Staff members recognized for long service and retirement
Recently retired and long-serving staff employees will be honored at the 2006 Staff Service Recognition Program Nov. 7 in Illini Union Rooms A, B and C. The program will honor 192 employees who retired between Sept. 1, 2005, and Aug. 31, 2006. In addition, employees will be honored for service completed during that time: 101 employees who completed 25 years, 37 who completed 30 years, four who completed 35 years, and one who completed 40 years of service with the university. A Web site for the Staff Service Recognition Program is available through the Staff Human Resources home page at www.pso.uiuc.edu/service. Retirees and service honorees are listed alphabetically by name, department or number of years served.
For more information about this year’s program, call 333-3101.
Berg is enjoying family and church activities By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor 217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu The decision to retire from her job as business manager with the UI’s School of Architecture wasn’t an easy one, said Carol Berg, who retired Dec. 1, 2005, after a 33-year career with the university. But the birth of her third grandchild last year, who lives in Barrington, Ill., with his parents, tipped the scales in favor of retirement. And, since retiring, Berg has been enjoying spending time with 1-year-old Jake, and her other grandchildren, Megan, 9, and Leslie, 7, who live in Monticello. Berg has been busy sewing costumes for her granddaughters and their dolls. In preparation for Halloween, she made a poodle skirt for Megan, who planned to dress as Sandy from the musical “Grease,” and a gown for Leslie, who aspired to be a princess. Berg also is sewing Illini cheerleader outfits as Christmas presents for the girls’ dolls, which accompany Megan, Leslie and their parents to volleyball games and other UI sports. Their mother, Laurie; aunt Kristen, who lives in Barrington with her family; and grandfather, Dick, are all UI alumni who majored in finance. Berg, who graduated from Eastern Illinois University with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, started her career with the UI in 1969 as an account technician with the State Universities Retirement System. When her husband returned from Vietnam, Berg left the university, and was a stay-at-home mom until their daughters were in school. She then returned to the UI as an account technician in the School of Architecture, where she remained until she retired. In addition to outfitting her grandchildren, Berg sewed all the window valances in their Tuscola home as well as several pillows that adorn the sofas and chairs on their sun porch, which overlooks a small pond and the rolling greens of Iron Horse Golf Course. “Living on a golf course, I always thought I’d take up golf when I retired,” Berg said. “But so far, I haven’t had time. Maybe next summer, I’ll take up golf.” About retirement, Berg said: “I feel like I’m on a wonderful vacation. Every day there’s so much I want to accomplish, and it’s nice to realize this isn’t just a vacation, but time when I can enjoy family, friends, hobbies, traveling and everything else life has to offer.” Berg’s flair for decorating also shines through in “Table Toppers,” an event at Tuscola United Methodist Church that she co-chairs. Participants decorate tables for display in the church on the first Saturday in December. “It’s so much fun to do,” Berg said. “I enjoy decorating, and it’s such fun to see all the creative ideas and themes that everyone comes up with to decorate their tables.” Although Berg was scouring magazines and books for inspiration, she hadn’t yet decided on a theme for her 2006 table. Last year she decorated one table with a Christmas theme – with flashes of tinsel in the water goblets, holiday-themed dishes and tiny wrapped packages in the center of each plate – and another table that was awash in orange and blue as part of an Illini theme. One year, Berg dressed a table with a bell theme, reflecting another of her longtime interests, playing in the church’s hand bell choir. The hand-bell choir plays for church services, weddings and other events and goes caroling through the streets of downtown Tuscola as part of the community’s annual Christmas celebration. Berg, who plays the E, F and G bells, has played with the choir for 24 years. Retirement allows Berg more time for activities such as helping out with funeral dinners at the church and beautifying her backyard with a mixture of annual plants and perennials. With her next-door neighbor, Berg also plants flowers in a patch of ground near the golf-course pond behind their houses, to brighten that corner of the course for golfers. Berg also walks about five miles a day – three miles every morning with a friend and a couple more miles with Dick in the evening. Since Dick, an entrepreneur, hasn’t yet retired, the Bergs’ traveling has been limited to short trips to visit family in Barrington and to Wisconsin and St. Augustine, Fla., where they visited the World Golf Hall of Fame and historic sites. This summer, they entertained relatives who were visiting from Anchorage, Alaska, and are considering a trip there in the near future for one of their nephews’ high-school or college graduations. One of the highlights of Berg’s job at the UI was a five-day trip she took to Versailles, in 1996, when she accompanied some Illinois students as they began their study-abroad year in France. Another highlight was helping organize the School of Architecture’s annual awards banquets. “I helped plan and attended 23 annual banquets,” Berg said. “It was always rewarding to see the students receive well-deserved awards.” But Berg does have one regret: never having visited the bell tower at Altgeld Hall to watch the chimes master play the chimes, which flood the Quad with renditions of tunes that range from hymns to the Illinois fight song. “That’s one thing I would still like to do,” Berg said. “I always loved hearing those chimes and wanted to see how it’s done.”
