Gerald W. Smith Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Gerald W. Smith 75
Still, when I see those students who went through that period, theyt some-
how or other feel that the people who cam in afier the new buildi was
nnished missed something important because we always had to innov$e.
Q. You man the period before the new building was finished?
A. Yes in the interim between the fire and the . . .
Q. You man there were some interesting educational by-products out; of
this experience?
A. Oh yes, yes.
Q. Could you touch on a couple of those?
A. Oh yes, there were several. One thing we did not lose was our gmnasiun.
The ori@nal building had no gym in it and the school district had purchased
a rather sizable old store building and converted it into a gym, but it had
no dressing moms in it. We dressed at the hi& school building where we
did have showers and dressing rooms in the basement, but then the students
had to go about two blocks to this gym for their gymnasium. Football was
held out on the Mathersbpasture at the southwest comer of town--Mr. Mathers
was a peat man, he let us use his pasture for our football field and even
allowed us to develop it som . So the students could agajn dress for foot-
ball at the school, which was about five blocks over to the football field,
but we had lost our showers and our dressing room. I had a young coach
who was just a year out of college--no, matter of fact, when the building
burned he wasn't there, I hired him that year, a graduate of kmuth
College-&ark Wilcox. We had to get readx for football in the fall with
no dressing rooms and no showers.
Down on ow school farm was a little lake--really ought to be called a pond,
it was kind of small, it was !mown as Lake Weaver-with a little bath house-the
building was about twenty-four feet long and fourteen or 'fifteen feet
deep wfth a porch on it the length of the building and about eight feet
deep. But they no longer used it, the lake was no longer used for awidng,
so we decided to take that building and br4ng it up and use it as our dressing
room. Frank and I went down to the school farm, which had timber on
it, cut d m a couple of trees to make skids. We jacked the bathhouse up
and put the skids under it after which the township road co~ssioner took
his diesel tractor, or his caterpillau, tractor, hooked on to it, and pulled
it up to us and for the fall we pulled it out on IW. &itherst pasture. We
went down in the old fire ruins, rescued the shower fixtures, took them up
and rigged them up and got a couple of oil barrels and put them up m the
rafters. We got us a heating stove and put it in there and we rigged a
coil down into the heating stove which circulated the water.
Q. Did the boys, the students have a chance to gt in on these activities?
A. Oh, they were all involved, yes. They were all down there helping us,
the students were involved in doing this kind of thing. men, of course,
we had to carry water to flll those barrels, but Frank had a very imagina-
tive manager who--kids who came out to watch football practice, in order to