Darius Phebus

Class of 1933

Darius Phebus attended high school in Pittsfield, Illinois, where he lived with his great aunt.  After graduating in 1928, he came to the University of Illinois to major in Commerce. 

“I came up here and got on a bus and came up to Champaign–Urbana and arrived about two or three o’clock. And, my mother had been working down at St. Louis, and she came up and we got us a room on California Street.” 

"It was a good school and it was rather cheap to come here.  The charge of coming here... it was only $25 a semester."

Work 

Darius, like many other students, paid for his college education by securing part-time employment during the academic year.  Many jobs were more than just a pay check, as co-workers helped each other.  His first job was at “the Jewish girls’ sorority, I worked there and I think it was about couple of months or less than that, that I was in the gym over there, the old gymnasium.  I wasn’t very strong in things like that, but we would kind of gymnastics stuff, and they had five or six men laying down like cord wood and you just jumped over them all [laughter].  It was awful.  Well at any rate I got over them, did my summerset, but my left knee came up and broke my left clavicle.  Oh man!  I’d go around like in a sling. The cook, she was a lovely women.  So she had a chair sent into the coal room and so I’d go over there and I get my meals in the coal room. And so eventually, it was fairly soon, I was back washing dishes and things like that.  And making salads and what not.” 

The University Fire Department

After working in the sorority, Darius' mother got him another job at the University.  “About the second year, I got a job working in the fire department of the University.  And we had three boys in the thing and we had one room, we all slept in that room, and we had a pole to slide down and the only thing we had, well, we had to work 3 hours a day, that was the thought.  And we got 35 cents an hour, each.” 

“Oh the fire department, had one [engine], one apparatus, and it was an old truck, and we were supposed to have one person, at least, and hopefully, we’d be there at night.  And so that was when we mainly was to do, get down there, run across the ally, or going up the road, and it was dark. And then you would have to get in the front seat, with the driver, the old people.  Just one guy, all there was, and then, we’d all, the three of us, if we were all there, we’d have to step in, we’d have the boots.  It’s an interesting thing, we had boots they’d come up to your knees, then we had these duck pants, kind of yellow canvas pants, kind of like. And we’d step in them, grab our, the, the calluses, put them over our shoulder and get down there and start the truck and we’d go to the fire.” 

Each man on the fire department had their own task to perform at a fire, “We had buckets hanging all around the building. And my job was to get around there and keep water in the buckets...  We had fires in the Chemistry building quite often."

After University of Illinois

Darius Phebus received a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Illinois in 1933 and a law degree in 1936.  He practiced law in his own firm in Urbana until his retirement in 1998.  He is married and has children. 

The tapes and complete transcript of this interview, conducted on December 6th, 2000,   are available for research use in the Student Life and Culture Archives.

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