Victor E. Shelford was a professor of Zoology at the University of Illinois from 1914 to 1946. In this interview, conducted by Maynard Brichford on March 24, 1965, Shelford discusses his work at West Virginia, Chicago, and Illinois, the Ecological Society of America, fellow scientists who have influenced/assisted with research/published with him, field trips, Brownfield Woods, Laboratory and Filed Ecology (1929), and The Ecology of North America.
Victor Fein came to the University of Illinois after serving in the US military. Eventually, Victor became a co-founder of a local co-op called Earthworks. The co-op started out as a small art studio selling handmade wood and leather good. It eventually grew to include a clothing shop, pet store, and grocery. Victor and his wife also opened a restaurant, Metamorphosis, out of the co-op.
Vic Lukas was co-founder of the University of Illinois Campus Folksong Club. He studied anthropology at graduate level at the University of Illinois and Duke University, with additional coursework at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and conducted fieldwork in Jamaica. He has worked for several years as a scientific computer programmer in North Carolina, where he continues to live, and has received many awards for work in photography and film. Music continues to be central in his life. He plays regularly with the Maudlin Brothers, a group dedicated to gospel music and songs of tragic romance and plays old-time music with the Porch Climbers. He is an active participant in fiddle conventions and music festivals and has taught courses on the history of Blues and Country music at the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis & Elkins College.
Wanda Spencer Larson (1918-2003) graduated in 1938. She majored in Education and joined the Chi Omega sorority. Wanda had rich memories of the manners and mores of campus life at the time.
Wayne Pitard is an emeritus professor in the Department of Religion at Illinois and retired director of the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures. With a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, his research has focused primarily on the religion of the ancient Canaanites, particularly on the only surviving library of Canaanite religious texts, found in the ruins of the city of Ugarit, Syria, and dating to about 1200 BCE. In September 2024, he also published Watchman, Tell Us: John J. Bird and Black Politics in Post-Civil War Illinois, research that began while he was director of the Spurlock Museum.
