Thanks to the years on this board, my thoughts of Mr Newhart include stories that ol’ Brot used to relay on here. I wonder what discussions they might be having now.

While I was attending LUC, Ed Sullivan filmed several shows at the colleges of various performers, including Bob Newhart. I believe Bob's show was filmed in the old Quonset hut student union.

In the 1961 yearbook I bought on eBay, there's a multi-photo, multi-page layout about filming the Ed Sullivan segments.

I've done a lot of research over the years on the late 50's-early 60's environment at Loyola.The Quonset hut student union was where the parking deck and far south part of the Halas Center are now. There was a football field left over from Loyola's football days and Loyola Academy (Loyola Academy left for Wilmette in 1957)-- the big grandstand was where Halas Center is. There was an open gravel parking lot where Gentile Arena is, paved with blacktop some time before I got there in 1990.

For those newer to this site, there was a prolific poster (must have had over 15k posts on Ramblermania--NOT an exaggeration) named Brot who grew up with Bob Newhart on the far west side near Oak Park. I even researched their respective addresses and looked at the proximity of their houses based on the 1930 Census when I wrote an obituary for Brot on this site. They both came to Loyola at the same time, around 1948. Brot, a newlywed, left school in 1950 to become a salesman-- Newhart continued to graduation in 1952 to become an accountant in corporate Chicago.

My mother was a huge Newhart fan. She graduated from high school in 1960, just as Newhart's revolutionary, improv-esque approach to comedy took the entertainment industry by storm (look it up, it was crazy). Second City was just gaining steam about the time that Newhart hit big, and Elaine May and Mike Nichols were also changing the way people thought about comedy.

My mother recently passed away (September 2022), but she was able to visit Chicago in April of that year with my brother. We took trips to the Art Institute, The Green Mill, Shaw's Crab House, and a few other places she loved from her previous visits here. She and my brother stayed at the Hampton Inn at Sheridan and Albion, across from Loyola. And every time we drove past the building at 5901 N. Sheridan-- the building Dr. Hartley lived in from the Bob Newhart Show--I pointed it out, and she was star-struck and impressed anew.

Bob Newhart really loved Loyola. I mean, he REALLY LOVED the school. It wasn't a publicity stunt or a pose or a thing he used for advantage when it was convenient. That guy loved Loyola, Loyola sports, the neighborhood around Loyola, the City of Chicago, the lake, the CTA, the people in Chicago, and everything that those things gave back to him. There are several episodes of The Bob Newhart Show that are basically advertising for Loyola. And as recently as the mid-2010s (as an 85-year old), he was doing the voiceover for Loyola commercials used on the sports broadcasts.

I never met Bob Newhart in person, but I feel like I kind of know him.

I graduated in 2001 (obviously), and he gave the commencement address at my graduation. I’ve participated in a handful of graduations in my life at various levels, and almost all of them I couldn’t tell you a single line from any speaker that day…except Mr. Newhart. To this day I still consider it one of the best speeches I’ve heard. He mainly spoke about the importance of humor, and left us all with just about the perfect piece of advice you can give to a college grad about to enter the real world: “Retain your sense of humor. You’re going to need it.”