Anita Margaret Crites Crawford (1913-2005) was a member of the Class of 1935. She earned a teacher's certificate and later entered law school. She said that she was not hurt by the Depression because a placement service helped her find a teaching job.
James Andrew Dengate is an emeritus professor of Classics at Illinois and has worked with campus museums since 1975. With a B.A. from Michigan State University and M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania, he is currently Director of Record for the Excavations at Halieis, Greece with which he has worked since 1965. Two volumes of the final reports of these excavations have appeared along with many preliminary reports.
Dengate and Pitard discuss the origins and vision of the Spurlock Museum. The collections, their organization, and repatriation are also major topics. Thumbnail image courtesy of The Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Kenneth Roellig served in World War II, and then used the GI Bill to attend college. He first studied at the Galesburg campus, specifically established to accommodate the influx of students after the war, and then transferred to Urbana. After graduating in 1950, he returned in the mid-1950s for graduate school, and then came back once again after receiving his master’s degree to study for an advanced certificate. In this interview, he discusses his early life, military service, time at both campuses, experience as a graduate student, and later career.
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.
