---

As the weather begins to chill in the later days of October, leaves of warm hues fall from the trees around the Main Quad. Today is a pleasant day, though, and many are out enjoying it. One student sits outside Lincoln Hall with a sage-green philosophy textbook. It’s his first semester back at the university after years away. He’d acquired this book before he left, but now he has time to really explore the teachings of Plato, Descartes, Hume, and Kant held within the pages.

Something catches his eye from above. Against a cloudy sky, a brown oak leaf flutters to the ground. He picks it up. For some reason that only he can know, he writes the following lines on the leaf:

Tucking the leaf inside, he closes the book. Nearly 80 years later, in 2025, the leaf sees the light of day again when the book is opened by a vintage collector.

This scene is speculative, reconstructed from a scavenger hunt through the past that began with three clues: a textbook, a leaf, and a collector.

A textbook, a leaf, and a collector

Acculturation specialist Dana Filsinger was in an antique shop in Erie, Pennsylvania, when she found the sage-green philosophy textbook with the leaf inside.

Through antique collecting, Filsinger preserves the memories from people of the past. Curious to find the backstory of the book and leaf, she had done some research into the name signed on the front page of the textbook: Lawrence S. Monroe, Feb. 1942.

In 2025, Filsinger made an Instagram post about the book and leaf, calling it one of her favorite finds. That post eventually made its way to the College of LAS.

I was getting settled into my internship as a news writer for the college when I heard about this story. The intern who had spoken to Filsinger had since graduated, and my boss wanted to know if I had any interest in continuing the search for Monroe’s backstory.

Challenge accepted. If you enjoy a scavenger hunt through the past, walk with me.

I was confident the university’s extensive archives could provide insight into Monroe’s time here. I began with the Illio yearbook from 1942. Sure enough, Lawrence S. Monroe was there. He was a member of the men’s gymnastics team, which reigned as three-time NCAA champions that year. He was also in Delta Sigma Phi.

Delta Sigma Phi lists him as a sophomore for the 1941-1942 school year. Judging by the date on the front page, Monroe acquired the philosophy textbook in that spring semester. For the next three yearbooks, however, Monroe is absent.

Perhaps he quit gymnastics and left the fraternity, I thought to myself as I took a screen shot of where his name should have been in the indexes and added that to my notes. Then, the years clicked.

Monroe is far from the only young man missing from the school yearbooks in the mid-’40s. In previous years, the campus had been around 75% men. All of a sudden, it was 20%. Monroe was missing from the yearbook because he served in the U.S. Navy in World War II.

When I learned about World War II in school, it always seemed so distant — stories told through black-and-white photos and grainy film. The generation that lived through that time was passing on as I was growing up. I was 2 years old when Monroe passed away.

Part of this disconnect is also due to how history is presented. I can give you statistics like 20,276 people from the U of I fought in World War II, and 738 were killed. Those figures are important, but they don’t help me to see through the eyes of students on a war-changed campus. I needed to get personal.

I have a deep fascination with everyday moments. When I look at history, I like to build scenes with as much detail as I can find so I can close my eyes and think about what I would do if I were there. What was it like to walk past the military training on your way to class? What was it like to plan meals while on sugar rations? What was it like to study for exams with the fear of war looming? What was it like to carry on after the war, knowing how many people didn’t make it back?

I’m a 22-year-old living in 2026. I type this story on a computer, connected to WiFi, while sitting in an air-conditioned room and streaming piano covers through my cellphone connected to Bluetooth headphones. The world I live in is so different from the world Monroe knew.

But there is one thing that connects us: this campus. This book and leaf were an invitation to this mundane little moment outside Lincoln Hall 80 years ago. So, I set off to scour archived news articles, history papers, and even historical weather data, all to rebuild this moment.

Philosophy, preservation, and the Stacks

Nowadays, it’s quite easy to track down a book via Internet search. I found the sage-green textbook: “An Introductory Course in Philosophy” by U of I professor John A. Nicholson, published in 1939. Why bother finding the book? The leaf was found pressed between pages, a method often used for preserving plants. With the date written on it, I believe that leaf was made to document a moment.

I wondered if something within the philosophy textbook could have inspired Monroe to write on the leaf. In the short online preview, I could see the first few pages included references to World War I. How interesting, I thought, that someone supposedly reading about philosophy and war in such a time might wish to record and preserve a moment of peace.

