WBBM-TV/CBS2 anchor/reporter Roseanne Tellez came to Ravenheart Coffee two weeks ago. The report aired tonight.
The video link to the report:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/7084142-popular-book-is-nicknamed-mommy-porn/
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Ravenheart Window to the World Special
The video link to the report:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/video/7084142-popular-book-is-nicknamed-mommy-porn/
Ravenheart's Window to the World 4/27/2012
BUSTED!
Friday, April 27, 2012, 9:10am. Sunny 47 degree morning. Elgin cop makes a stop on Chicago Street.
Elgin Founder James T. Gifford Bust
It was commissioned for the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. One of the city council members listed on the monument, Robert Gilliam, believe it or not, still sits on the city council.
Gifford built and lived in a log cabin in what is now the middle of Prairie Street, between Villa and Chapel Streets. The cabin also served as the town's first school, church and post office.
In the spring of 1832 Black Hawk invaded Illinois with a band of hostile Sauk and Fox Indians. The previous summer they had been driven from their corn fields and burial grounds near the mouth of the Rock River by white squatters and threats of military action by the state and national governments. They were forced across the Mississippi, and Black Hawk had signed an agreement not to return without United States permission. But it was too late to plant any crop, and that winter the Indians had suffered for want of food. Now some five hundred armed braves and their families were moving up the Rock.
The scattered whites were frightened, and the Governor called out volunteers to pursue Black Hawk. Poorly disciplined, the militia were routed at what is now Stillman Valley in Ogle County. For a time northwestern Illinois was kept in terror by Indian raids. Regular troops under General Winfield Scott were sent to help the bungling militia. They were delayed at Detroit and Chicago by a cholera epidemic, and by the time part of this force crossed the Fox River at a shallows about one mile below the village limits of what is now South Elgin, Black Hawk had been chased into the wilderness of Wisconsin. The soldiers from the East saw no warfare, but they did see northern Illinois, and they returned home to spread the word of its attractions.
Between the small lake port of Chicago and the lead mines at Galena near the Mississippi beckoned a fertile, well-watered region. The Black Hawk War had focused national attention on the area. Soldiers and militia acted as its explorers, newspapers printed their descriptions of the land of opportunity they had seen, and within two years seekers of permanent farm homes and town sites began to appear up and down the Fox River. The track from Chicago to the river made by the heavy supply wagons of Scott's troops was followed by many of these newcomers and became known as the Army Trail. A highway leading into the Fox Valley still carries this name.
The pioneers entering the Fox Valley came mainly from upstate New York and New England, where the stony, thin soil could not match the yields of farms opening in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Although their large families were crowding small holdings, these settlers were not impoverished, having both the means to pull stakes and the ambition to better their condition. They arrived by way of Erie Canal boats, lake schooners, and rough wagon roads. Awaiting them was astonishingly black soil with groves of trees for fuel, buildings and fencing, a land sparsely populated by Indians.
The nomadic Potawatomis roaming the valley had pushed other tribes out of northeastern Illinois in the 18th Century. Allied with the British in the War of 1812, they were responsible for the Fort Dearborn massacre. By the 1820s, however, they had become increasingly dependent upon white manufactured goods, including liquor. They had refused to join Black Hawk in his foray, and in 1833, pressured by the U.S. government and half-breed traders, had ceded their remaining Illinois lands in a treaty signed in Chicago. Before the U.S. Senate finally ratified the treaty in May of 1835, the first white penetration had begun.
Young Hezekiah Gifford of Oneida County, New York, lured by tales of the rich soil in Illinois, reached the banks of the Fox River by way of the Army Trail in the spring of 1834. Delighted with the country, he returned to New York, married, and induced an older brother, James, to sell his property in Yates County and accompany him to Illinois the next spring. Hezekiah aimed to establish a farm, and James sought a location for a town.
The Giffords left central New York about the first of February 1835 with a span of horses and a wagon load of provisions and tools. Many other families were then on the road West. Most of them traveled on Sunday, but the brothers put up their team and rested on the Sabbath. They reached Chicago, then a village of little more than 3,(W, early in March. Leaving their wagon behind, they started on horseback northward along an Indian trail to the Milwaukee River in Wisconsin. The choice water power was already claimed, and they sent their horses with a fellow traveler back to Chicago and struck west on foot until they reached the Fox River. Following the river southward into Illinois, they reached what is now Elgin, thirty-eight miles west of Chicago, on April 3rd. James shrewdly had calculated the importance of a good river crossing site on a direct line between Chicago and Galena.
