NORMAL -- The summer of 1969 is famous for the Woodstock festival and for the first manned mission to the moon.

But 10 Illinois State University students and their professor spent that summer on an archaeological dig in Presidio, Texas.

The nine surviving ISU alumni held a reunion Saturday at the home of their former archaeology professor, Ed Jelks, and his wife Judy, both of whom accompanied them on the trip. Some came from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii for the reunion.

Only one student who went on the expedition, Raymond Scott, became a professional archaeologist for an extended period of time. Scott, who was the Historic Properties Manager of the Fort Washita Historic Site in Durant, Okla., died at age 53 in February 2001 while battling a fire at the site. Fellow student Rose Schilt honored Scott's memory at the reunion by reading aloud a letter Scott had written to her.

The alumni lounged around Jelks' in-ground pool, sipping margaritas while Jelks presented a brief slide show from the trip, often prompting laughs.

Schilt, who worked for a decade as a field archaeological director for the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, praised the Jelks for their commitment to young people.

"They've just inspired a huge generation of students in archaeology and other fields to find our voices in the world," she said.

"They went beyond the classroom to embrace their students as extended family. They modeled teamwork and equal roles of men and women. Ed (Jelks) has always promoted women in the field of archaeology…They were early on to break through any of that (discrimination)."

"It (the dig) opened up my eyes to the potential of moving away from home and discovering the great wild West," said Ed Bovy, who went on to perform wilderness inventory for the Bureau of Land Management in Utah and Alaska, and now owns his own publishing company.

"There's nothing like a little travel to get you interested in what's outside your back yard."

Al Morgan of Murphysboro, was a 20-year-old history major when he went on the dig.

"It (the expedition) gave me a lot more knowledge on research and field work," Morgan said. "It also was an experience in interpersonal relationships, working with a group." Morgan said, now retired from the Illinois Department of Corrections.

The students spent the majority of the dig at Fort Leaton, a site about five miles from Presidio, a town with a population of about 1,000 at the time near the border with Mexico. The site was named after Ben Leaton, who established a farm and trading post there in the 1840s. The young excavators mapped out the fort and dug in the ruins of adobe buildings, which were abandoned about 1930.

One of the goals of the mission was to determine whether Leaton's post had been built on the same site where Spanish priests built a mission in 1683, as many had believed. Relics recovered in the students' work at the fort dated as late as the 1920s. But nothing was found that could be dated earlier than the 1830s, leading Jelks to determine that the Leaton buildings were not erected on the remnants of a Spanish mission or Spanish military post.

Artifacts recovered in the dig remain in Texas as property of the state.

The students took side trips in the expedition, visiting Big Bend National Park in Texas, Carlsbad and White Sands, N.M., and Copper Canyon, in Mexico.

At the reunion, Morgan played a drum which was acquired from the Tarahumara tribe of American Indians who had settled near Copper Canyon, while Jelks displayed a guitar and a violin built by the same tribe.

As for the 1969 lunar landing, the students watched it from a motel bar, which boasted Presidio's only TV.

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Students on the dig

Terry Huene, Dixon

Raymond Scott, Homer

Ed Bovy, La Grange

Jan Pasch, Lockport

William Boostrom, Moline

Rose Schilt, Mt. Pulaski

Al Morgan, Mt. Vernon

Jerome Hunt, Peoria Heights

Mike Dopp, Springfield

Chili Shen, Taipei, Taiwan