OT - Medill alum, renowned author passes, age 75

[montana_cat]

Renowned author (and a fellow small-town Montana guy like me), Ivan Doig, died today at age 75. He was a fellow Medill product. Got to know him slightly during a couple of his many trips from his Seattle home back to the Treasure State/Big Sky Country, gathering material for another of his many novels. Always will have fond memories of his first book, an autobiographical work called "This House of Sky" about growing up in these parts. He earned a McCormick Scholarship to NU, as did I; lived in Latham House, as did I; and he mentions Ben Baldwin on the Medill faculty as one of the formative persons in his career. Likewise, Ben made a big impact on me. RIP, Ivan.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/acclaimed-montana-author-ivan-doig-dies-at/article_4d0fdd62-d5e8-5c00-af1b-3c01691ee0c8.html

 

[pawildcat]

Sorry to read of this successful Medill grad's passing. Ben Baldwin had a big impact on a lot of people. I believe he was probably responsible for getting me admitted to NU.

 

[WildcatWillie]

Have to ask, Montana_Cat -- do I gather you weren't in Latham House at the same time as Ivan? Because I was. There probably aren't too many of us left. I don't know how long that place survived, or how it held together as long as it did. Latham House was a piece of work in 1960. Quite a gang of eccentrics in that place in my time, and perhaps always.

So sorry to hear of Doig's death. This may set me on a binge of reading (and in some cases, re-reading) his work. He certainly became a Montana legend, didn't he?

 

[montana_cat]

Wildcat Willie - I lived in Latham in the fall of 1972. I was part of the crew that gave the firetrap its final farewell just before Christmas that year. This after the administration, finally acting on the city of Evanston's condemnation of the heap, said it was going to close the place and move us elsewhere .... to a new coed dorm. Yikes!

We had a party that got out of control. Person or persons unknown started trashing the place ... literally. I didn't see any of this - honest - but someone took a saw to one of the main support beams downstairs. Fortunately, the sawyer stopped short of felling the tree, er the beam. Besides that evidence of mayhem, the next morning dawned with the sight of holes punched in walls, beer cans everywhere, etc.

Suffice to say, the administration was not happy. In fact, a dean convened a meeting and told us we were all pretty much persona non grata. We were kicked out a couple weeks before Christmas. I ended up sleeping on the floor of a friend's place. And, then, as you probably know, a wrecking ball obliterated Latham. And a Burger King rose in its place. Couldn't have written it better for the movies.

I didn't know Ivan well, hardly at all - just a couple passing meetings, once when he was a guest of another writer at her English lit class at Eastern Montana College (now Montana State University-Billings) and then just last fall at a book signing in Bozeman. He became a huge, but humble, figure not just in Montana but throughout the West. He was often called the Wallace Stegner of our day. A great loss, to say the least.

 

[WildcatWillie]

Thank you much for the 1st hand account of Latham House's "final farewell." I'd never heard any of that. It's amazing that the place lasted more than a decade after I was there.

 

[JoeWildcat]

I can confirm Montana's account of the final Latham party. Latham remained a dorm of eccentrics until its final demise. I lived there for a couple years, and returned for the final party. For those who haven't heard about it, Rick Tellander's band (The Del Crustaceans?) played at the party, and he later described some of the craziness that went on in a long article he wrote for some major magazine (Playboy?). The party also made front page news of the Chicago newspapers. I don't remember the exact date of the party but it was late 1972.

 

[StreamCat]

There is a picture of the aftermath in the link of NU photos on another thread.