lit a candle 6h agoMy mom was in the first class of the engineering college he started at NIU. She called me this morning just to tell me he'd passed, still proud of that degree after all these years.
Their story
John E. La Tourette was an economist and university administrator who served as the tenth president of Northern Illinois University from 1986 to 2000. Over fourteen years he reshaped the DeKalb campus through major building projects, new academic programs, and a successful campaign for an independent governing board. He died…
John E. La Tourette was an economist and university administrator who served as the tenth president of Northern Illinois University from 1986 to 2000. Over fourteen years he reshaped the DeKalb campus through major building projects, new academic programs, and a successful campaign for an independent governing board. He died on September 27, 2026, in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the age of 93. His wife of 69 years, Lili La Tourette, died nine days later, on October 6, 2026.
Born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, on November 5, 1932, and raised in blue-collar South Amboy, La Tourette was a first-generation college student. He earned bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in economics from Rutgers University, completing the Ph.D. in 1962. He served as a navigator in the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command and met Lili, then an elementary school teacher, while stationed at Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka, Kansas. They married in 1957.
After military service he spent four decades in higher education as a faculty member and administrator at Rutgers, Binghamton University, and Bowling Green State University before arriving at NIU in 1979 as provost and vice president for academic affairs. Colleagues remembered an approachable leader who hosted student receptions, wrote reference letters for graduates, and helped teach University 101. He often summed up his approach by saying the mark of good leadership was to get people moving in the right direction and fall in behind.
As president he doubled the university's landholdings and oversaw more than 200 million dollars in capital improvements, including the Peters Campus Life Building, the Engineering Building, the Campus Child Care Center, Faraday Hall West, and the parking deck. NIU opened off-campus centers in Naperville, Rockford, and Hoffman Estates and secured funding to restore historic Altgeld Hall and build the Convocation Center. He established the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, grew the College of Law, and added doctoral programs in physics, mathematical sciences, biological sciences, and geology and environmental geosciences. In 1996 his long effort helped replace the multi-campus Board of Regents with an independent Board of Trustees for NIU. In 2010 Faraday Hall West was renamed John E. La Tourette Hall.
A joint memorial service for John and Lili La Tourette was scheduled for noon on October 16, 2026, at Hankins and Whittington Funeral Home in Charlotte. No cause of death has been made public. He was survived by his daughter Yanique R. Thorman and grandson Jeremy Thorman of Belmont, North Carolina. NIU President Lisa Freeman said the university was mourning two people who continued to support the community long after his retirement.
Biography adapted from NIU Today, Northern Public Radio (WNIJ), NIU Office of the President past presidents page, and Hankins and Whittington funeral notices.
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1by People Forever
My dad worked under him in the 90s, said he never forgot a student's name