Bursting at the Seams
GI Bill Transforms the Community
On the same day that University, President Willard canceled classes in celebration of the war’s end, a man of Men Fred Turner declared in a speech to a local service club, “The most serious problem facing the University is student housing.” For the next decade, the University, the cities of Champaign and Urbana, and the entire county would struggle to keep up with explosive growth.
The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was signed into law on June 22, 1944. This bill would reshape the county unlike any bill since the Land Grant College Act of 1862, which provided the basis for the establishment of the university itself. The G.I. bill offered a range of benefits to returning veterans, including cash payments for tuition and living expenses to attend high school, college, vocational, or technical school. In addition, it provided low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business, and one year of unemployment compensation.
Needed: Room to Rent!
Roms were hard to come by in the years after the war. Builders were desperate to satisfy the appetite of a demanding student and community population. Basements were transformed into apartment units and the square footage of the average living space was in free fall. By 1946, there was simply no room to house students. The problem became so dire that University President Willard and Government Green traveled to Washington to press the Secretary of War to help solve the problem. The university was forced to begin taking the unprecedented step of limiting enrollment. Even gas stations were converted to housing for returning vets and their growing families.
Wedding Bells Chime
With the war over, life quickly transitioned to weddings and children. The baby boom had started and wouldn’t let up for the next two decades.
Helen Lambin of St. Joseph was reunited with her highschool sweetheart Russell Landrith, and they were married a month after his return from wartime duty in the pacific, on September 8, 1946. Both were 1940 graduates of St. Joseph High School and commuted together to the University of Illinois. When he was called away in 1943, she continued majoring in Home Economics and graduated in 1944. He would return to the University in 1946 and receive his degree in Electrical Engineering, and their story would be repeated thousands of times in Champaign County throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Hundreds of families in the county today trace their reason for being here to this generation that came for free education and made Champaign County their home.