To get myself a copy, I entered the trove of old tomes — the Main Stacks. Entering the Stacks feels as if you’re crossing into another dimension. As you pass through the threshold, you leave the bright, bustling common area and enter into the dim, quiet liminal space containing rows upon rows of knowledge. When I spotted the textbook and pulled it from the shelf, I wondered when it had last been opened.

Gymnastics, the draft, and Larry Monroe

Monroe appeared several times in The Daily Illini throughout the 1940s. The earliest instance was the Delta Sigma Phi pledge list in September 1941.

But a lot happened between November and February.

‘Thunderous and Deafening and Unbelievable’

“October of 1941 came and was amber, with lazy smoke and leaves too thick for wading, and war was far, and crowds thronged Memorial Stadium. And November of 1941 was frosts and exquisite twilight, quiet and slow and hallowed, and warm lamps glowed in black, cold night, and no one knew, or wanted to know.

“And then, early that afternoon in December of 1941 something came from the Pacific that was thunderous and deafening and unbelievable, jarring and stirring and feverishly maddening. No, not here, not anymore on this world, not to this nation. It couldn’t happen.”

That excerpt comes from former Daily Illini sports editor and Pfc. Fritz Jauch (LAS ’46, ’51), who wrote a reflective column in the July 25, 1945, edition of The Daily Illini. Here, he recounts the blissful naivety around campus in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and even in the immediate aftermath.

“We were still joking. … And when the president of the University told the student body that classes would go on as scheduled the following morning, some of us wanted to know, ‘What good’s a war if we don’t get a day off.’

“It took us a while to know what had happened, to emerge from our dream, our make believe. It took us nights of bewilderment and days of sudden all-enfolding aloneness.

“… And then it was there, and we knew. We knew that we, our world, we the living, were to know agony more sharp, heartbreak more cruel, desolation more awful than any before us.”

Campus was transformed in the following months. While the importance of education was still emphasized by the administration, it realistically took the back burner. If students could do anything to help the wartime efforts, even if that was by putting on theatrical performances for soldiers, that was prioritized. Those training for war struggled to keep up with shortened class schedules. New courses were introduced covering war-related topics. Barracks took over buildings. Activities unrelated to the war were scarce.

In February, Monroe signs the philosophy textbook and puts the date February 1942. By April, Monroe was training for war. The Daily Illini reported, “Lawrence Monroe … recently enlisted for flight training in the navy air force. After primary training at Glenview, he will report to one of the navy advanced flying schools for secondary instruction.”

Nearly a year after that, The Daily Illini reported Monroe’s transfer to a naval air training center in Corpus Christi, Texas, having completed his primary training.

That is the last mention of Monroe until after the war ends in 1945.

Lincoln Hall, leaves, and reflection

Monroe sits in front of Lincoln Hall on October 24, 1946, his first semester back well underway. Perhaps he revisits that philosophy course he rushed through in the chaos of training or never got to finish. As he reads from his textbook, the content hits differently after everything he’s been through.

Alternatively, that philosophy book could have been collecting dust on a shelf, and when Monroe needed a book to preserve a leaf in, he chose the one for a class he’d long left behind.

Either way, a perfect brown oak leaf catches his eye. It flutters down gently. Peacefully. It is beautiful. Untattered. Whole.

Perhaps it is a new appreciation for life that prompts Monroe to pick up the leaf. Perhaps it symbolizes a time of peace as he looks around campus at all that was lost. The war is over, and the campus is busy again, but there will always be holes from those who didn’t make it back. Holes that can never be filled. Classes never finished, diplomas never received. Dreams killed. Classmates, friends, and partners ripped away, robbed of this beautiful autumn day.

Perhaps he records the date and location as a way of saying “I am here” — a grounding moment after fearing he may never return to this campus, this quad. Perhaps I am overanalyzing a man’s interest in a really nice leaf.

I’ve done a lot of research and quite a bit of speculating. I do not wish to assign any of my own thoughts to Monroe or the other students who lived through this time. No matter how many archives I look through, I can never truly know what was going through their minds. But I believe that trying to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who lived before us, to imagine what thoughts were going through their mind, to empathize and be mindful, is how we learn from the past.

I became a journalist because I love stories. If the walls around U of I could talk, I’d interview every single one. Even before I started working on this story, I would often envision students of the past walking beside me as I moved through Foellinger Auditorium, the English Building, or the Union. It gives me a similar feeling to looking up at the night sky in an attempt to understand my place in the universe. Now, whenever a leaf falls by me, I take it as a moment to reflect. Maybe you will, too.

Thank you for walking with me.