Dayton Diary: Sentimental junk?

The artifacts on our office shelves may seem to be sentimental junk. But each has a story. Among the items I’ve gathered over 40 years is a nondescript brass doorknob.

I came upon it one day in 1987 as I walked to my office on the second floor of St. Joe’s Hall, then an old building filled with bats, cheesy wood paneling and more than its share of stuff needing to be fixed. The knob on the classroom door next to my office had come off again. I picked it and brought it to my office. I thought, “I’ll call maintenance over Christmas break.”

I never made that call. Eleven days later (Dec. 22, 1987), St. Joseph Hall was badly damaged by a fire.

My office suffered mostly water damage; my office stuff was rescued by a team of UD volunteers. Among the items packed into boxes labeled “SJ 215” was that brass doorknob. It holds special memories for me. Not so much the trauma of the fire, but the way the UD community responded. The residents of St. Joe’s became “academic refugees” spread across campus without a home for almost two years. But everyone opened their doors to us. We were warmly welcomed. (That Marianist thing is real!)

That beat-up brass doorknob that survived the fire symbolizes for me the amazing generosity in our community. I do wonder if our tradition of holding doors open for each other may have started in a classroom on the second floor of St. Joe’s.—TOM SKILL

A version of this article appears in print in the Summer 2025 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 63. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE