Alumni Highlights
Do you know of a Steel House alumna that would like to tell us her memories of Steel House? Various alumni will be profiled here every month! Send us your stories. Keep it to 500 words or less. Send a picture of when you were a "Steelie" if you have one. Sendyour comments to Del Hungerford or Heather Frazier
Lucille
I take great pride in being one of the first "Steel" women. I was a freshman in 1953 and had the same room for the four years I lived in the house. And the room survived!
Traditions at Steel House were having the duties that made it a cooperative dorm, freshman mandatory study hours, and being monitored to make sure we were studying, escorting the house mother to meals (I hated that). We had dress up dinners on Sunday and Wednesday night. We had to be dressed and our hair combed before going to breakfast and could only wear jeans out on campus on Saturday mornings. The dean of women would decide when it was cold enough that we could wear slacks to class. Four years of "cross passing" dishes at meals and eating with one hand in your lap was so ingrained in me that I still do both of them over 50 years later. And of course, the "gab fests" that lasted way into the night. Exchanging ideas and dreams shaped all of us into what we are today. It was wonderful to see so many of them at the reunion in 2003.
I was a rebel and objected to many of the "rules" of the campus. I still get irate over the fact that the girls had a curfew and the boys did not. Other changes that are changes for the better are no housemothers, having phones in the rooms instead of only having two phones for the whole dorm, more girls have cars, and more freedoms in how they dress.
Two events that stand out in my memories are the time we beat Pullman in football for the first time in 28 years. We had a school holiday, with no classes, on the following Monday. And the tragedy of the Gault Hall fire with the three deaths. The whole campus mourned those days.
I was appalled to hear that Steel House had been closed and am so happy to see it has had a rebirth. The co-op living is probably essential for some girls who attend the U of I on limited funding. Keep up the good work!
Lucille (1953-1957)
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