The brothers spent the night at the William Welch farm in the Little Woods area of St. Charles Township. The next day they returned and staked claims on the east side of the Fox. On the 6th Welch sent his sons with three yoke of oxen and a plow to break the land, sow grain, and make a fence to establish the claims. The Giffords returned to Chicago for their horses and wagon and procured additional supplies. From Chicago on April 11th James Gifford wrote to his wife, Laura:
Hezekiah and myself have located on the river, have a tolerable supply of timber, some good springs of water, and plenty of good prairie ... We have selected land lying in considerable swells, such as would be called in this country broken, as I would like to see something like hills. I have on my claim the best place for water power which I have found on the river from its source to some distance below this ... The Fox is the finest stream I ever saw, it has uniformly in this State a limestone bottom, its current uniform and gentle, its waters pure, and is abundantly supplied with fine Fish. We have selected for sites to build upon, an elevation of from thirty to forty feet above the river and from thirty to forty rods from it, a grove lying between.Devoutly religious, Gifford had selected the name for his new town before leaving New York. During the 16th century Calvinist reformers restricted church songs to what was contained in Scripture. A variety of metrical versions of the Psalms were set to music. The Scottish Psalter of 1615 introduced a new feature, common tunes which were not attached to any particular Psalm. Some of them were given names of cities and towns of Scotland. The Scotch tunes were taken up by the English psalteries. Gifford's Puritan ancestors had sung these hymn tunes for generations. He had helped to establish the town of Dundee, New York, which he named after one of' these tunes, and he now chose "Elgin," for his Illinois settlement. "I had been a great admirer of that tune from boyhood," he explained, "and the name Elgin had ever fallen upon my ear with musical effect."
In Chicago the Giffords met Joseph Kimball of Plymouth, New Hampshire, who had reconnoitered the Fox Valley the previous year. On this second trip West he left his home on February 24th and arrived in the Chicago area about April 1st. Along the way he had stopped at Washington, D.C., where he called on President Jackson and Vice President Van Buren in the company of his state's senators. Kimball was looking for a mill site, and the Giffords invited him to join them on the Fox River. Together with a brother, Jonathan, and a son, Samuel J., he laid a claim on the west side. Beginning about the first of May they built a house, made a garden, and planted corn. Their cabin was erected near the southwest comer of South and Vine Streets. Orchard Street derives its name from the fruit trees Joseph started with the graftings he had brought with him from the East.
In a letter to his oldest son, William C., on July 4, 1835, Joseph Kimball recorded an arrangement with the town's founder and noted his interest in a Chicago-Galena road:
James T. Gifford, Esq., from New York, near Utica, has a location on the east side of the river. He and we have agreed to build a dam together, he having the privilege of improving equal share of the water. Mr. Gifford is to build a flour mill and we are to build a sawmill ...
We think that Chicago will be one of the most important places in all the western country ... We have taken considerable pains to ascertain what chance there is for making a road in direct line from Chicago to Galena, and find that we are on the direct route between these two important places...Mary Jane Gifford, Hezekiah's bride, was the first white woman to arrive in Elgin. She came in June with Asa Gifford, her brother-in-law. Hezekiah's claim joined his brother's to the south, and his cabin was located on the east side of St. Charles Street, just south of the Yarwood intersection. Mrs. Gifford was an object of curiosity to roving Indians. On one occasion a delegation of braves entered the cabin and attempted to help themselves to flour without permission. She pushed one of them. This set up a roar of laughter, but they departed and later returned with Hezekiah, who gave them all the flour he could spare.
Samuel Jewett Kimball (1809-1866), "proprietor" of the west side, cooperated with James T. Gifford on early projects benefitting the community. The city's second mayor, Kimball considered it one of his duties to watch with the sick while the patient's family had some needed sleep.
