1984 Rose Bowl Memory
Lynda Zimmer
Robert Zimmer, my late husband, staged an intensive lobbying campaign to
get his bosses at the Associated Press in Chicago to let him cover the Illini in the Rose Bowl.
As the AP correspondent based in Champaign, he had been writing about the team through the 1983 season, but AP policy was to assign on-site AP
reporters to the bowl games.
Robert, a big train buff, came up with the idea of recreating an earlier Illinois team's trip to the California game by train. Managers authorized
the expense and we whooped for joy. We bought a ticket for me to go too. I
planned to write feature stories about a school band traveling to the bowl
by train, fans and pep rallies.
The plan was to spend Christmas of 1983 in St. Louis with relatives, then
take Amtrak west to California.
But that was the Christmas that was almost completely canceled. Even
church services were called off. There was so much blowing snow that no
one could get out of town. Friends of ours who planned to drive north or
south ended up at our house on Christmas Eve for a meal of whatever we
could put together from the basement freezer.
Robert headed to the Champaign Amtrak station to change our tickets. Now
the plan was to wait a few days, take the train out of Champaign to
Chicago and then ride the rails West.
At the train depot he found passengers headed north abandoning the train
because they had no food and water was frozen. He drove one couple to
Champaign motel.
The day we were scheduled to go, our car would not start. We called a
friend to drive us to the Amtrak station. Snow was packed so deep on the
steps that it was near impossible to climb up to the tracks. The
northbound train was late so, panicked that we would miss the big event,
we had the friend drive us to the Greyhound bus depot. Even buses were
running hours late.
We made four trips back and forth between the depots until a train finally arrived. Once on board, it took twice the usual time to get to Chicago.
At Union Station, we camped out in the Amtrak waiting room until the ceiling collapsed from the weight of ice and snow.
We escaped by cab to a Chicago friend's apartment for the night, then
started frantically calling airlines. It was America West, which we'd
never heard of at the time, that got us to Orange County.
I'll never forget walking down the steps of the plane in my muddy boots, with encrusted salt on the bottom of my heavy coat and feeling that wonderful California warmth. LYNDA ZIMMER
Submitted by Lynda Zimmer of Champaign on 01-04-2008 at 11:10 AM
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