Lawson spends time with family and still has time for golf
By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor 217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu When Kathy Lawson retired on Dec. 31, 2005, after 30 years with the Illini Union, her goals included playing more golf, de-cluttering her Mahomet home, and spending more time with her 81-year-old mother, Louise Guymon, who lives a few doors away. Lawson said that this summer she played more golf than she had in five years and spent time helping her mother. And her plans to de-clutter her house? “Well, it’s been almost a year and it hasn’t happened yet,” Lawson said, with a burst of infectious laughter. “But I’ve been enjoying doing what I want when I want to, and doing things with mom. And I’ve been spending more time chasing my kids around with the different sports they’re involved in.” Lawson and her husband, Steve, who retired several years ago from his job as campus vending manager with the Illini Union, have two children: Jen, a 17-year-old senior at Mahomet-Seymour High School and varsity golfer who also plays softball, sings in the chorus and plays in the marching band; and Andrew, 14, an eighth-grader at Mahomet-Seymour Junior High School, whose pursuits include discus-throwing, baseball, bowling and band. Avid bowlers, Lawson and Steve play in a league at Old Orchard Lanes in Champaign, and competed in the U.S. Bowling Congress’ national tournament in Corpus Christi, Texas, in February. “We golfed our way down there, and I did well enough in the bowling tournament to get a little money back. I didn’t do as well as I would have liked because I was having some foot problems that were affecting my knees and my bowling. But it’s a fun trip, and I enjoy going with the group,” said Lawson, whose average score is about 182. She recently resumed bowling after recuperating from foot surgery in July. Lawson and Jen also assist Steve with administrative tasks related to his responsibilities as manager of the Champaign County Bowling Association, which oversees leagues and competitions, and as scoring manager for several national youth, collegiate and adult tournaments. Those duties took Lawson and Steve to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., this summer and will take them to Las Vegas next spring. And it was bowling that brought Lawson and Steve together. They met when Steve was the bowling lanes mechanic at the Illini Union. Lawson sometimes used her lunch hour to bowl a few games there with co-workers. On their first date, they went bowling and they married three years later. Handicrafts are a family legacy for Lawson and her mother, who are members of the Decatur Quilters’ Guild, of which Lawson is hospitality chair. Guymon taught quilting at Parkland College for a while, and Lawson’s grandmother and great-grandmother also sewed quilts. “Mom has always been a crafter, so we learned how to do things from her, such as quilting, knitting, crocheting, cross-stitching and scrap booking,” Lawson said. Lawson stitched one quilt entirely by hand, beginning the project when her children were small, but only recently finding time to complete it. She also has machine-stitched two full-size quilts, a top for a third quilt, has the material for a fourth quilt and has completed several smaller projects, such as wall hangings and cross-stitch pieces. As a member of the “sandwich generation,” people who are raising families while caring for aging parents, Lawson’s schedule stays so full that she began carrying a calendar “and I have to check to see if I’m available before I agree to something.” When Lawson accepted a job as a secretary at the Illini Union in 1976, she expected to stay only a year or so, then use her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Illinois State University to obtain a teaching position elsewhere. “But there was something just a little bit more secure about working at the university,” Lawson said. “There was enough variety to keep me interested. I liked the work and enjoyed the people. I had lots of opportunities to move on, but I liked the security that I had where I was, and when I looked at the whole picture, I couldn’t see that I could have had it any better.” While working full time, Lawson earned a master’s degree in human resource education from the UI, painstakingly taking a class or two at a time until she graduated in 2001. “It was very difficult, not having been in school for over 20 years,” Lawson said. “But surprisingly enough, I wasn’t the oldest in the class, and it was enjoyable.” Although Lawson is considering getting a part-time or seasonal job, she’s in no rush to rejoin the workforce. “I got used to not working really fast. That wasn’t a problem,” Lawson said with a laugh. “I still feel like I’m in transition, that I’m not sure what my routine is going to be. But that’s the nice thing about being retired – you don’t have to have a routine. I can get the kids off to school and go back to bed for an hour. You can just take things as they come.”
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