- Max Albritton,
ISU alumnus
NORMAL- It is a Friday afternoon. The sounds of showers running and men whooping and hollering greet the 17-year-old boy’s ears as he climbs the stairs. As he reaches the 3rd floor, he sees a shirtless man rocket down the hall on his belly. Groups of men are cluttered at one end of the hallway. Laughter fills the air. He joins them, standing back a bit, but close enough to watch the antics of the men. More men zip down the hall, now flooded from the stopped up showers. The fun lasts until the Resident Assistant breaks up the group and threatens to write everyone up.
Former Dunn Hall resident Mary Stayner pensively waits to answer a question from a local reporter during the Walker and Dunn-Barton Halls time capsule celebration April 8 in the Student Fitness Center. A plaque (below) marks the location of the time capsule whose contents, which included an iPod, ticket stubs and sealed letters, were donated by former residents. (Photos by Daneisha Goodman / Staff Photographer)
This was life in Illinois State University’s Walker Hall in 1965. The 17-year-old was freshman Garth Piercy. Piercy, a Normal resident, attended ISU full time from 1965 to 1969, earning his undergraduate degree in Social Science, then part time from 1970 to 1990, earning his graduate and doctorate in Educational Administration. He has witnessed many changes on campus, from the construction of Watterson Towers, Bone Student Center, Milner Library, to the Redbird Arena and the College of Business.
For Piercy and many ISU alumni, the new Student Recreation and Kinesiology building is the hardest change to be excited about. Building the Rec Center required the demolition of Walker Hall, the place Piercy and 22,000 other students called home for some or all of their undergraduate careers between 1956 and 2008.
The decommissioning ceremony in April 2008 provided alumni an opportunity to say goodbye to their beloved residence hall. University Housing Services took orders for door knobs, mailbox doors and room numbers from Walker Hall, with the proceeds going to support the University Housing Services Student Employee Scholarship. Some alumni were even able to obtain bricks from the building.
Since that time, three Facebook groups have been created for Walker Hall and Dunn-Barton alumni with 326 members among them. For two days in July 2010, the Alumni Center hosted a Walker Hall reunion with an evening reception and a picnic on the Quad the next day. April 18, 2011 marks the 3rd anniversary of the decommissioning of Walker Hall. What made Walker Hall so memorable to the former residents?
“Living in Walker Hall was the most fun a person could have in four years.” Piercy said.
He recalls antagonizing his RA by having sword fights in the lounge with real machetes, chilling beer with CO2 fire extinguishers, playing wiffle ball in the hallway, lighting farts while playing pinochle and decorating the dorms for the annual Homecoming contest.
“For the four years I lived in Walker Hall, we always won the dorm decorating contest,” Piercy said. “The industrial tech majors, the art majors, and the science majors would collaborate to come up with the best ideas. The rest of the residents did the grunt work. Residents who normally wouldn’t talk to each other came together to make our dorm decorations the best on campus.”
Max Albritton, an ISU alumnus, transferred from Illinois Wesleyan to ISU in 1966 and was assigned to Walker Hall. He recalls the winter of the killer crow.
“My room overlooked the dining hall, so we would open the window to put things on the roof to stay cold,” Albritton said. “There was this crow that showed up, and my roommate, Jimmy Thompson, would talk to it and throw bread out for it. He somehow got it to come into our room. We named him George. George had the habit of buzzing at people on the Quad, especially the girls. Word got out that the “killer crow” was being kept in our room. ISU security showed up with a cage to capture George, and they took him to Miller Park Zoo.”
The men did not always occupy Walker Hall. When it first opened in 1956, it was a women’s dormitory. The men did not invade until 1958, when the women were moved to Dunn-Barton residence hall. Later in its life, it was home to the International House and the Honor’s House. But while ISU built larger dorms like Watterson that housed thousands of students, Walker Hall remained small with its approximate of 400 residents.
Both Piercy and Albritton agree that living in Walker Hall created friendships that have lasted more than 45 years. The men attribute it, in part, to the size and layout of the dorm. There were 100 men per floor, with four floors. The hallways were wide and long but sectioned off with fire doors which were usually open.
“You had 100 buddies,” Piercy said. “You knew everyone on the floor.”
“On any given night, you could look out your door and see all the men sitting out in the hallway talking on the phones,” Albritton said. “The old kind of phones – the ones you had to dial with cords attached to the wall.”
“But it also had to do with the fact that there was only one TV which was in the lounge,” Albritton said. “We spent many nights sitting around watching Star Trek. We didn’t have televisions in our rooms. We had a close kind of relationship – a togetherness, a camaraderie. My first night there, I had my parents drop me off at Wesleyan so I could find my old friends. I couldn’t find any of them, so I went back to Walker Hall. Some guys were sitting around playing cards and invited me to join them. My best friends today are some of the men I met that night.”
Matt Schwab, the residence hall coordinator for Manchester Hall, does not see that kind of bonding among his residents.
“Today’s students are not as socially isolated as they were,” Schwab said. “Cell phones, instant messaging, Facebook and Skype keep them connected to their friends and family back home. Students in the dorms don’t have a strong need to form that close bond. We have to work harder to create programs that will bring residents together.”
Piercy and Albritton, along with a few other Walker Hall friends, plan on having their own commemoration in April.
“Walker Hall wasn’t just an address, it was a way of life,” Albritton said.