Don Grubb came to NIU in 1959 with a dream: Build a first-rate journalism department. His tools: A $300 budget, an Army barracks building and the support of English professor Edith Marken, who had known Don professionally and was responsible for his being lured from a fledgling program at SIU-Carbondale.

Don taught classes and advised both the Northern Star and the Norther, NIU’s yearbook. He routinely made administrators nervous, first by being a staunch defender of student press freedom and second, by founding the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association and bringing hundreds of journalists onto campus every year.

Ruby Grubb, Don’s widow, remembers NIU President Leslie Holmes berating Don because the Star had used the word “brothel” in a story. These types of meetings with presidents and administrators weren’t uncommon.

“They thought whoever was in charge would tell the students what to write and how to think,” Ruby says. “They didn’t seem to know about freedom of the press.”

Even so, within a couple of years, Don had talked the university into giving him four faculty members, including new Northern Star adviser Roy Campbell and professor Hallie Hamilton. He also secured tenure for Campbell and, later, civil service status for Jerry Thompson, to make job threats less a part of Star advisers’ daily lives.

“Don Grubb was more than merely a friend of the Star,” wrote Bob Bruce, a 1967 graduate and now a University of Oregon administrator. “He was a loving and doting parent. … His style of teaching and administration allowed students to grow in their understanding of the rights and responsibilities of becoming a journalist, even when it meant allowing students to learn from their own mistakes for which he had to endure academic or administrative rebuke.”

By the time Don stepped down as chair in 1976, the department boasted a full-time faculty of 14, and 800 majors. At the time, he was quick to downplay the faddish interest in journalism following Watergate. “The aura of glamor in journalism is false when you have to work your tail off in such a demanding profession,” he said.

Don died of cancer in 1992. He was 68. Perhaps not coincidentally, some say, journalism ceased to be a separate department four years later, in the name of cost cutting. “It was kind of like a death in the family,” daughter Karen says. Her sister, Virginia, adds: “We’re just glad Dad wasn’t here to see it.”