novak, Smythe, Haverhals, Teeven, Richey, Jamieson.

One of the most colorful Bradley employees who lived on Maplewood had to be Pat Sier. She and her husband Don lived on the corner of Maplewood and Laura across from our house. Among other things, Pat worked as hair dresser, a veterinary tech and from 1976 to 1982 a security guard at Bradley. She was a short, short-haired, feisty woman who was the Gladys Kravitz of the neighborhood. One time, some soda bottles were stolen off a neighbor’s porch and thanks to Pat’s observant eye, the thief was apprehended.

When I was in high school, I used to baby sit Pat’s daughter Robin. A few years later when I was leaving my house for a potluck, the brownies I had on the front seat started to slide to the floor as I turned left from Laura onto Maplewood. Stupidly, I went to save the brownies and kept turning into a parked car on Maplewood. It was an old car made of heavy metal. Almost all of the damage was to my parents’ station wagon. I was very upset and not knowing whom the car belonged to, went up to the Sier’s door and knocked. I was crying when Pat answered. She was very comforting to me, telling me the other car was hardly damaged and the people wouldn’t care anyway.

After Pat’s stint at Bradley, she and her husband went on to own an auction company, a job perfectly suited to her energy level. Besides their daughter Robin, they also adopted a son, Justin. Pat died in 2001 at age 55 of a brain tumor.

She was the kind of person who made Maplewood such a fun place to live.

And Then There Was One

The house at 841 N. Maplewood, my childhood home and the focus of many of these posts, was knocked down yesterday. I was in St. Louis for much of the day with my husband and son, so I wasn’t around to see the big collapse. Yesterday was also my mother-in-law’s 93rd birthday, and we drove down Maplewood around 9:30 pm as we took her home from her birthday party. Ominously, all of the houses on the south end of the block were gone. We could see the silhouette of the Boesen’s brick house, one house from the corner. But then as we moved past it, the outlines of the rubble sitting on the lot of our house came into view.

John stopped the car and we all kind of looked at it. That mess had once been our home? It didn’t seem possible. I had been hoping that the house would somehow defy the laws of physics and refuse to destruct.

No one said anything except our son. He had been with me on many earlier drive bys and asked plaintively, “Why did they knock down mommy’s house?” I told him they were going to build a new building. It was kind of shocking to see the house gone, but my mother-in-law’s birthday put things in perspective. I had told myself that I didn’t want to see the demolition of the house anyway, but in truth, I probably would have watched if I’d been here to see it.

Of course, this morning I had to return to the scene of the crime and watch the mop up operations. When I arrived, the excavator was ripping into the tree on the corner of the lot that my dad and brother planted. I had written about the tree in a previous post with the hopes that it could be saved. Watching the excavator go to work emphasized how beyond quixotic this hope was. In about five minutes, the 30 foot tree was gone. Three swipes by the excavator amputated the branches and a couple more uprooted the trunk. Those excavators are scarily efficient machines. They are like steel, gas-powered dinosaurs. With its vicious-looking maw able to maul anything, the excavator is a most excellent destruction machine. They should make a movie about them along the lines of Killdozer.

After the tree was eliminated, the excavator turned its attention to the debris and began scooping it up and dumping it in the huge truck parked on the front yard. I kept searching for recognizable pieces from the house, but it all looked like a bunch of old wood and other junk. There really is something to that entropy stuff. I imagine by the end of today, the lot will be cleared.

That leaves just one house on the two blocks. You can see why that third little piggy was smart to construct a house of brick.

Below is the one house left on the two blocks of Maplewood.

Worth More Dead Than Alive To Some

In efforts to get a little exercise, my husband John and I visit Meinen Field a couple times a week, where we jog around the track for varying durations and intensities, depending on our energy levels.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a huge tree trunk lying on wood blocks at the south end of the track. My oxygen-deprived brain didn’t initially register that this was kind of odd. But as we continued our laps, a truly strange thought emerged from my synapses.

“I wonder if that’s the truck from the copper beech that Bradley cut down,” I remarked to John. He immediately embraced this idea. “I’ll bet it is.”

We continued to discuss the notion during our jog. It seemed a little preposterous. Why would Bradley, or somebody, lug this huge tree trunk to Meinen Field and put it up on blocks? It also seemed a little preposterous that we would just stumble upon it this way. It would be like me walking into a random Peoria house only to find the staircase from my old house at 841 N. Maplewood newly installed and leading to the second floor. And yet. . .

