Jonathan Hiskes | Oct. 8, 2007
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| Photo by Jeremy Hogan |
| Amid the technology of the present-day IDS, Marge Blewett, B.A. ’48, and John Wilson, B.A. ’48, look at old IDS issues during the recent alumni weekend. |
They came from a diversity of professions, they came from around the county and some came with kids in tow. At Friday’s open house reception, Eric White (B.A. J. ’97) and Sara Brazeal (B.A. J. ’97) showed their daughter, Caroline, the IDS newsroom where her father first asked her mother out on a date. Brazeal, who works for a Chicago public relations firm, reminisced about the newsroom’s stained brown carpeting and worn-out furniture.
"It was a dump, but it was our dump," she said.
Upstairs in Ernie Pyle Hall, Anita Feiwell Boorda (B.A. ’43) spoke of working as the IDS telegraph editor and watching her boyfriend’s draft number come over the line. She recalled the shock of learning about it before he did, and the phone call some months later when he proposed to her from training camp. She was in a phone booth in the student union.
"I tried to buy that booth when they renovated the union," she said.
Phil Sears (B.A. ’83) found the display case with his first place award from a William Randolph Hearst Foundation National Photojournalism Contest. He covered the 1981 men’s basketball championship game from Nick’s English Hut, capturing on camera a pitcher full of beer flying midair as the game’s final seconds ticked away.
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| Photo by Jeremy Hogan |
| Phil Sears, B.A. ’83, found the display case with his first-place award from a William Randolph Hearst Foundation National Photojournalism Contest. |
The socializing continued at a tailgate party Saturday before IU’s game against Minnesota and at a brunch Sunday morning at the Tudor Room in the Indiana Memorial Union.
Earlier last week, Dean Brad Hamm said it never seems difficult to convince alumni to visit Bloomington
"I travel a lot, and people have an amazing fondness for Bloomington and Ernie Pyle Hall," he said. "People want to talk about the campus and school and city. They want to talk about their professors too, but there’s this romantic image about this place they loved when they were students."
Several speak at Adams memorial
On Friday evening in Ernie Pyle Hall Auditorium, alumni and IDS staffers from the past three decades offered affectionate stories about David L. Adams, the student media director who died in June. Beneath a slide show of Adams working with dozens of appreciative students over the years, many of the same students spoke of his impact on them.Matthew Zimmerman (B.A. ’00) described his former advisor’s glowing, "missing-tooth grin."
"I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to have one more conversation with Dave Adams," Zimmerman said. "To have one more lunch with him and have him say, ‘God, you’re too young to be that cynical.’"
School Communications Director Beth Moellers (B.A.J. ’99, M.A. ’05), Dean Brad Hamm and Brandon Morley (B.A. J. ’06) spoke of Adams’ passion and the personal attention he showed to so many young journalists. Ryan Gunterman (B.S. ’02) recalled talking with Adams about the First Amendment controversy that arose last winter when a northern Indiana principal censored a high school newspaper after it ran a column discussing homosexuality and tolerance.
"As he talked, his voice would get more and more high-pitched, until no one could hear him but his two dogs," joked Gunterman, a journalism advisor at Bloomington High School North.
"As sad as I am about his death, don’t ever thinking he’s done teaching these kids, because his work is still going on," he said.
Current IDS editor-in-chief Trevor Brown spoke of one example of students carrying on Adams’ work: the Indiana Student Free Press Act, which several students are promoting with help from the campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. They have nicknamed it "The Dave Adams Law."
"He cared so much about his students," Brown said.
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