A MAJOR HISTORIC CONTRIBUTION FROM AN ALUM

Dr. Savage’s donation to the Saint Ignatius College Prep archive allows us to see the unique academic and cultural environment at Saint Ignatius in the late 1970s, and how that setting fostered the career of one of Chicago’s leading literary historians.

The professor of English Literature at Northwestern University, donated nearly three-hundred pages of materials from his courses with Mr. John Chandler to the Saint Ignatius College Prep Archives. Dr. Savage took John Chandler’s classes in Chicago History, U.S. History, Sociology and Psychology and saved his tests, essays and notes for nearly forty-five years. His papers will be digitized and stored in our Specimens of Classroom Work Collection. 

Debates about co-education were frequent during Dr. Savage’s four years and he ultimately graduated alongside the first female cohort in the spring of 1980. The cover of a senior magazine he donated featured a tombstone that jokingly read “RIP St. Ignatius All Male Dynasty.”

 

Back in the day, Dr. Savage used a typewriter for all his assignments, writing on translucent onion skin paper in rigid typeface font. The highest number grade Bill ever received was a ninety-nine. “We couldn’t earn one-hundred back then,” he shared, “because, as the Jesuits frequently told us, only God is perfect.” 

An assignment in John Chandler’s 1979 Sociology class asked students to analyze fads in American society. Dr. Savage wrote, “Skate boards, disco music and Frisbees are the most current examples of crazes,” and justified disco’s success by arguing, “disco is more than just dancing. It’s a whole lifestyle and outlook on life, a whole attitude.”

It is easy to see from his classwork how Saint Ignatius nurtured his passion for Chicago literature. Dr. Savage wrote essays about Al Capone, Big Bill Thompson and the World’s Columbian Exposition and completed a final project about the history of his home neighborhood, Rogers Park. Many of these characters and events have been featured in his research and classes at Northwestern. “I’d love to donate my books from Mr. Chandler’s class,” he told me. “Unfortunately, I still use them in my work today.” 

Signed copies of books to which Dr. Savage has contributed are currently held in our Chicago Collection in the Brunswick Room. Chicago by Day and Night, which he edited, is displayed in the Columbian Exposition exhibit in Brunswick. 

 

An assignment in John Chandler’s Chicago History class that Dr. Savage and many others remember well, asked students to photograph their home neighborhood and present the developed slides to the class. “Unlike today the school was dominated by boys from the South Side and the Taylor Street area,” he recalls. “I remember being fascinated during my classmates’ presentations. I saw that the city wasn’t just downtown and Rogers Park, it was all over - it was a bustling, exciting and diverse place.” Many of these 35mm slides are stored in the Saint Ignatius College Prep Archive.

Dr. Savage also reflects on the academic skills his Jesuit education gave him. “Mr. Chandler and my other teachers taught us to work with discipline and to think both critically and creatively about every subject,” he said. “When I began my undergrad at Loyola I was much better equipped to succeed than many of my peers. The intellectual skills and framework that Saint Ignatius gave me remain in my work to this day.”

 His donation ultimately shows us how Saint Ignatius has both changed and remained the same. The academic technology and content was different during Dr. Savage’s era, as was the school’s demographic makeup and student culture. But the principles of diversity, academic rigor and critical thinking remain today. They’re manifested in both our current students and our alumni, like Dr. Savage, himself, who are leaders in the world.