University YMCA · 1001 S. Wright St., Champaign, IL 61820
Visit universityymca.orgThe University YMCA has always been independent of the University of Illinois, but the two have often been governed by the same people. A congressman who had sat on the University's board helped pay for the Y's first building. In the 1950s Y Trustees sat on the University board, and in 1959 two of them voted on opposite sides of lifting its 69-year-old ban on political speakers. Later, students who learned to lead at the Y went on to govern the University, and deans, a provost and a future chancellor took their turns chairing the Y's own board.
When the University's Board of Trustees heard a report on the YMCA's building fund in March 1892, it had to ask a basic question: would a Christian association's building be part of the University or apart from it?1 The Y answered by building on its own land, with its own money, and by governing itself. "The independence of the University YMCA from the University of Illinois, financially and otherwise, has been one of its strongest assets," Harold Hannah wrote in the Y's centennial history.2 From the start, though, the two institutions shared people.
William B. McKinley of Champaign served on the University's Board of Trustees from 1903 to 1905.3 He was a railroad and construction man who had spent two years at the Illinois Industrial University, a congressman, and later a U.S. senator. He sat on the committee that raised the Y's first building, Association Hall at Wright and John streets. His subscription closed the building fund, and he gave to the endowment at the same time. "It is unlikely that the building could have materialized when it did without his help," Hannah wrote. When the hall was dedicated in October 1908, McKinley, "an 'angel' for both the YMCA and YWCA," spoke at the afternoon program.45 Another member of the building committee was "Mrs. S. T. Busey" of Urbana, very likely the Mary E. Busey who sat on the University's board from 1905 to 1930.53
The chairman of the Y's Board of Directors in those years was the University's vice president. Thomas J. Burrill, the botanist who had planted most of the trees on the early campus and served as acting regent from 1891 to 1894, chaired the Y's board from 1900 to 1913. He was also dean of the Graduate School until 1905.678 In 1903 the University's Trustees put into their minutes "an official appreciation of the Y and its meaning to the University."9
The ties ran through families too. Robert F. Carr of Chicago, class of 1893, was a University Trustee from 1915 to 1921 and president of the board for his last two years. He and his brother George R. Carr, class of 1901, were long-time givers to the Y, and George later chaired the Y's Trustees. Carr Lounge, on the Y's third floor, honors them both.31011
For most of its first century the Y's Board of Directors was led by faculty, and some of its chairs were among the University's senior officers. Albert J. Harno, dean of the College of Law from 1922 to 1957, chaired it in 1926–28. A few years later he also became the University's provost (1931–44).61213 Charles M. Thompson, dean of the College of Commerce from 1919 to 1942, chaired the board in 1935–38. In 1952 he was one of the eight men on the Y's new Board of Trustees, and he was still on it as dean emeritus ten years later.6141516
William L. Everitt, dean of engineering, chaired the board from 1959 to 1961. When he was re-elected in April 1960, the faculty members elected with him included Carl Knox, the dean of men.617 Allen Weller, dean of Fine and Applied Arts, chaired it in 1965–67.6 Others led the Y first and the University later. John E. Cribbet chaired the Y's board in 1954–56 as a young law professor. He became dean of the College of Law in 1967 and chancellor of the Urbana campus in 1979.61819 James W. Carey, then director of the Institute of Communications Research, chaired it in 1973–74 and was dean of the College of Communications from 1979 to 1992.620 Robben W. Fleming, who chaired the board from 1956 to 1959 while directing the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, went on to be chancellor at Wisconsin and president of the University of Michigan. He remembered that the Y of the 1950s "provided an intellectual ferment which the University needed."62122
The Y had a Board of Trustees in the 1920s, to hold its property and raise its endowment, but abolished it in 1930. Harold B. "Pete" Ingalls brought it back when he became general secretary, and in 1952 eight Trustees were appointed. Their purpose was to reach "the business community of the state."15 Several of them also governed the University.
