ECC names street to honor longest-serving employee

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Holding the new street sign are (from left) ECC President David Sam; Jan Ferchow, Gail Shadwell’s sister, and Ferchow's husband John; Myrna Shadwell, Gail Shadwell’s sister; and Robert McBride, ECC board chairman. | Submitted

Updated: March 6, 2012 8:14AM

ELGIN — Renaming First Street, which runs through the heart of Elgin Community College’s campus, after Delvenia Gail Shadwell seems especially appropriate, Associate Professor of English Rachael Tecza said.

That’s because, Tecza said, “Gail Shadwell was the heart of the college.”

The Elgin Community College Board of Trustees voted unanimously to name the street Gail Shadwell Drive after its longest-serving employee. Only Trustee John Dalton was absent and did not vote.

Shadwell died at age 73 on June 22 in Effingham.

“She was the heart of our family, and that heart is broken now,” said Jan Ferchow, Shadwell’s sister.

Shadwell retired in 2008 after 42 years at Elgin Community College, where she worked as a professor, a division chairperson and a dean, according to the college. She had been hired by the community college’s first president, Gil Renner, in 1967.

She organized speech competitions and created the community college’s forensics program and Writer’s Center to support amateur and professional writers in the District 509 community, the college said. Those now are Shadwell’s legacies, according to Tecza, current director of the Writer’s Center.

“She understood writing gives people a unique opportunity for self-expression,” she said.

Outside the school, Shadwell was named an Honored Illinois Author by the Illinois Library Association in 1998 for her many academic and popular articles and co-authoring of books, according to the college.

That includes “Speaking Your Way to Success,” used for many years as the text for speech classes at the college, and “Never Begin a New Paragraph in the Middle of a Sentence,” a collection of stories and anecdotes from the classroom.

She also was nominated as a Harriet Gifford Leader in Education for the Elgin YWCA Leader Award and listed in the Who’s Who in the Midwest, among other honors, the college said.

She was the first of four daughters in a very poor family, Ferchow told the board of trustees Tuesday. She is survived by her sisters Ferchow and Myrna Shadwell, both of Effingham.

“If she were able to be here for the occasion, she never would have wanted a fuss made over her, and she wouldn’t have thought she deserved it. She would have been pleased you thought she did,” she said.

Trustee Robert Duffy, who first met Shadwell in 1975, agreed. “Gail was never afraid to share what she thought about various decisions this board made. She was really an inspiration to so many people, including me.”

And now, Elgin Community College President David Sam said fondly on Tuesday, “She will be on GPS.”