Julie Wurth reports in the October 1, 2017 editions of The News-Gazette:
Back in the 1970s, with Playboy in its heyday, publisher Hugh Hefner was nominated for an Alumni Achievement Award from his alma mater.
The awards committee at the University of Illinois Alumni Association, which had turned down the fabulously successful but controversial Hefner several times before, finally voted him in at the urging of some younger alumni. He was to be honored at commencement with two other alums who would march in with the honorary degree recipients in ceremonial robes.
Then the UI's top brass got wind of it.
Jim Vermette, CEO of the association from 1967 to 1983, remembers getting a call from UI President Jack Corbally, who was also one of his closest friends.
"He said, 'Jim, I want you to know this right now — if Hugh Hefner is chosen, we are not going to allow the award to be given at commencement. We will not attend any of the social gatherings where he will be present,'" Vermette said.
The award was eventually withdrawn after a lengthy debate and close vote by the Alumni Association board.
The story illustrates the UI's complicated relationship with one of its most famous alums, shunned by some as a pornographer, celebrated by others for staunchly supporting the First Amendment and civil rights, and considered one of the most influential people of the 20th century for reshaping American's views toward sex.
"Whether you approve or not, he had a tremendous impact," Vermette said following Hefner's death last week at age 91.
A Chicago native, Hefner enrolled at the UI in 1946 as a psychology student, following his high school sweetheart, Millie Williams, to the university. He carried a double load of classes and graduated early in 1949 with a degree in psychology and a double-minor in creative writing and art.
Along the way, he was co-publisher of a campus humor magazine called "Shaft" — where he introduced a "Co-ed of the Month" feature — and drew cartoons for The Daily Illini student newspaper (though he confessed later that he "wasn't a very good cartoonist"). He also took flying lessons and lived at the Granada Club House at 1004 S. Fourth St., C., later the site for the Police Training Institute.
He and Millie married after graduation and, after several jobs writing promotional copy, he started Playboy in 1953. The first issue went to press with no date because he wasn't sure how quickly it would sell. Only 70,000 copies were printed, and 51,000 sold, enough to launch a second issue and, eventually, a publishing empire.
Hefner rarely returned to campus but maintained ties to the UI over the years, hosting alumni events and the UI's 1983 Rose Bowl team at his Playboy Mansion near Beverly Hills, Calif., donating money for journalism scholarships and keeping in touch with Professor Theodore Peterson, one-time head of the journalism program.
In a 1990 interview with The News-Gazette, Peterson recalled that Hefner visited campus in the late 1950s, after Playboy became a success but before he was personally famous, to give a talk at the University YMCA.
Beforehand, he walked around campus, pointing out buildings where he had classes and stopping by the DI, where he found his old desk.
After the talk, which ended at 10 p.m., he planned to drive back to Chicago. But he never made it, prompting a panicked phone exchange between Peterson and Hefner's secretary back in Chicago. It turned out Hefner had met the student editor of "Shaft" and stayed up all night talking to him, then invited him to lunch at the Illini Union the next day.
Peterson never taught Hefner, who graduated before the professor started teaching at the UI, but the two hit it off. Hefner wanted Peterson, who specialized in magazine writing and wrote a book on magazine publishing, to write his biography, but Peterson turned him down, Vermette said.
"Hefner had a soft spot for Dean Peterson, probably because Peterson was the first to regard Playboy as a serious vehicle for journalism, politics and cultural issues," said Steven Helle, retired UI professor of journalism.
Hefner visited campus again in 1971, this time in the famed Playboy jet — a DC-9 painted black except for the iconic white bunny logo on the tail. His girlfriend, Barbi Benton, spent the weekend posing for noted artist Frank Gallo, a UI professor.
Hefner was met by a mass of reporters, fans, 10 Illini cheerleaders, football Coach Bob Blackman and Champaign Mayor Virgil Wikoff, according to the Daily Illini's coverage.
"We have taken the plane to some of the major capitals of the world and have gotten some nice response, but I'm stunned by this," Hefner remarked. "I never expected anything like this in dear old Champaign-Urbana."
Lou Liay, who succeeded Vermette as head of the Alumni Association in 1983, remembers going out to Willard Airport to see the jet.
In late December 1983, Illini Coach Mike White took 90 players to the Playboy Mansion to keep them busy during the two weeks they spent in California before the Jan. 2 Rose Bowl. Five costumed Playboy Bunnies led groups of Illini players and coaches on a short tour of the mansion and grounds.
Some fans blamed that tour for the Illini's "flat" 45-9 loss to UCLA, Liay said. Hefner promised to invite the team again in the future, but the 2007 Rose Bowl team chose not to go.
Hefner actually completed his education at the Navy Pier campus in Chicago, which no longer exists, so the Urbana campus tends to claim him, Helle said.
In the 1990s, Hefner wanted to donate money to endow a faculty position, but the journalism department opposed the idea of a Hefner Chair, and he gave the money to USC instead, said Helle, who was department head at the time.