James Gifford returned to New York for his wife, Laura and their five children, two spinster sisters, Harriet and Experience, and the family of Philo Hatch, who had married Laura's sister. They floated down the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and then embarked on a lake schooner. When they reached Elgin on September 12th, the youngest member of the family, Sarah, was lifted from the wagon and set down on her unsteady baby feet. They immediately collapsed, plunking her on the ground, and she was promptly declared Elgin's first real settler. Their cabin, about the middle of what is now Prairie Street between Chapel and Villa, was enclosed but not chinked up, and no floors were laid, so they moved into Hezekiah's. James Gifford's cabin served as a church on the following Sunday. The founder addressed the Throne of Grace, Harriet read a sermon, and Hezekiah led the singing.
While returning East for his family, Joseph Kimball was stricken with cholera and died in Ohio, but he had prepared the way for a swarm of relatives. Besides Jonathan, another brother, Phineas, came to the new settlement. He arrived with his wife and daughter in June and settled on the east side, north of James Gifford's claim. His cabin was located on the northeast comer of what is now the Kimball and Douglas intersection. Their distant kin, Samuel (Squire) Kimball came in the fall of 1836, preceded and followed by several of his sixteen children.
Two sons of Joseph Kimball were to become town leaders. Samuel Jewett Kimball returned to New Hampshire to marry, then arrived with his bride in the spring of 1836. William Currier Kimball moved in from Canada late in 1837. The first marriage, first death, and first locally elected officials were in the Kimball families, and their willingness to co-operate on many undertakings with the Giffords promised well for the future of the town.
Within a year most of the land along the river had been claimed by hewing bark from trees or by plowing furrows in the prairie. The claims were sometimes disputed. After Henry Sherman staked out land to the west of Elgin in 1838, he put up a small shanty and returned to New York for his family. In his absence the cabin was broken up by the Kimballs, but Sherman later went to court and held the claim. "The Kimball boys wanted the earth," he recalled. "I wanted only a slice of it."
The Potawatomis, awaiting their treaty payments prior to their removal across the Mississippi, bartered fish and venison for the pioneers' flour and tobacco. They were inoffensive, but the whites regarded them as dirty, lazy vagabonds. The leader of one band, Waubansee, had a settlement in the Big Woods, south of Batavia and east of the Fox; another, Nickoway, was camped in Dundee. There were no Indians in Elgin when the Giffords and Kimballs arrived, but burial mounds covered about fifteen to twenty acres between what is now Highland Avenue and Wing Street.
Their continued presence in the valley made the whites nervous, and a false report of an Indian uprising in 1836 brought all of six men to an emergency meeting in Elgin. The last major group of area Potawatorriis assembled at the Des Plaines River for departure in 1838. The enterprising, acquisitive emigrants, to whom they had become a nuisance, were not sorry to see them go. The only reminders of the Indians' sojourn in the valley were a few narrow trails and low burial mounds soon leveled by the plow.
Strenuous efforts were necessary to provide subsistence and to expand the facilities for raising a surplus with which to pay for the land when it was placed on sale by the government. "Money is very scarce at this time ... every man that has money is using it for speculation," wrote Samuel Jewett Kimball in a letter of June 4,1836. "It is almost impossible to have a dollar..."
Large sloughs of stagnant water had to be drained. Breaking the prairie soil required a strong team of eight or ten oxen, but they could not be procured fast enough to keep pace with the emigration. The gummy black earth also required a suitable plow. "We were troubled to find a plow that would scour and do a good work," remembered one of the settlers. "They would all bank up with dirt on the mould board." George Renwick, a blacksmith who arrived in the spring of 1838, solved the problem by copying a plow brought into the area from Virginia that could throw the furrow. He was soon crowded with orders.
The hand-made farm implements were heavy, rough and dull. The main crop was wheat. Sowing was done by hand scattering. The grain was cut with a cradle, then raked and bound by hand. With the gathering of the first crops, James Gifford devised a mill by hollowing out a large stump and fitting into it an immense stone which was raised or lowered by means similar to those used in raising water out of wells.
The log houses, usually about fourteen by sixteen feet in dimension, had a low loft for beds reached by a ladder or steep stairway. The cabin was sometimes whitewashed to improve its appearance. After the saw mills were started, a lean-to was added as a kitchen or bedroom and wood siding was nailed to the exterior walls. The settler's wife made her own soap and candles and washed with hard water softened by ashes. There were no screens or netting to keep out insects, in greater abundance than now. All the slaughtering, dressing and preserving of pork and beef was done on the farm. Fruit, except for wild specimens in season, was scarce until the orchards began to yield. Bread, pancakes, salt pork, and potatoes was the monotonous diet, supplemented by game or fish.
