I arrived, just south of the Colvin Recreational Center, at 9:45 a.m. It was Jan. 24th, 2005. The air was brisk and the mood subdued, as everyone stood, stealing glances at the 12-story tower just to the south. We saw the suspended cable from the crane that would hold the tower’s demise.
My friend and coworker had come as well, and was carrying ample memory recording equipment.
The last time I had seen a building topple was in 1995 when the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City had been imploded, as it was unsafe and ultimately unstable.
This building was obviously less tied to forlorn memories, but tied to memories it still was.
While I’m not a Willham Hall alum, I’ve had several friends over the years who lived there.
My personal memories of the building included their cramped dorm rooms and hours sitting in the Virtual Bean sipping beverages that were almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee. And yet it was quizzically named so.
We stood around, chatting, watching as the crowd began to congeal, an air of silent, buzzing expectation permeating the scene.
At 9:59, the crane operator switched some unseen lever, and a rust-colored iron ball rose hesitatingly in the air, and then swayed there, awaiting its commands of destruction like some god of chaos awaiting the perfect time to strike an unsuspecting populace of brick and mortar.
At 10:00, Dr. Bob Huss, director of Residential Life, introduced Dr. David Schmidly, OSU System President, and the dance of words began.
All involved were careful to paint this as not the destruction of memory, but as the first stage in a moment of rebirth, as if someone were trying to explain away the tragedy involved in the fiery death of some phoenix from ancient Greek mythology.
At the appointed time, RHA students blasted their air horns and the crowd stood in awe as the crane reared back, preparing for the first, decimating strike.
The initial blow to Willham North was, in effect, quite anticlimactic. The impact of iron on brick resulted in a satisfying “thwack”, but alas, with little apparent damage to the building itself.
The crane instead reared back again, and again, and again, until chunks of wall were missing and a window frame was left hanging, depressingly mangled, waiting for gravity’s win of the never-ending war against our own structural designs.
At one point, the ball itself completely missed the building, and the thought of not hitting the “broad side of a barn” came easily to mind. Laughs, comments, even sighs of disappointment were heard throughout the crowd as destruction reigned supreme a mere 100 feet southerly.
Some had shown up that day to see memories tumble to the ground, torn from the building as easily as the brick and mortar were, until they too were a jumbled heap on the ground, cast off from a different, younger time.
Others had come to see the march of progress, the destruction only a small stage in the effort to create higher, better… newer.
Whatever their outward purpose, however, everyone had come to watch the awe-inspiring disorder unfold, as chaos and destruction is fascinating to the human race, for whatever rhyme or reason.
And, in the entropic passing of structured order, we arrogantly believe that out of chaos will rise more order.
Even if that chaos is the loss of a 12-story container of people and memory, now winding through maximum entropy into nothing more than a pile of brick, steel and mortar, and of course, our fond memories of this former home.
Originally printed in the Daily O’Collegian, January 26th, 2004
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