Settling a baby down for a nap can’t have been easy with thousands of Illini fans stomping and cheering overhead. Still, despite the rumbling coming from above, Margaret Crackel spent many Saturdays shushing and rocking her baby boy to sleep in the Memorial Stadium apartment she shared with her husband, Ben, the stadium’s caretaker.
The ten-room apartment was built into the northwest side of the stadium near the student section, with windows that looked out upon thousands of scrambling feet as they excitedly made their way to their seats.
known to have been born in Memorial Stadium. His proud father,
Ben Crackel Sr., served as the custodian to the entirety of Illinois
Athletics for twenty years.
The Crackel family lived at the stadium for thirteen years, and, in 1925, Ben Crackel Jr. had the distinction of being the only baby born on the hallowed grounds. Ben Jr. spent many happy years playing in his backyard that was the stadium. And with arguably the best house in town, it is easy to imagine how many of his classmates wanted an invitation to come over and play.
In a 2008 documentary, Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit, Tom Porter, former marketing director for Illinois Athletics, remembers his conversations with Ben Jr. about his childhood. “The stadium was his playground,” Porter said. “He talked about it so fondly. He talked about Red Grange all the time.” Jane Crackel, Ben Jr.’s widow, also shared a memory in the documentary. “Before they had the elevator in the stadium, the reporters would have to carry their typewriters up to the press box,” she said. “So, Ben and some of his friends would carry the typewriters up for a dollar. The kids would bring their bikes over and ride down the ramps.”
While Ben Jr. could certainly claim a magical childhood home, it was really Ben Sr. whose legacy is most directly tied to the stadium. In the early twentieth century, Ben Crackel Sr.’s name was uttered with the same reverence as his contemporaries, Huff and Zuppke and Grange. A familiar sight in his army boots and fatigues, Crackel oversaw all the athletics grounds at Illinois—from football to basketball, ice hockey to baseball. The Daily Illini called him “the efficiency man of a million tasks.”
To many, he stood among the greats who built Illinois athletics. The well-oiled machine that Crackel created was born from his time on the battlefields of World War I. He joined the army when he was just fifteen, and his military career took him from the Illinois National Guard to the trenches embedded in the rolling hills of France and Germany.
Crackel was injured a remarkable thirteen times serving his country. In one instance, he was the sole survivor of an attack on an ambulance carrying him to the hospital. For two days, he lay covered in dirt amongst his dead comrades before he was rescued. The explosion broke his back, and he was told he’d never walk again.
Of course, Crackel proved the doctors wrong, and after his discharge from the army, he worked his way up from storekeeper to overseeing every athletics event in his twenty-year career on campus.
“The military precision and organization Mr. Crackel injected into his work, especially in maintaining the Stadium, had been remarkable,” noted the Daily Illini in reporting his death. “With complete cooperation of his staff, Crackel clung to any job until it was finished, even though it required getting up before dawn and working until after dark.”
Even university presidents didn’t escape Crackel’s rules. In 1930, President David Kinley visited the stadium on a Sunday, and despite the “No Automobiles Allowed” sign, his chauffeur drove right in.
As reported in the Urbana Daily Courier, President Kinley humorously recounted this story at a banquet, and he told the crowd that Crackel, “came striding out and talked to my driver in a traffic cop voice. Although I was hidden in the recesses of the back seat, I could easily hear Ben crackle!”
Today the opposing team’s locker rooms occupy the space where the stadium apartment once was. After Crackel’s sudden passing in 1938, the family moved out, and there is no record of anyone using the apartment after that.
His name doesn’t adorn a building, and no statue has been erected to honor him, but Crackel was a vital player in athletics between the two world wars. His legacy lives in the meticulously manicured fields and courts, along with the achievements of thousands of athletes who have donned the orange and blue.
This story was published .
