Creepy as it may sound, Marc Bookman's most cherished Illini memory involves an Urbana cemetery.
“Although I have many great memories of the town — including the Ice Arena, Kam’s and many others — the one place which has surprisingly stuck with me all of these years is the Woodlawn Cemetery," says the Tokyo-based CEO of Trendlife Inc., which develops digital solutions for the health, nutrition and personal care industries.
“My sophomore rhetoric teacher made everyone in the class leave one day to go outside and write an essay reflecting on what we wanted to do with our lives. The assignment was to go to the cemetery, find a departed person with whom we felt some affinity and write the essay on their tombstone.
“Somehow, that moment of deep reflection in that particular place has stayed with me all these years. Kudos to the UIUC English department.”