Wayne A. Johnston of Flossmoor was one of the first eight. A 1919 graduate who had started with the Illinois Central Railroad as an accountant in Champaign, he was the railroad's president from 1945 to 1967. He was elected a University Trustee in 1950 and served from 1951 until his death.15323 When the Y honored George Carr at the Chicago Club in November 1955, the Daily Illini described the presiding officer as "Wayne Johnston, YMCA and University trustee."11 He chaired the Y's Trustees from 1959 to 1967.15
Chester R. Davis, a vice president of the Chicago Title and Trust Company, was a University Trustee from 1940 to 1949. Hannah lists him among the Y's Trustees, and in 1962, by then retired, he was re-elected to a five-year term.3241516
Hannah's list also names a Kenney Williamson. The University board's longtime president of that name was a Peoria insurance man, class of 1921. He was first appointed to the board in 1940, won elections in 1944, 1954 and 1960, and was its president in 1949–51 and again from 1959 to 1962. He had been a director of the Peoria YMCA since 1927 and was a member of the University of Illinois Foundation.15325 The Foundation was where the Y's Trustees looked for friends. They entertained its members at a breakfast whenever the Foundation held its annual meeting on campus, and the two Trustees the Y appointed in 1960 were both Foundation members.2627
Since 1890 the University had kept political candidates from speaking in its buildings. Through the early 1950s that left the Y, on its own land on Wright Street, as the place where students could hear candidates. In 1952 its Board and student cabinet adopted a policy "to provide a platform opportunity to a wide range of political expression," balanced between the parties.28 In October 1954 Vice President Richard Nixon spoke to about 4,500 people from the street in front of the Y.29 When the Student Senate asked for the ban to be lifted in 1955, the Daily Illini pointed out that "Only the University YMCA, off University property, is available."30 That year the Trustees opened their buildings to candidates for president and vice president only.31 (The longer story of the ban and the Y's platform is told in "A school of democracy".)
On Tuesday, June 23, 1959, after what the Daily Illini called "a stormy discussion," the University's Trustees voted 6 to 3 to open University buildings to candidates for state and national office, as a two-year trial. President David D. Henry had urged them to. The Y's Trustees were on both sides. Wayne Johnston, who chaired the Y's Trustees from that year, voted no. He was "not in favor of politics in the University." Kenney Williamson, the board's president, voted yes.31 That June the Y's own Board of Directors was chaired by Dean Everitt of Engineering.617
The two men's paths crossed once more. Johnston became president of the University's board in March 1967 while still chairing the Y's Trustees. He retired from the railroad on Dec. 1 and died at home three days later. Gov. Otto Kerner named Williamson, who had lost his seat in the 1966 election, to fill Johnston's place.32332 The Y's Board set up a memorial fund in Johnston's name. The campaign raised under it in 1970, matching a challenge grant from the Krannert Foundation, paid for new furnishings and repairs to the building.2633
Later the movement ran the other way. Students who led at the Y went on to govern the University.
Bob Lenz was chosen in 1958, as a senior in Liberal Arts and Sciences, to chair the National Student Council of the YMCA, "the top leadership position in the student YMCA movement." He co-chaired the National Student Assembly of the YMCA and YWCA held at the University over the 1958–59 winter break.34 As a law student he was elected to the Y's Board of Directors in 1960 and again in 1961.1735 By 1974, when he ran for the University's board as a Democrat from Bloomington, the Daily Illini described him as an attorney and real estate developer, a former general counsel of Illinois State University, "a member of the national board of the YMCA and director of the University YMCA."36 He won, and he served from 1975 to 1981.373 The Y gave him its Edward Nestingen Award for alumni in 2024.38
James D. Montgomery worked at the Y as a student in the early 1950s and chaired its Racial Equality Committee, the group that in 1952 began the campaign against the campus barbershops. In October 1954 he was one of ten Black students, all refused service, who telegraphed Gov. William Stratton.3940 He became a Chicago lawyer. He was appointed a University Trustee in 2007 and served until 2019.3 At the board's meeting in May 2007, Trustee Lawrence Eppley announced that Montgomery had just received the Y's Distinguished Alumnus Award and recalled his work on the Racial Equality Committee.3938
Naomi Jakobsson was a development officer at the University YMCA and then director of the University YWCA, starting in 1999, before representing Champaign-Urbana in the Illinois House from 2003 to 2015.41 Gov. J. B. Pritzker appointed her a University Trustee in 2019, and she served until 2023.42 She received the Nestingen Award in 2020, and she is a Trustee of the Y today.3843
When Henry E. Wilson died in 1946 after thirty years as the Y's general secretary, the University's Trustees adopted a resolution that put the relationship exactly: "While not an official member of the University staff, Mr. Wilson's contribution to the University's welfare and student life has been far-reaching and outstanding."44 The Y has never been part of the University. It has always drawn many of its leaders from the University, and over more than a century it has helped make some of the people who governed it.
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