President’s House and Grounds Upkeep: “Exceptional”

The President of the University of Illinois System appreciates and values F&S work done at the President’s House, even without considering transformation of beech tree to valued milled artifacts.

As one would expect with a home of such symbolic and real world value, the President’s House, completed in 1931, is as marvelous as dozens of other iconic campus buildings. Making it a functional living quarters sets it apart, as has the list of its guests, which includes President Barack Obama, aviator Amelia Earhart, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, movie critic Roger Ebert, businessmen and philanthropists Arnold Beckman and Thomas Siebel, governors, Nobel laureates, Supreme Court justices, artists, coaches, international ambassadors and members of town-and-gown organizations all have crossed the threshold into the President’s House.

When they arrived from New York, neither President Tim Killeen nor his wife Roberta Johnson Killeen had worked with a unit like F&S at Illinois; and that meant in terms of work on the house itself, but also understanding the role of the unit generally on campus.

“I mean, it was a big, a big learning curve and also learning to, relish that in a way,” Johnson Killeen said. “You know, when you look at this house, it’s gorgeous. The work done on it is exceptional. And when you think of how old this house is, all the stuff that has to happen to keep it looking like this is pretty overwhelming.”
 
“So so that’s, the fact that it looks so good, continues to look so good, I think is a statement in itself. I think our first really big, exposure to F&S personally in terms of our personal projects was the she-shed and the veggie patch out there,” Johnson Killeen said. “And that went very well. It came out beautifully. It was a project that also evolved a bit, but it all got done within that summer. So, I think that was definitely a trust building experience.”

Call Me Definitely

Another time, the cold hit hard, and even the university’s first family was a little split on whether to call F&S or not. Editor’s note: please call!

The F&S Service Office can answer questions and get your request routed; and after-hours, the call will go to U. of I. Public Safety.
217-333-0340

“It’s wonderful to be in a situation where if something goes wrong, you can call up and somebody comes over and deals with it,” Johnson Killeen remembered. “Like, there was a time last holiday season. It wasn’t really Christmas, but it was somewhere during the cold months. And I hadn’t really realized it, but we had lost all heat to the house. It was it was getting so cold that we were wearing coats in the house.”

“And finally, I think Tim had to go off to a game, and I was saying, well, maybe I should call F&S. And he says, ‘Oh, well, not maybe not. Maybe not.’ You know?”

“I said, ‘Well, I think I’m gonna call.’ So he went off to the game and I called F&S. They came out and discovered that the whole heating system had shut down and that one panel had frozen. Oh, wow. And and they were out here with two or three people for eight hours.”

Killeen noted much the same about other events in the house requiring maintenance: “Well, in terms of the house and F&S, it’s just a great thing. We’ve had floods. We’ve had, you know, electrical things, stuff to smolder and burn. We’ve had things with chimneys and everything else. It’s an old house. So there’s been a lot of maintenance and upkeep needed.”