Past Revisited

The trip from West Chicago to downtown Chicago was more arduous than I remembered. Traffic. Much too much traffic. Bumper to bumper and side to side, all at 60 to 75 miles per hour. That was when we were moving; when we weren’t moving, stopped dead in a quagmire of steel on rubber on asphalt.

It was Sunday. Daughter Liz was driving me, her mom (my ex) Ann along for the reverie. Along the way we picked up youngest granddaughter Kira from her downtown Depaul campus.

We wended our way to Lake Shore Drive and headed south. Down along the lake with the burgeoning skyline to our right. Countless buildings looming where they once were not, at least in our memory. Through thick traffic we did not recall, we reached Midway Plaisance and drove west toward the University of Chicago. Our goal was to visit the previous site of the Chicago Theological Seminary where I was once enrolled in 1968. That’s 57 years ago! Nearly 60 years. Gosh.

I knew the seminary building had been bought by the U of C, along with McGiffert House, the married student housing facility next door to the Robie House (Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece). The Economics Department was now housed in the seminary building, freshly remodeled and expanded. McGiffert is now the Co-op Bookstore and academic offices. The seminary was located at 5757 University Avenue, but it was located mainly on 58th Street. That is immediately behind Rockefeller Chapel and what was once known as the Oriental Institute, now named something very complex. We were in the very heart of the University of Chicago campus. The quadrangle, Divinity School, Harper Library, Bond Chapel and so much more.

We walked quite a bit while I strolled with the rollator for a bit and sat the rest of the time in the car remembering 57 years ago when the world was changing minute by minute following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That specific event changed my life and led me to seminary. So much was going on then. Chicago was changing, Illinois and the nation were changing, at lightning speed. Recall the history of 1968. It was one of those pivotal years. And we lived it front and center in our own lives.

Ann and I were married in December of 1968 and moved into McGiffert House. She continued to work for Prudential in the city while I labored on in classes. I changed my mind about seminary and returned to industry in July 1969. That is a story saved for later elaboration. But this trip was about seeing the past in a very different way.

The U of C is a very mature, academic campus. Relatively small, but packed tightly with laboratories, classrooms and research facilities. Graduate education is the primary function of the campus as opposed to undergraduate education. Research expanding mankind’s understanding of the world is the product of the university. This is a place of learning, not socializing. It is quieter and more pondering than most campuses. It just is. It was so in 1968 and remains so in 2025. Interesting. And profound to me, then and now.

We drove around the campus drinking in its special sense of being, then headed to the southern portion of campus below Midway Plaisance. That is where the seminary moved to its own larger building at the corner of Dorchester. It looks a bit lonely and certainly away from the center of campus. We wandered this part of the city in Hyde Park and encountered a large construction project nearby that turned out to be President Obama’s Presidential Library. When finished it will be a marvel of modern architecture and budding research. It is very near the Museum of Science and Industry.

We ventured north to Kira’s apartment to return her home and deliver a small table and chair set. Turns out her apartment is only 3 blocks from our Lake Shore Drive apartment building Ann and I once called home. She now shops the stores and restaurants we did when we were in our mid-twenties! Small world.

Then it was the return trip to the western suburbs. Another barrage of traffic and congestion all providing the time to ponder on what we had just experienced. A time travel journey of past and present. Of what had been and the results of now. A journey indeed. A well-traveled one.

One thought that came to me many times that day is this: we were exposed to amazing things back then. We lived with them and built a long life of doing. Still doing. All of us. Aware now of more amazing things. And the need for more doing. 

May 23, 2025

 

Exposed to amazing things

 

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