Well, I was able to verify that this is indeed the trunk from the copper beech that until a few weeks ago had been growing for more than 100 years on Glenwood Avenue between the now non-existent Sigma Chi house and the equally non-existent Alumni Center. The trunk is up on blocks to be dried out, and beyond that I don’t know what’s going to be done with it.

File it in the “It’s a small, strange world” category.

Still Standing

I really thought 841 N. Maplewood would be gone by now. Heck, I didn’t think it would even see the light of June. Having been stripped of its windows, shutters, and much of its siding, the grand, old homestead doesn’t look much like the picture above, but it’s still there.

The 900 block of Maplewood, however, is gone, a span of empty lots now. As of a couple days ago, eight houses, in varying stages of intactness, remain on the 800 block of Maplewood between Laura and Bradley Ave. Three houses on Bradley have recently been demolished with one more to go.

Williams Brothers, the construction company, has parked a couple of trailers on the 800 block and put up a chain link fence around a few of the newly created empty lots. 841 N. Maplewood, on the corner of Laura and Maplewood and 839 are outside the fence. Likewise there is a fence around part of the 900 block, where the parking deck will be constructed. If I read Bradley University’s plan correctly, the spot where our old house is will be part of a quad, so perhaps there’s not as much urgency to get the house down.

For whatever reason, it’s still standing. I think I feel one more flurry of posts before this blog and probably the remaining houses on Maplewood are finished.

900 Block of Maplewood R.I.P.

All the houses on the 900 block of Maplewood are gone. Destruction is quick compared to construction.

An Assist from Dr. Harold Vonachen

I have Pete Vonachen’s father to thank for my existence and the fact that it is taking place in Peoria. Well, he at least deserves a little bit of the credit.

Pete’s dad, Harold, was a physician. So was his uncle John, who lived with his wife Isabelle and their four children, Molly, Carol, Betty, and Bob at 841 N. Maplewood from 1918 to 1945. John was the first pediatrician in Peoria and one of the first in the state. “I remember being in your old home many, many times,” said Pete. “It was a great house.”

Before he became the medical director at Caterpillar, Harold had a general practice and was also the doctor for the children who lived at Guardian Angel Orphanage on Heading Avenue. Sometimes he asked his brother John for help.

Both Pete, who has an amazing memory, and my dad contributed details to the following story.

My dad lived in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, where, as a young man, he became a pretty good athlete. In high school, he triple-lettered in baseball, basketball, and football. As center, he was voted the most valuable player on the Mt. Vernon Rams football team.

But it was on the basketball court where my dad and his teammates had their greatest success. In 1949 and 1950, the Mt. Vernon Rams won the Illinois State Basketball Tournament, going undefeated in ’50. And this was back when there was only one class for high school athletics in Illinois.

The starting players on the team, including my dad, received attention from colleges wanting to recruit them. The team’s star, Max Hooper, who was recently honored as one of the 100 top high school basketball players in Illinois history, was going to the University of Illinois. My dad decided he would go there too.

But that was before Dr. Harold Vonachen and a couple of his friends paid a visit to Mt. Vernon. Dr. Vonachen was very involved in the Bradley boosters club. He and his friends made the drive from Peoria to Mt. Vernon that in that day had to be close to six hours.

They came to town in a big black sedan. Dr. Vonachen handed the keys to my dad and his teammate John Riley and said, “Here boys, take the car for a ride. We want to talk to your parents.”

After the meeting, my dad’s parents suggested he check out Bradley. He had never heard of Peoria, much less Bradley, but he made a campus visit. And he loved what he saw. “The campus was beautiful and so much more personal than Illinois.”

He came to Bradley, majored in economics, pledged Sigma Chi, and became a starter on the basketball team, which placed second in the NCAA Tournament in 1954. While he was a student, Harold Vonachen was his physician.

My dad went on to receive a master’s in counseling at Bradley and spent his entire career working in administration at the Univeristy. He met my mom, who lived in central Illinois, and in 1961 the first of their five children were born.

And it all got its start because of Pete Vonachen’s dad. Thanks Dr. Vonachen

The top picture is of the 1954 Mt. Vernon Rams, who won the Illinois High School Basketball Championship. My dad is number 46. The bottom picture, from the Peoria Journal Star, shows the happy, victorious Braves after they defeated the Oklahoma City Chiefs, a victory that won them a berth in the 1954 NCAA Tournament.

