Yeah, really the only ones I've been around for were Smiley, Val Alstine, Tommy Bell, Matt Tanney, and now Danielle Surprenant.
I know that Helen Smiley was well-liked and during her tenure, we had some pretty successful football and basketball teams. Probably would have made the NCAA tournament a couple of years if it wasn't for Valpo and Bryce Drew. Not a huge fan of Van Alstine...he did a few good things, but also royally screwed up a few things too. Tommy Bell seemed fine, but wasn't here very long. I think Tanney could have been pretty good, but again wasn't here long enough. Suprenant hasn't really been in charge long enough to get a great read on how she'll handle things. If she's named "actual" AD (as opposed to "interim"), and we're able to have a year or two of stable budgets from the state, then we'll see how things go.
At this point, Smiley is the best one that I can remember...and the Summit League's top award for a school on the women's side is the "Dr. Helen Smiley Women's All-Sports Award Trophy", so obviously she was at least somewhat well-respected among her peers in the athletics community.
From the Summit League website:
The Commissioner's Cup is given annually to the member institution that collects the most combined points in relationship to placement in league-sponsored sports between its men's and women's athletic programs, while the All-Sports Awards are given to the institutions that accumulate the most points in men's sports and women's sports. The men's award is named for former Valparaiso Director of Athletics Dr. William Steinbrecher, who guided the Crusaders from 1979-2004, while the women's award is named for former Western Illinois Director of Athletics Dr. Helen Smiley, who headed WIU's athletic program from 1994-2001.
Dr. Smiley was also inducted into the WIU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2010:
https://goleathernecks.com/hof.aspx?hof=225
and the Summit League Hall of Fame in 2018:
http://thesummitleague.org/halloffame/p ... iley_helen
Other AD's in the WIU Athletics Hall of Fame are:
Women's AD Marion Blackington:
https://goleathernecks.com/hof.aspx?hof=21
Ray "Rock" Hanson:
https://goleathernecks.com/hof.aspx?hof=91
Gil Peterson:
https://goleathernecks.com/hof.aspx?hof=192
All of whom had huge impacts on the state of WIU Athletics during their time at the helm.
EDIT - so, after looking at those names and when they were ADs at Western, it looks like we pretty much had Ray Hanson until 1964, not sure who else for a few years, Gil Peterson from 1970 to 1994, then Helen Smiley from 1994 to 2001, Van Alstine, Bell, Tanney, and Suprenant.