2023 History Makers Hank and Mary Campbell met as co-eds at Ohio University and moved together to Bowling Green, Ohio. Hank studied industrial technology; Mary worked toward a career in social work. The couple lived in Toledo for a brief time, then in Pittsburgh for six years. They moved back to Ohio for Hank’s Ph.D. and Mary’s master’s degree at Ohio State University. A job offer for Hank at Illinois State University brought the couple to Bloomington-Normal in 1976. They’d both spend their careers at ISU, but at the time, Mary gave it two years.
“I wasn’t very excited about leaving the East and coming to the Midwest, but it’s turned out to be a wonderful place to live,” Mary Campbell said.
A classmate of Hank’s at Bowling Green State University, where he’d earned his master’s degree, was a professor at ISU and encouraged him to take the offer. The flat, treeless landscape was a large part of the couple's apprehension.
“It’s amazingly flat,” Mary said, calling periodic visits to the hills and trees of the mid-Atlantic region “spiritual.”
“But the people are good; we like it here and we’ve both had really rewarding careers.”
Both Campbells found that their academic careers provided opportunities for community service. Decades of involvement with Habitat for Humanity was sprinkled with many individual projects.
“We did many service activities with our students,” Mary Campbell said. “We took students year after year to disaster areas. Hank took his students to the Habitat projects.”
“We didn’t know any differently,” Hank Campbell said. “We thought, that’s just part of the profession and moved to different opportunities.”
Those opportunities included a host of international trips, projects in rural Appalachia and survey research on environmental racism in Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens neighborhood—to name a few.
“The real world has to be part of it,” Mary Campbell said, noting that most of her students at ISU hailed from the Chicago suburbs. “Books are one thing, but when you take students to work in an inner city, they actually get to see what urban city life is like. When they get to see what the lives of other people are like, it changes how they see what they read in a textbook.”
Habitat for Humanity student chapter
Starting in the early 1990s, Hank Campbell helped direct a joint venture between Illinois State University and Illinois Wesleyan University (and occasionally with Heartland Community College). It became part of the curriculum for Illinois State’s class on construction management. According to Hank Campbell, local students built 27 Habitat houses in 26 consecutive years.
“It’s the most successful student chapter, that we know of, across the country,” he said. “That’s only because we’ve got good people backing us up within the organization of Habitat, and maybe a construction manager making sure the lots are there and the materials show up. The most rewarding times are the house blessings with the families, because you do build with the family, not for a family.”
In retirement, Hank has been heavily involved in Normal Rotary Club. Mary serves on the Board of Trustees for Heartland Community College and is co-founder of Dreams are Possible, a nonprofit advocating for women in building trades. Mary also co-founded Labyrinth Outreach Services, an organization that partners with the YWCA of McLean County to assist formerly incarcerated women with reentering society, including transitional housing, job training and medical services. Hank has assisted with Labyrinth’s building permits and construction projects.
Eschewing a retirement of beach life—although Hank maintains a golf habit, in moderation—the Campbells chose to remain in Bloomington-Normal because of the community they built—at times, literally.
“I think we’re on this Earth to make a difference,” Mary Campbell said. “I think we have to be accountable for each other.”
“Speaking out is not enough,” added Hank. “I think you have to put some action behind it, because people will generally identify with action more than just words.”
“But what drives you to do that?” Mary said, pressing her husband to identify his motivation.
“I didn’t want to be perceived as not being successful,” Hank said. “That was part of an internal drive that came from my childhood. You hear messages that you really can’t do this and you may not be able to do that—and by gosh, you can.”
The 2023 History Makers Gala honoring Dotti Bushnell takes place Wednesday, June 21, in the Brown Ballroom at the Bone Student Center at Illinois State University. Individual tickets are $75-$100, with table sponsorships available. Tickets and additional details are available at (309) 827-0428 and mchistory.org.