Pickin' the Winners on Maplewood

Orville Nothdurft, the Dean of Admissions at Bradley University for 25 years in the sixties and seventies, lived in the 900 block of Maplewood. His former home was the second to last to be leveled on this block.

After the Nothdurft’s moved from this home, Bradley English professor Peter Dusenberry and his family lived in the house for 23 years. “Mim Orville was very short woman,” said Dr. Dusenberry. “One of the Nothdurft daughters was a carpenter and she made all the counters and cabinets lower,” something the Dusenberry’s had to change when the house became theirs in 1984.

When I would walk to school, I remember seeing Mr. Nothdurft in his dark suit, walking across Bradley Avenue to his office in Swords Hall. He always had a friendly smile and a greeting. My dad, who early in his career at Bradley was the Assistant Dean of Students, was friends with Orville.

Dad, Mr. Northdurft, Les Tucker, the Dean of Students, and Doc Norton, the Dean of Men and head of the Speech Department formed the disciplinary committee, which started meeting in 1959-60. The four men were big Bradley basketball fans and after they dealt with whatever issues misbehaving students presented them, talk turned to the Braves.

To make things interesting, the four men created a friendly contest. Before Bradley games, they would each predict what they thought the final score of the game would be. A complicated—to my mind—scoring procedure was developed and at the end of the season, the fellow who earned the most points through his predicting prowess was declared the Bradley Basketball Top Prognosticator. His name was engraved on the plaque pictured above. The plaque only goes until 1977, but the contest continued into the early 90’s.

I remember many times my dad phoning in his prediction to whomever’s turn it was to track the scores. I would ask him his prediction and was always disappointed when he didn’t pick Bradley. According to my dad’s recollections, three times in the history of the contest one of the men correctly predicted the final score of both teams, the equivalent of a prognosticating hole in one.

Orville Nothdurft was a wonderful man, educator, and promoter of youth athletics. He died in 2001. In 2002, my dad received the Orville Nothdurft Lifetime Achievement Award, for service by a former Bradley student/athlete to his profession and the community. I know it is one of the biggest honors he has ever received.

The 900 Block of Maplewood

In this trip through the dimly lit tunnels of my memory, I have been almost completely neglecting the 900 block of Maplewood. Actually, I have been mainly neglecting the experiences of everyone except me—and a few of my family members. Ah, the self-absorbed dangers of sitting down behind a computer with memories to burn.

Anyway, as to the 900 hundred block of Maplewood, my family also lived on this block for four years. My newlywed parents moved into the green shingled house on the corner of Main and Maplewood, 931 N. Maplewood, in 1960. The house was owned by Bradley, and my mom and dad paid $75 a month in rent. This house isn't part of Bradley University's current demolition project as it was knocked down years ago and turned into a grassy lot.

I and my brother Jim were both born while we lived in this house. The memories from this time are pretty hazy, but I have a few.

Our next door neighbors, the Peyers, had beautiful rose bushes, which Mr. Peyer faithfully cultivated. One day, he gave me a rose, which is undoubtedly the first flower I ever received from a man.

The school crossing guards for Main Street stowed their flags on our front porch. How I coveted those flags! My mother was very adamant about not letting us touch them, though. One day, she relented, and we have pictures of my brother and me delightedly frolicking with the flags.

In December 1964, on my brother’s second birthday, we moved down the block to 841 N. Maplewood. Later that month, Mel and Evelyn Novak, who lived in the middle of the 900 block, had a holiday open house. Evelyn was the secretary for Cam Prim, who was then the Dean of Women at Bradley. Mrs. Novak had all these beautiful and intricately-made hors d’oeuvres set on the coffee and end tables throughout the house. It was with horror that my mom watched my brother Jim go around to the tables and pop many, many of these exquisite appetizers into his mouth. They were a little too low to the ground and a little too perfectly sized for a two-year-old’s fingers.

Mrs. Novak was just one of many Bradley employees who lived on Maplewood through the years. I’ll talk some more about a couple of them in my next post.

Peoria Journal Star sports editor Kirk Wessler mentions some of these Bradley folks in his wonderful June 22, 2007 column reminiscing about his childhood on Maplewood. He remembers the football games and the great Homecoming celebrations with all the house decorations. I can’t really recollect those times and the wish to do so, as well as what some would call a perverse desire to have come of age in the sixties, caused me to remark to my husband, who did grow up during those days, that I’d like to have been born about a decade earlier.