"As important as Hefner was to journalism, he was still controversial and the faculty did not want that to be a factor in our recruiting of either faculty or students," Helle said.
Hefner had funded scholarships for magazine journalists at the UI. And he donated $500,000 in 1997 to create the Hugh H. Hefner First Amendment Scholar fellowships for graduate students in journalism, saying he wanted to inspire journalists and focus on freedom of the speech and of the press. The award funds up to five fellowships each year.
In 1998, the UI Alumni Association magazine ran a profile of Hefner. Liay had seen a televised interview with Hefner, who had married for a second time and had young children, and decided, "It's time."
"I had never pictured him as a family man," Liay said.
University officials were cautious about Hefner because they wanted to respect different points of view, but also recognized his impact on American culture, said former magazine editor Vanessa Faurie, who wrote the profile and received a Hefner scholarship as a journalism student in the 1980s.
"For all of the things people criticize him for, he was at the forefront of breaking down racial barriers and really speaking out on civil rights, at a time when it wasn't really popular for people to do that," she said. Playboy published writers, poets and artists from diverse backgrounds, which was "a bit ahead of its time," she said.
"It was a progressive voice at the national level on everything from contraception to race relations to marijuana use at a time when there weren't many progressive voices to be found," Helle said.
Liay said he got several letters of complaint about the story, but "I'm of the opinion that he has achieved and he did well. He's actually one of the most influential people of his time."
During the interview, it was clear he remembered Illinois fondly, Faurie said. His classmates included movie critic Gene Shalit and author Shel Silverstein. He talked about one of his mentors, Samson Raphaelson, a noted screenwriter and playwright who taught creative writing at Illinois in the late 1940s.
"He was incredibly influenced by that experience," she said.
And she has a Playboy mansion story: When her husband dropped her off for the interview, one of her two young daughters needed to use the bathroom. There were no corner gas stations in Beverly Hills, so Hefner's assistant graciously allowed her to use the bathroom there. The interview also ran long, so when they came back to pick her up he offered to show the girls around Hefner's animal menagerie, which included flamingos, peacocks and monkeys.
Later, as they were at the airport waiting to fly home, one of Faurie's daughters was chatting with a friendly older woman who asked what they'd enjoyed most about Los Angeles.
"Feeding the monkeys at Mr. Hefner's house," her daughter responded. The woman got up, glared at Faurie "like I was the worst mother in the world" and walked away.
In 2006, Hefner was inducted into the inaugural Illini Media Hall of Fame class. Honorees are nominated by fellow Daily Illini alumni, and Hefner was chosen for his "passion and commitment to publishing and First Amendment rights," said co-publisher Kit Donahue.
Whether you agreed with Playboy's philosophy or not, she said, "he was such an advocate and strong defender of First Amendment rights and freedom of the press."
Hefner's schedule didn't allow him to attend, but he wrote a "very nice letter" saying he was honored to be inducted and sent some autographed books and other items for an auction, Donahue said.
That first class of 17 included Ken Paulson, former editor in chief of USA Today and president of the First Amendment Center, now a dean at Middle Tennessee State University.
"We were all so bummed that he couldn't make it," Paulson said Friday. "The honor was enough, but we all really wanted to meet Hugh Hefner."
Paulson was a law student at the UI and reporter at the Daily Illini from 1975 to 1978, when Playboy's popularity was at its peak. He said the old adage was true — people really did read it for the thought-provoking articles, coverage of contemporary music and in-depth interviews with the likes of John Lennon and Jimmy Carter.
"There were a lot of magazines that had nudity or partial nudity, but only one had these extraordinary interviews with leading newsmakers around the world. Only one had that caliber of writers and insights into popular culture. Take the pictures out of Playboy and you still had a fine magazine that truly reflected the '50s through the '70s," Paulson said.
"Hefner's foundation was a beacon in terms of shining a light on the need to protect free expression in America," he added.
At one point, the Daily Illini had a "Hall of Fame" room with plaques on the wall commemorating the winners' contributions, including Hefner's. But they were packed away when the paper sold its building and consolidated into smaller quarters, Donohue said.
There are no other marked tributes to Hefner on campus. And while he was nominated several more times for the alumni award, he was never chosen again, Vermette said.
That mid-'70s meeting where his award was debated and ultimately withdrawn was "the most interesting board meeting in my history," he said.
After the fateful call from the UI president, Vermette had contacted the Alumni Association board president, Al Hallene, arguing that the association answered to alumni, not university administration.
But Hallene decided to put it up to a vote by the full alumni board, which then consisted of about 70 members. Most of them showed up. The first vote ended in a tie. A second vote, in which each member had to stand and announce his vote, ended the same way.
The board then engaged in a "brilliant" philosophical discussion about the issues involved, Vermette said. The vote still ended in a tie. Finally, Hallene cast the tie-breaking "no" vote.
Hefner never seemed to hold it against the university, Vermette said.
"On balance, my opinion would be today that he did more good than bad," he said.
