Last Look: Drawing From the Past

Bob Happ ’87, MBA ’92 considers the Aurora University campus home. He and his wife — Marissa Happ MSW ’00, DSW ’18, assistant professor of social work at AU — live a block and a half from the campus. The Happs raised their five children in and around AU, and the many red brick buildings serve as landmarks of some of Bob’s favorite memories.

A few years ago, Happ, 68, a trained draftsman and commercial illustrator, started to create pen-and-ink architectural renderings of the AU buildings. He began with Eckhart Hall — the oldest building on campus — and then moved onto the Phillips Library, Davis Hall, Dunham Hall, Centennial Hall, and more. Happ felt a spark of joy and kept drawing. “It just grew and grew,” he said.

By 2020, he had composed drawings of all 16 buildings on campus, including the renovated Roger and Marilyn Parolini Music Center. The black-and-white drawings evoke the simplicity and classic styling of architectural drafts.

Happ’s interest in drawing began as a child. An uncle who was a commercial illustrator himself spotted Happ’s talent and encouraged him to develop his sketching and illustration skills. Happ is color blind, so he gravitated toward the black and white of engineering drawings. After graduating from Northern Illinois University with training in graphic design and city planning, he worked for the City of Aurora and then at Allsteel Inc. At age 30, while working full time, he enrolled in AU and earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and later an MBA. That led him to a career in marketing and sales. But he always loved drawing.

As Happ moved toward retirement, art once again became his passion. He set up his own company and website to take on commercial and residential architectural rendering commissions. And he began making regular trips to Williams Bay, Wisconsin, to illustrate the buildings at AU’s George Williams College campus. When his work is completed, he will have a total of 26 illustrations of AU buildings in Illinois and Wisconsin.

Happ is donating all of the drawings to AU in hopes that the university can use the illustrations as prints, notecards, and calendars, among other ways to help fellow alumni remember the campus.

“For me, Aurora University is a destination for education and a destination for culture,” Happ said. “These buildings symbolize the relationships we build here.”