Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit
A new documentary produced by WILL-TV
DVD available: $19.95 (+$3.00 postage)
Watch a preview video, and see interviews and stories.
This new documentary looks at the legends and the history that have emerged within the granite columns of Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois, and at the spirit that is reawakened every time a game is played there.
From the Galloping Ghost who emerged on the stadium's dedication day, to crucial wins and losses, to the feats of players with names like Butkus, Grabowski, and Halas, the memories created there have sustained generations of Illini fans.
Highlights of the documentary include Red Grange's dedication day performance; interviews with former players Dick Butkus, Jim Grabowski and J.C. Caroline about what the stadium means to them; the tragic story of an Urbana husband and father in whose memory one of the stadium's massive columns was built; and the adventures of a boy who was born and lived at the stadium, riding his bike up and down the ramps and earning a few extra bucks carrying reporters' typewriters up the stairs to the press box.
Although steam engines, horses and painstaking labor erected the stadium, so did the spirited fundraising of Illini students, alumni and other fans who contributed $2 million for construction, and of community members who wanted to honor soldiers who died in World War I.
Old wooden bleachers at Illinois Field were replaced by a stadium both functional and so classically grand that it could also be a memorial to the fallen soldiers of World War I. Designed by the same architects who planned Soldier Field, the structure on a swampy southwest campus site was a great human and engineering achievement.
In the documentary, produced by WILL-TV's John Paul and Denise La Grassa, ex-Illini Caroline describes how he has always felt the stadium was part of him, not just because he played football for the Illini, but because he worked as the stadium's night watchman while in school.
The documentary also looks at how George Huff and Robert Zuppke built the Illinois football program with innovative ideas, the big game that produced such a huge crowd that fans clamored for a new stadium, and the architecture that made a steel and concrete athletic facility also appropriate as a monument for fallen soldiers. Historic photos and old film footage are interwoven with interviews to tell the stadium's story.
The Illini spirit that helped build the stadium is still present today, says Marching Illini director Peter Griffin. "When we talk about tradition, it's not always about remembering the past; we re-create it every Saturday afternoon and part of the re-creation is the stadium itself." It's more than a building, he says. "It's something that lives and breathes every time there's an event in there, and people who attend bring it back to life."
Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency
A new documentary produced by WILL-TV
DVD available: $24.95 (+$3.00 postage)
Abraham Lincoln's experiences on muddy roads, in homes of friends and in courtrooms on Illinois' Eighth Judicial Circuit shaped the views and honed the skills that guided him when he became president.Riding through prairie grass on trails just barely wide enough for his horse, Abraham Lincoln traveled more than 500 miles each spring and fall as a lawyer on Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit, then the fastest growing area of the country. (more)
