Pictured top: Head Coach Pete Elliott (center) and his 1966 Illini captains, Bo Batchelder (left) and Kai Anderson (right).

By Mike Pearson
FightingIllini.com

Over the first 128 years of University of Illinois football history, more than 200 men have earned the prestigious title of captain. Dianne Anderson's recent $500,000 gift to the Illinois Football Performance Center project will effectively assist in honoring the careers of every one of them.

Anderson's generous donation is being made in the memory of her late husband, 1966 Fighting Illini co-captain Kai Anderson, but it will honor the post-football career accomplishments of all of the men who have captained the Orange & Blue.

"Kai would have been pleased to show what his education from the University meant to him and he would have wanted to share this with his fellow captains," Anderson said.

The couple met more than 50 years ago at a sorority open house on the Champaign-Urbana campus.

Kai Anderson and Dianne Gardner were college sweethearts at Illinois.

"I was a freshman pledge at Delta Gamma when I first met Kai," she remembered. "He was the biggest person I'd ever met. At that time, I was pinned to a fellow I dated in high school who was attending Michigan State. I told Kai 'I have to tell you that I'm dating this fellow.' Kai very kindly said 'Well, I've enjoyed getting to meet you, but this is a situation that isn't going to work for me because I just can't do that.' I understood that. Later that week, he sent me a card and attached a quarter to the letter. The card said 'I've been wondering about your wearabouts. Use this quarter if you'd like to see me.' He had a great sense of humor. Eventually, I broke off with the fellow at MSU and started seeing Kai more frequently. We got engaged my senior year."

It was Kai who introduced his future wife, a UI English major and Linguistics minor, to the game of football.

"I went to one or two of my high school games at Mount Prospect, but it was only for social reasons," she explained. "So I didn't know anything about football when I went to my first game at Illinois to watch Kai. He was the team's center, so he's right there in the middle. And I watched these two lines of young men run at each other and most of them fell down. And I thought 'What is going on? What's happening here?' It was so loud and so violent. But I realized that this was an important part of his life, so I went to all the games."

The former Moline High School standout originally played at the Air Force Academy, but left Colorado Springs after two years to play in his home state. He was an all-star performer for Coach Pete Elliott's 1965 and '66 teams, earning honorable mention All-Big Ten honors. Kai opened gaping holes in the offensive line for All-America running back Jim Grabowski and protected quarterbacks Fred Custardo and Bob Naponic so that they could connect with record-breaking Illini receiver John Wright.

Anderson's fellow co-captain in 1966, Robert "Bo" Batchelder, raved about his teammate's physical strength and character.

"I would describe Kai as a gentle giant," Batchelder said from his home in Raleigh, N.C. "Being co-captains of the Fighting Illini was the highest and greatest honor we received at the University of Illinois."

Another of Anderson's Illini teammates and roommates was former Illini athletic director Ron Guenther.

"We played next to each other on the offensive line," Guenther recalled. "Kai was a very good student, a strong leader and a good friend. He took the game very seriously and was very well conditioned. He was about as high quality of a guy as you could meet."

The talented 6-2, 230-pound lineman got drafted by both the NFL's New York Giants and the AFL's Miami Dolphins. He chose to tryout for the Dolphins and was offered a contract to play for the taxi squad. However, Anderson saw the writing on the wall and decided to instead take advantage of the degrees he'd earned in marketing and finance. After turning in his playbook, Kai drove directly to his fiancée's house in Chicago's northwest suburbs to begin his new life.

(left to right) James and Kari Simons, and Dianne and Kai Anderson.

Kai began his highly successful career at Union Bank in Chicago in 1967, marrying Dianne a year later. He moved his family to San Diego in 1970, accepting a job as District Sales Manager for the California Casualty Management Company. Following the birth of their daughter, Kari, Kai joined his company's home office in northern California as Manager of the Business Insurance Division. At age 60, he was elected President and CEO in 2004.

Dianne says that Kai enjoyed fly fishing at his boss's ranch near Daniel, Wyoming.

"While he went fishing, I would run," said Dianne, an 11-time Boston Marathon participant. "Finally, I tried fishing and ended up really loving it. It's a tremendous sport."

Daughter Kari inherited her parents' academic skills and athletic genes and walked on as a soccer goalkeeper at the University of Denver. When she injured her hand in a game, Kari turned to her dad for advice.

"Kai had been plagued by injuries at Illinois, but he never missed a game," Dianne said. "Kai told Kari that she had to decide whether she was hurt or injured. Kai said 'If you're injured, you'll hurt your team. If it's just painful, you've got to play.' That was his philosophy."

A year before Kai was planning to retire, the Anderson family received devastating news when Kai was diagnosed with a rare Mantle cell lymphoma cancer. He went through a then pioneering stem cell transplant. It extended his life for a few more years, but he succumbed on September 30, 2009 at age 65. Three years later, Kari and her husband James Simons presented Dianne and her late husband with twins, grandson, Kai, and granddaughter, Kennedy.

Dianne and Kai Anderson's grandchildren, Kennedy and Kai.

Dianne initially donated money to the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics for the Kai G.E. Anderson Scholarship, a gift that benefits a deserving Illini offensive lineman. In 2017, she pledged a gift for the new Football Performance Center.

"We're going to honor the football captains in a corridor of the building," she said. "I'm doing this in memory of Kai, but I want every former captain to be included and recognized. Kai truly appreciated his education from the University of Illinois and he would have wanted to share this with his fellow captains."

When the facility is dedicated in 2019, she plans to bring her grandchildren from Danville, California to the ceremonies.

"My husband would have been so proud," she said.