“So you wish you were 55 now?” he responded.

Well, I’m sure 55 will be fabulous when it gets here, but not exactly, and I guess you can’t have one without the other.

My mom, brother, and I standing in the back yard at 931 N. Maplewood. My face reflects the unadultered glee I was feeling with the chance to hold the flag.

My dad holding me outside the house at 931 N. Maplewood.

"They Say It's Your Birthday. . ."

According to the cosmic calculator, I wonder how many birthdays have been celebrated on Maplewood. If our family’s photo albums are any indication, the general answer is a lot. A couple of comments on the photo montage with this post:

Do any one-year-olds have fun at their own birthday parties?

Apparently my dad and I like to stand on chairs on our birthdays.

My mom, who was so good about celebrating and photographing other people’s birthdays, had no picture of her own birthday and I had to make due with a picture of her cutting someone else’s cake.

As a non birthday-related aside on pictures that didn’t make the cut, why didn’t someone tell me how awful my various hairstyles were? In the same vein, why is it that things we think look so good at the time, we recognize as hideous years later? Evolved taste? Some sociologist needs to do a study.

Destruction and Debris on a Sunny Day

For the past week, I’ve been taking my four-year-old son to bright, summery Lakeview pool for swimming lessons. There is nothing like enthusiastic, competent, 17-year-old girls who are good with kids to renew one’s faith in humankind. While I keep one eye on my son, dogpaddling in the clear, sparkling water with a noodle under his arms, the other’s on a book of essays, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory by Patricia Hampl.

Some of her writings don’t exactly match the sunny, good times vibe of the day, with pieces about Polish poet and writer Czeslaw Milosz, who speaks of “looking into the hells of our century” (the 20th) and Jewish/Catholic saint Edith Stein, a victim of the hell known as Auschwitz. “Memory is not just commemoration;” writes Hampl, “it is ethical power.”

It is a strange thing to be reading about such things while sitting by a pool, but good too. Perhaps this type of life where kids get to have swimming lessons can triumph over the kind of life where hatred spawned the Holocaust.

To continue my juxtaposing ways, I drive over to Maplewood to look at the destruction/progress on this radiant day.

The 800 and 900 blocks of Maplewood now look like a tornado or a war has hit them. Several of the houses are completely gone and others have been ravaged for what is valuable. As I look at this process, two metaphors leap to mind, one cup-half-empty and the other cup-half-full. The cranes, work crews, people going in and out of the houses remind me of vultures picking through the remains. On the other hand, when I look inside the glassless windows of my old house and see that the radiators and fireplace are gone, I tell myself that our house is like an organ donor and parts of it will live on in other homes.

The above paragraph begs the question, “Why are you continuing to drive by the neighborhood when it’s such a painful sight?” The whole process is like a slow motion death penalty for these houses.

The only answer I can give is that it’s to bear witness. I think there is inherent value in observing and describing events, even when they are depressing and register lightly on the historical scale. Hampl writes, “If we refuse to do the work of creating this personal version of the past, someone else will do it for us.”

For me, it would be even worse if this neighborhood was being eliminated with no one watching. I appreciate the coverage of this subject by PJS sports editor, blogger, and former Maplewood resident Kirk Wessler and blogger, Peoria, Illinoisian.

What's a college?

My dad used to shave in the downstairs bathroom. This bathroom had two doors, one by the sink, opening onto the family room and one opposite the toilet, leading to the kitchen. My dad is 6’3” and he would have to bend his knees to see himself in the mirror.

One morning as he went through this daily ritual, my youngest brother, Mike, asked him, “Dad, what’s a college?”

As my dad continued running the razor over his face, he replied, “You walk through one every day.”

This is the way it was for us with Bradley University when we were kids: our dad worked there and we walked through the campus to school. We lived across the street from the university, and if familiarity didn’t breed contempt with me, it surely dimmed the mystique of the place. Bradley was so much a part of our day-to-day lives that we didn’t really think about it that much. It was just there.

My dad worked in at least three different buildings on the campus during his tenure as Dean of Men, later renamed to the Director of Residential Life and the Judicial System. Doesn’t that change of title tell you a lot about the evolution in society, for better and worse? Through his almost 40 year career, he had offices in Bradley Hall, Swords Hall, and Sisson Hall. I don’t remember ever stopping in to see my dad at work, although one day when I was in junior high, in a cheesy grade school exercise, my friends and I polled some of the Bradley students as to what they thought of my dad. He got good reviews.

