Margaret Bonkowski, wife of Richard Bonkowski (EE ’67), sent a thank you letter this past January to Illinois Tech President Alan W. Cramb. He had responded positively to her inquiry about obtaining a replacement of her husband’s 50th anniversary Class of 1967 commemorative medallion, which was destroyed in the 2017 Sonoma County California wildfires. Here is an excerpt:
I was overwhelmed when I opened the package I received from IIT and found not only a medallion but also the beautiful shadow box in which it was displayed as well as photos taken at the reunion.
When [my husband and I] opened our gifts on Christmas day, I saved the best for last: the gift from IIT (and from me). Rich was very surprised—and a little confused. Actually, I was a little surprised, too. What I didn’t know was that he had also made a request for a replacement medallion through the alumni office. As I explained what I had done, he was touched by my effort to obtain the medallion especially because my life has been quite busy lately, as you can imagine.
Thank you again for your generosity and for helping with this memorable Christmas surprise.
In looking over IIT Magazine from fall 2017, the letter from Ron Dickman (BE ’67) caught my attention. His statement on the [local] “mining division” sounded like the Goodman Manufacturing Company, my first employer. Goodman was an employer for many of us engineers starting our careers. I worked for Goodman for a little over four years and left at the time the Westinghouse Air Brake Company bought the mining division and the remaining part of the company was renamed Mangood Corporation. Sadly, Goodman along with Crane Company (South Kedzie Avenue), Kool-Aid [part of Kraft Foods Inc.] (South Rockwell Avenue), and many others are no longer part of the Chicago employment scene.
Thank you, Ron, for allowing me to mentally time travel to back then. And I did not have to steal a TARDIS.
—Chuck Hresil (ME ’61)