DePaul sports memorabilia are recovered in a new internship aimed at honoring the university’s legacy
Silently tucked between classrooms of DePaul University’s O’Connell Hall, art history students are recovering and recording artifacts of DePaul’s past that have long since been forgotten.
The Athletic Memorabilia Project has saved dozens of trophies, jerseys and game-winning balls from decimation. These artifacts of university history were previously left to disrepair, simply shoved into a basement storage closet to collect dust. For years the sports memorabilia never saw the light of day, but the upcoming expansion project forced relocation for the objects. Upon moving all of the memorabilia into a room more suited for their care, a program sprouted to organize and catalog the objects into archives for future historical usage.
Brother Mark Elder, C.M., has worked with DePaul art programs for decades now, and is spearheading the project as an opportunity for student interns interested in conservation and art history.
“The end goal is basically to really clarify a long-standing need for a proper inventory of all the memorabilia that DePaul Athletics has in its rich and storied history.” Brother Mark said. Much of the objects now in their possession were severely neglected, experiencing water damage, deterioration and intense disorganization.
Outside of ongoing maintenance, the interning students work on dating each object and recording their existence in a digital archive. So far, the oldest artifact the program has found is a heavyweight championship trophy from 1930.
Nora Rodriguez is a junior majoring in museum studies and contributes to the team by ordering old game records across various sports.
“As a group we have been working on making instant reports for a lot of the objects,” Rodriguez said. “And I, for the past couple of weeks, have been mainly focused on creating an index of these two file cabinets.” She nods in the direction of two large gray cabinets, stuffed to the brim with colored folders and papers, all unorganized records from throughout DePaul’s long athletic history.
Beside them lay tables upon tables of trophies and plaques, each with a blue sticky note tying the object to a code. Each label refers to a spreadsheet of digital records, colloquially known to the group as the archives. These Post-its of instant reports give a brief overview of the type of object, material, date and sport associated with it. Some of them even come from sports the university no longer offers, like boxing.
Mary Cook, a junior majoring in the history of art and architecture, is the one who transfers the information from the instant reports into the digital archives. This tedious task is perhaps the most important, as it provides an opportunity for future sports historians to easily find an artifact and determine exactly where it came from and who it was for.
“I just take all the reports that they do with the categories,” Cook said, “And I organize them by such. So I’ve done it alphabetically by category, and I just go from there by inputting data.” Cook finds the repetitive responsibility quite fun and has been designated the sole person to digitize the records.
“It’s really interesting to see the evolution of DePaul,” Cook said.
“It definitely feels nice to be able to take care of all this stuff and make sure it’s in a better condition and has a better home,” Rodriguez said.
For other members of the team, like Brother Mark, preserving DePaul’s history is a matter of service. To make something that future generations can use later and appreciate the past is the underlying motivation for the Athletic Memorabilia Project.
Header Image by Erin Kindred
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