Quick Navigation

Northern Illinois University

Northern News


Chuck Shriver
Chuck Shriver

To obtain print-quality JPEGs, contact the Office of Public Affairs at (815) 753-1681 or e-mail publicaffairs@niu.edu.


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

September 27, 2005

Alumni of NIU student newspaper to reunite
after four decades away from campus

DeKalb — Some Northern Illinois University alums will celebrate a special homecoming a week before the official event.

About two dozen members of the student newspaper staff from the years 1957 to 1963 will return to campus Friday, Oct. 7, and Saturday, Oct. 8, for a reunion. For some in the group of Northern Star alums, the gathering marks their first return to campus since their graduation four decades ago.

Former “Star-types” are expected from Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. Their weekend begins with a Friday night reception at Best Western DeKalb Inn & Suites and continues Saturday with campus tours and a closing dinner at Carls Fargo in Sycamore.

“Our people still identify their college experience with the Star more than anything else,” Northern Star Adviser Jim Killam said. “These folks have a strong affinity.”

Chuck Shriver, a 1962 alum, and Al Erisman, class of 1963, organized the get-together.

“It all happened because, very fortunately, I was honored to be inducted into the Northern Star Hall of Fame at a dinner in February,” said Shriver, who is retired and lives in Elk Grove Village. “Jim Killam sent out a general e-mail to all the Northern Star alums inviting them to the dinner, and it mentioned all the inductees, me included.”

Erisman, a retired Boeing executive living in Seattle, saw his old friend's name and found his e-mail address online.

“We started e-mailing back and forth, catching up on things, and thought, ‘Gee, wouldn't it be nice to get together just to shoot the breeze?' We started putting down names of people we remember,” Shriver said. “We managed to run most of them down, and there's going to be 35 or 40 of us, including spouses.”

Hallie Hamilton, a faculty member from that era, will attend. So will Ruby Grubb, widow of Don Grubb, who came to NIU in 1959 to create the journalism department. Hamilton and Grubb, who died in 1992, are members of the Northern Star Hall of Fame.

The group will pose for a photograph, tour campus, including the Convocation Center, and visit the Star's offices in the Campus Life Building.

Killam expects some of his students to show off their workspace and speak with their predecessors from more than four decades earlier.

“It's always fun to see different generations find a common point of connection, and this current generation connects well with their grandparents' generation,” said Killam, who hopes his students see how the Star can lead to successful careers. “A lot of key issues our students are dealing with today are pretty close to what they were dealing with then. Other than technology, reporting the news hasn't changed in a lot of ways.”

However, Shriver said, the Star itself and its campus surroundings have changed plenty.

“The school was a lot smaller. Enrollment was about 5,000 when I graduated, and it had been about 3,100 when I enrolled a few years earlier. The paper was a weekly, 10 to 12 pages,” he said.

“Our offices were in an old Army barracks located where (Anderson Hall) is now. After the Korean war, a lot of G.I.s had come back, and Northern, to get some temporary housing for these returning G.I. guys, bought some old wooden barracks from an Army camp up in Rockford,” he added.

“They had 'em trucked down and sat next to Kishwaukee Creek, across from the old football field. They were used for a few years as housing, and as the school started to grow, they started putting some offices over there, and that's where the Northern Star was. We used to crumple up newspapers to stuff in the cracks in the floor. The wind would blow underneath those barracks and blow up between those planks, and it was pretty cold.”

Although the time of Shriver, Erisman and their colleagues predates the campus turmoil of the Vietnam era, the newspaper wasn't immune to scrapes with then-NIU President Leslie Holmes.

“That was in the days when the administration considered the student newspaper as the P.R. arm of the administration. Of course, we didn't think that way. We had a lot of skirmishes about what should and shouldn't be in the newspaper,” Shriver said. “It's part of the growing-up process. Roy Campbell, our adviser, was always running interference.”

Shriver, ironically, spent much of his career in public relations.

He worked in the front offices for professional sports teams including the Cubs, the White Sox and the Chicago Sting, and returned to campus from 1985 to 1988 as associate director for marketing in Huskie Athletics. His final job before retirement, from 1988 to 2003, was on the copy desk of the Daily Herald.

And, like most Star alums, the newspaper remains dear.

“It was a fun time for us,” he said. “Everyone is looking forward to mostly talking and catching up, and they're curious about what the campus looks like now.”

For more information, e-mail Shriver at cshriver@sbcglobal.net.

# # #