By NATALIE GOTT
Staff editor
The Daily Eastern News, April 27, 1995

He was described as “200 pounds of beef and bulldog good naturedness” by the 1928 Warbler staff for his role on the football squad.

A year later, he was selected as an All-Conference guard and the best tackle in the “Little 19” Conference for his contributions to Eastern’s only undefeated football team.

But Burl Ives, one of Eastern’s most famous alumni, was also known for his participation in the dramatic arts during his three years at Eastern. He attended Eastern from 1927-29 during the summer of 1930.

Ives died on April 14 in his home in Anacortes, Wash., after slipping into a coma the previous Wednesday. He was 85. To the public, Ives was a singer and an actor. He was best known for his recordings of folk and children’s songs including “Frosty the Snowman” and “The Blue Tail Fly,” which has the chorus “Jimmy Crack Corn (and I Don’t Care).”

Poet Carl Sandburg once called. him “the mightiest ballad singer of this or any century” Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ on Broadway and film, and he won an Oscar in 1958 for his supporting role in “The Big Country” But Eastern alumni, employees and students remember Ives with a deeper sentiment.

“Because of his attendance here, the alums that went here with him and his fellow students remember him with great fondness, and he certainly helped bring them out as supporters of the university,” said Dan Thornburg, former executive officer of the EIU Foundation and a retired journalism professor.

Ives was co-chairman and promoter of the EIU Foundation’s Tenth Decade campaign that raised $7 mil-lion for the university Ives had an awesome presence, not only his physical stature, but because of his voice, said Vaughn Jaenike, former dean of the fine arts department and longtime friend of Ives.

“He used common words, but he certainly had the ability to use a great portion of the king’s English. It was natural for him to enunciate very clearly “A person was kind of awestruck around him.”

As an Eastern student, Ives, a science major, was the man treasure of the Council, a member of Delta Lambda Sigma fraternity, the College Quarette, the Players (drama group,) the band and the football team.

But by the middle of his third year at Eastern, then-Eastern President Livingston C. Lord called Ives into his office to discuss his record, Jaenike said.

“Ives told my wife and I about his decision to leave Eastern,” Jaenike said. “He said, ‘we (Lord and I) came to an agreement that I was not a likely candidate for a teaching position, and I had talents that lie in other areas besides teaching children. Without even stopping to pick his clothes from his fraternity house, Ives went on the road. He rode on trains as a hobo, not as a passenger. He went to the sea, as he always had a passion for the water, Jaenike said. And he became a star.

But he never forgot his roots. Ives returned to Eastern on several occa-sions.

In 1976, he performed to a near-capacity “Parent’s Weekend” crowd in Lantz Gymnasium.

In 1986, he sang again to raise funds for the University’s art department and new art studio building. He returned in 1990 to participate in the formal dedication of the Burl Ives Art Studio and for a second performance to raise money for the arts program.

“I think the last time he was here he was probably about 80 years old,” Jaenike said. “He could play his gui-tar well and he could sing well. He had just the right knack of presentation to make people laugh, others toe-tap and others shed a tear.”

Ives was given Eastern’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1987, and in 1988 he was nominated by then Eastern President Stan Rives and selected by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities as the recipient of its Distinguished Alumnus Award for his “contribution to the cultural and intellectual life of the nation and the world.”

Ives has also made public service announcements to promote the Tarble Arts Center, and in 1991 he donated the guitar he used in some of his early movies, the suit he wore in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and other items to Eastern Illinois University His contributions to the university were acts of sheer kindness, Jaenike said. He always took time for his for-mer school.

“He had a fondness in his heart for Eastern. There is no doubt about it.”