Featured in this batch of fun facts: The City of DeKalb used the ‘Mighty Kish’ to convince a site selection team to choose DeKalb as the location for NIU, the school’s first radio broadcast of a Huskie football game was in 1939, a victory garden was established on campus during WWII to help provide fresh food during shortage, and the NIU Alumni Association’s popular travel program organizes eight trips every year to destinations like France, Australia, Iceland, and Japan!
NIU HISTORY
The City of DeKalb set up and broke a series of dams on the Kishwaukee River to exaggerate the strength of the “Mighty Kish” in order to convince a site selection team to chose DeKalb as the location for what would become Northern Illinois University.
Karl Adams was the school’s fourth president. He ended up serving the school’s second-longest presidency for 19 years from 1929 to 1948 during the Great Depression and World War II. Just short of his 20th anniversary, President Adams died in his sleep at the age of 60. He was memorialized with the naming in his honor of Adams Hall.
The first radio broadcast of a Huskie football game was in 1939.
NIU DURING WWII
During WWII, the school ran a civilian pilot training program under the direction of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and was granted permission by the U.S. Navy to offer a special program that qualified young men for commission as officers.
Due to a shortage of fresh food in local grocery stores during WWII, faculty and students established a large “victory garden” in the area where the Neptune complex now stands. The garden continued after the war under the supervision of Professor Fred Weed — it became known as “The Weed Patch.”
Some 400,000 Americans died in World War II. Thirty-seven of those who made the ultimate sacrifice were students from Northern Illinois State Teachers College.
When the U.S. entered WWII in 1941, there were 370 men and 638 women students at NISTC. In 1946, enrollment jumped to 901 men and 541 women — the first time that men outnumbered women at the school. Of those numbers, 731 men and 11 women — more than 50% of the student body — were veterans. Nineteen barracks from Fort McCoy, Wisconsin were moved to DeKalb and placed on land at Lucinda and Garden Road to accommodate the huge influx of post-war students. It became known as “Vetville.”
Several of the “Vetville” structures remained standing for nearly 40 years, with the last one being torn down in the 1980s.
NIU ALUMNI
The NIU Alumni Association serves nearly 160,000 NIU alumni in Illinois and 244,000 worldwide. It offers programs, hosts events and partners with departments and organizations in support of the university. The NIU Alumni Association slogan is, “That They May Know Who Came Before and Know We Care.”
The most popular program run by the NIU Alumni Association is its travel program, which offers a variety of trips across the globe. The association organizes eight trips every year to destinations like France, Australia, Iceland, Japan, South Africa, Peru and more. The travel program helps to bring in over $100,000 in gifts each year which support scholarships and other student career success initiatives.