A few posts back, I wrote about my dad’s college connection to 841 N. Maplewood. While my mother didn’t have an association with the house prior to moving in, she remembers a childhood experience in the same neighborhood.
My mom grew up a farm girl in McLean County. In 1950, when she was 15, Lexington, the high school closest to her home, was playing Spalding in the sectional at the Robertson Memorial Field House. My mom’s uncle got tickets and, she and some of her cousins drove over to Peoria, beside themselves with excitement. “I remember exactly where we sat,” recalls my mom. “I have looked at that section many times since and thought, ‘In a hundred years I would never have dreamed that one day I would be living across the street and my children would go to Spalding.’”
A few posts back, I also wrote about the male Bradley students who boarded in our attic. During my childhood years, we also had some female Bradley students live with us. They received room and board in exchange for helping around the house and babysitting several adorable children. These must have been some desperate college women. Though my mother will confirm that we were rather well-behaved children, there were five of us, all born in a span of seven years.
These courageous Bradley co-eds became more like family members than the boys. They ate with us and their bedroom was on the second floor, the same as ours. I remember Chris and Patty and Bev.
One night, Chris didn’t come home. Early the next morning, my panicked mom called Chris’s mother, who lived in central Illinois. “Oh yeah,” the woman said. “She does that sometimes.”
Of all the women who stayed with us though, far and away our favorite was Arlene Horvath Crawford. She was fun, didn’t treat us like a burden, and actually signed on for two tours of duty.
I remember Arlene explaining to me why she broke up with her boyfriend. “I knew he was going to ask me to marry him and I would have said no.” I felt like such a grown up, having the mysteries of the adult world deciphered. Arlene did marry her next boyfriend, George Crawford, who would give us kids “airplane rides” on his back.
Though not natives of Illinois, Arlene and George settled in Peoria and raised their girls here after they graduated from Bradley. They became life time friends. Arlene died, much too young, last year. I will always remember her as 22.
My mom grew up a farm girl in McLean County. In 1950, when she was 15, Lexington, the high school closest to her home, was playing Spalding in the sectional at the Robertson Memorial Field House. My mom’s uncle got tickets and, she and some of her cousins drove over to Peoria, beside themselves with excitement. “I remember exactly where we sat,” recalls my mom. “I have looked at that section many times since and thought, ‘In a hundred years I would never have dreamed that one day I would be living across the street and my children would go to Spalding.’”
A few posts back, I also wrote about the male Bradley students who boarded in our attic. During my childhood years, we also had some female Bradley students live with us. They received room and board in exchange for helping around the house and babysitting several adorable children. These must have been some desperate college women. Though my mother will confirm that we were rather well-behaved children, there were five of us, all born in a span of seven years.
These courageous Bradley co-eds became more like family members than the boys. They ate with us and their bedroom was on the second floor, the same as ours. I remember Chris and Patty and Bev.
One night, Chris didn’t come home. Early the next morning, my panicked mom called Chris’s mother, who lived in central Illinois. “Oh yeah,” the woman said. “She does that sometimes.”
Of all the women who stayed with us though, far and away our favorite was Arlene Horvath Crawford. She was fun, didn’t treat us like a burden, and actually signed on for two tours of duty.
I remember Arlene explaining to me why she broke up with her boyfriend. “I knew he was going to ask me to marry him and I would have said no.” I felt like such a grown up, having the mysteries of the adult world deciphered. Arlene did marry her next boyfriend, George Crawford, who would give us kids “airplane rides” on his back.
Though not natives of Illinois, Arlene and George settled in Peoria and raised their girls here after they graduated from Bradley. They became life time friends. Arlene died, much too young, last year. I will always remember her as 22.
Arlene and me in front of our house on the day of my First Communion.
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