Kay Vogt Wheatley:
CLASS OF 1965
Riverdale High SchoolClass of 1965
Port byron, IL
Kay's Story
I headed to the University of Illinois once I graduated from Riverdale High School, and bonds have kept me connected to the U of I ever since. I finished my bachelor's degree in communicationsâwith a major in advertisingâin 1969. That summer, I worked in the Office of Agricultural Communications while my fiancé finished his degree. I filled in for vacationing editors, as well as doing radio editing and dubbing. No one used the word "internship" back then, besides, I got paid! I learned a lot that summer, and I made many connections that paid off later in life. I had spent a lot of time in the College of Agriculture because I'd won a the first scholarship ever offered in Ag. Communications, but I ended up turning it down because I didn't want to take a lot of ag courses. But the Office of Ag.Communications had more and better equipment than the College of Communications. And the people all had farm backgrounds, just like me. They were warm and welcoming, and I spent a lot of extra-curricular time in the Ag. College, editing the College paper and becoming the first female president of the group called the Bright Young Men in Ag. Communications (they had to change the name!).
Meanwhile, I also got involved in house politics, becoming first social chairman during sophomore year and then president during my senior year or Lincoln Avenue Residence. My senior year, I was elected to the campus Student Senate, which addressed campus-wide issues. We had some real power during an era of unrest during the Vietnam War, when grades were a life-and-death matter.
I stayed independent and taught everyone I knew how to play the guitar. Every night after supper, we played and sang for hours. On Friday nights, we did the same thing at coffee houses. (I just missed playing with John Fogelberg.) Later, when I ran into people who REALLY knew how to play, I would simply sing in a group and let the guys play. But for years I never went anywhere without my guitar. And although I did manage to go to class and do homework, after hardly ever having a date in high school, I practically majored in dating in college. Three hours after my folks dropped me off at my dorm, where I was wondering what in God's name I had done to myself, I had a date. I was sitting in my room alone when a pretty woman stuck her head in my doorway and as...Expand for more
ked if I was busy that night. When I said, "No," hardly knowing what she had in mind, she asked if I'd mind going out on a blind date. I didn't have anything else to do, so I said, "Okay." The guy was from Alpha Gamma Rho, a senior, and gorgeous. And from that night on, I was never without a date if I wanted one. I often wondered what had happened because I almost never had a date in high school. And my phone rang so much in college that my roommate made a joke out of leaving me notes that read "Some guy called." She knew it drove me nuts not to know who had called, so it became a game. I NEVER knew who had called. I worked and played very hard at the U of I, and to this day I have a great reverence for the place. Because not only did I go to school there, but I met my husband there, both my sons graduated there in electrical and computer engineering, I went back in my 30s and earned a masters degree in journalism, I worked as an editor in Ag. Comm. there, I taught both writing and news writing there. And, finally, I joined the U of I Foundation, which in 1965 had given me a four-year scholarship to Illinois, and I wrote speeches for the U of I President and brochures, invitations, documents, dedications, and campaign pieces that helped raise millions of dollars for my Alma Mater.
My grandfather took his family, including my mother and her three younger brothers, to Urbana every summer for 17 straight summers in order for him to go to summer school so that he could earn two masters degrees from Illinoisâone in math and the other in physics. He also taught at Illinois during those summers. He was a brilliant physicist who died just before he was to take an appointment to work at FERMI Lab, the particle accelerator. He started an important trend in my family. I met and married my first husband, Mike England, at Illinois. We had one son, Matt England, who was born in 1971. When Matt was working on his degree in electrical and computer engineering, he participated in a work-study program with Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles for eight months out of each year for two years in a row. That program helped make him expert in both hardware and software, so that when he graduated, he received offers from every major computer company in the nation. He said that his Illinois degree opened many doors. (TO BE CONTINUED)
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