Brooks, Mar. 11, 2005

(Opinion on chief: no comment)

It's too bad you won't focus your attention on finding a cure for cancer or helping the less fortunate. The argument over the chief is so minor in what's happening in the world today. Get a clue...please. By erasing sacred tributes to Native American culture, like Chief Illiniwek, you are erasing their existence. I am 29 years old and did not attend the University of Illinois. I reside in California.

Feriozzi's grandfather, Webber Borchers, was the first Chief Illiniwek to perform in authentic American Indian garb back on Nov. 8, 1930, at Yankee Stadium in New York when Illinois played Army in football.

Student Lester Leutwiler made the first appearance as Chief Illiniwek at halftime of the Illinois-Pennsylvania football game in 1926 in a homemade costume, but Borchers and his interest in Native-American culture took the tribute to a new level.

Borchers hitchhiked to a reservation in South Dakota to have the suit designed and made. He took a Boy Scout troop studying Indian lifestyles to London. He lived briefly on the Illinois campus in a teepee. To Borchers and many like him still alive, the presence of the Chief celebrates a proud history more than mocks it.

Feriozzi, of Zion, remembers attending an Illinois football game with her grandfather, a colorful former state representative from Decatur who died in 1989, and seeing his eyes moisten when Chief Illiniwek came onto the field.

"He cared, and what's being done today is what my grandfather started and the Indians knew exactly what he was doing and approved," Feriozzi said. "It wasn't, and isn't, done to humiliate them, it's to honor them. People trying to make this a negative don't make sense because [the Indians'] forefathers approved of it. It shouldn't even be an issue."

Brooks (Clayton, CA), via the web.