My memories of walking through the Bradley campus are specific, yet mundane: the wide, shallow steps between Bradley Hall and Westlake that led from Glenwood to the main quad; the impossibly steep wheelchair ramp between Westlake and the library; the “hills” in front of University Hall on Bradley; walking through the Swords Hall parking lot and marveling at the domed, space ship like appearance of the green house. A landmark day for us grade school kids was when the Sweet Shop, with its fancy candy, opened in the Student Center.

I remember the first time I noticed the two monstrous-looking appendages on the roof of Bradley Hall. “What are those?” I asked my father, shuddering. “Those are gargoyles,” he said. “They scare away the evil spirits.” A revelation: monsters for good.

The gargoyles are part of the gothic design of Bradley’s first two buildings, Bradley Hall and Westlake Hall. Bradley Polytechnic Institute was planned with input from William Raney Harper, the president of the University of Chicago, who was a member of Bradley’s original board of trustees. Bradley’s buildings look similar in style to those of the University of Chicago.

We soaked in the Bradley campus atmosphere as we walked to school. Any more, middle and upper class kids don’t seem to walk to school as much. My sister, Theresa, a Bradley grad, and her family live in Oak Park. The neighborhoods in this tree-filled, village-like suburb adjacent to Chicago, remind me of the neighborhoods of the West Bluff, albeit with vastly higher real estate values. Like their mother and aunt and uncles, my sister’s children attend a parochial school a few blocks away. But they don’t walk to school, and neither do their classmates. It’s a different day now.

The Porch

What’s the most romantic part of a house? Some people would say a porch. Well, 841 N. Maplewood had a great one, and I would wager it was my mother’s favorite part of the house.

Our porch wasn’t a front one or a back one, but a side one that ran at least half the length of the house and overlooked the corner of Laura and Maplewood. We resurrected the porch in spring, like some people open up their summer homes. With its maroon tile, white wicker furniture, and screens that ran from almost the ceiling to more than half way down the walls, the porch was cool on the hottest day. It was the perfect place to sit and watch our part of the world go by.

To be honest, I didn’t appreciate the porch when we lived in the house. But my mother did. “Breakfast, lunch, and dessert,” she listed when I was trying to remember the times she spent on the porch. She would read the newspaper and drink her tea.

During the day, a steady stream of Bradley students and staff passed by the house: Ruthie Keyes, who worked in the library, John Kenny, the physics professor, (he once replied to my husband, his student, who said in frustration during a lab, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” with “Who does?”), Clarence Brown from the counseling department. I wish we could run a tape fast forward through the decades to see all the people who walked down Laura to and from Bradley; it would be a cornucopia of hair lengths and clothing styles.

When I was 16 and in possession of my driver’s permit, my friend Bernadette, who had her license, picked me up along the side of our house in her family’s station wagon. We drove one block to the corner of Cooper and Laura, where Bernadette and I switched places in the front seat. We didn’t drive quite far enough away, because my mom sitting on the porch, couldn’t help but witness this act, shocked at the treachery that her firstborn would engage in. I don’t remember this incident or the repercussions that followed, but my mom assures me she saw the whole thing from the porch.

What easy, fun childhoods many of us who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century had. It wasn’t the same for the namesake of the street that our porch overlooked. In 1864, about 113 years before my driving shenanigans, Laura Bradley, 14, the last surviving child of Tobias and Lydia Bradley, died. According to Allen A. Upton in Forgotten Angel: The Story of Lydia Moss Bradley, one of Laura’s teachers had this to say about her:

“I became acquainted with the family of Mrs. Lydia Bradley in the fall of 1862, and I was an occasional guest at their home. The family then consisted of the father, mother, and Laura, the last survivor of several children. The loss of the other children seemed to have intensified the affection of father and mother for their daughter, and their affection was fully and warmly reciprocated. When Laura entered my school—the old Franklin—in the fall of 1862, she was a slender, vigorous, fair, light-haired girl, ambitious and earnest. She was a generous, amiable and affectionate girl, and always did her best with all work given her to do. Her unselfish generosity and kind disposition made her a general favorite. . . . She was possessed of a dignity and propriety rarely found in one of her age, though full of life and spirit.”