Deer appeared almost at the cabin doors. At night prairie fires occasionally lit up the heavens, and wolves howled in the distance. Despite their hardships and sense of isolation, this first wave of pioneers had taken possession of good earth at an advantageous location.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Ravenheart's Window to the World 4/26/2012
Out of the back door for a change. The coffee shop shares the first floor of the building with Salon Couture. The parking lot is on a hillside, so it slants.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Ravenheart's Window to the World 4/23/2012
Kimball Street Dam - Useful, but Deadly
At the Fox River mile marker 310.4, in Downtown Elgin just south of the Kimball Street Bridge, at a height of 13 feet, stands the Kimball Street (Elgin) Dam. It is the third incarnation of the dam. The current one was constructed in 1881-1882, with a framework of timber, iron rods, and cross pieces, buttressed with dirt and stones, which was later faced with the concrete.
Over the decades, the benefits have included flood control in the immediate area. It has promoted commerce, with a race that aided the creation of grist mills and a stone mill, ice farming in the still water above the dam, and the operation of a former foundry. It is one of the things that helped Elgin grow into a powerful city.
The dam also creates a myriad of recreational options for a couple miles above it in the quiet, deeper placid water, primarily boating and fishing.
However, it also creates a deadly churning whirlpool and backwash. Just below the dam, at the north tip of Walton Island, the water can still be seen churning, a complete opposite of the quiet movement above the dam.
Elgin Dam, Elgin
Located just after Kimball Street bridge in Elgin. Not an easy portage.
Before reaching the bridge move over as far as you can river left (east). Get out of your boat and use your painter line to control it while you walk under the bridge. There have been many fatalities at this dam. DO NOT RUN THIS DAM!. After you walk under bridge, carry your boat on the dirt trail by the Elgin Civic Center to get back down to the river past the dam
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| The Memorial stands in sight of a tragedy. |
In 1974, two Elgin firefighters gave their lives saving another person who had foolishly gone over the dam frivolously on a dare.
The Memorial plaque below explains the situation. It was dedicated in 2003, nearly three decades after the incident. Nearly $32,000 had been raised by friends and family of the firefighters to acknowledge their heroism.
Another man lost his life on a jet ski in 1995.
Although surrounded by the bustle of urban activity, when away from the dam, it is a very pastoral and peaceful setting. Walton Island sits serenely just below the dam, pummeled by the swirling water.
From the tip of the island, a full panoramic view of the dam can be seen. It is almost like being in a completely different place from what lies just steps away.
There is a terrific overlook, giving everyone the ability to get very close to the dam without having to be right in the water.
Recently, the city commissioned a study into the possibility of utilizing the water power for electricity. According to the preliminary study, a 750-kilowatt hydropower turbine/generator could be added to the dam that would have the potential to produce about 3,285 megawatt-hours of electricity per year. This would amount about 1 percent of Elgin residential customers’ usage. It also would reduce local carbon emissions by about 5.5 million pounds per year.
The Trygve A. Rovelstad heroic-sized sculpture of The Pioneer Family, designed in the 1930s and not actually created until 2000-2001.
With much fanfare after decades of waiting, it was dedicated on Veterans Day, November 11, 2001. Its completion was a longtime dream fulfilled by many.
It is perched just over dam, its subjects looking upriver seeking a new life.
It is a truly beautiful statue, evoking hope, courage, and fortitude that must have been felt by the early European settlers to the region.
In 2010, with decades of water scouring the concrete surface, it was discovered that some of the pilings have suffered some exposure, which has garnered a "below acceptable" rating from the state. While not an immediate problem, the dam will have to undergo stepped-up inspections until the appropriate remedies can be engineered and executed.
It has beneficial aspects, but it still presents inherent dangers. Despite the knowledge and warnings, including those in the water just above the dam before the water begins to race, some people never learn, as just recently was the case (below):
from The Daily Herald - Article updated: 4/24/2012 6:07 AM:
Elgin teens escaped death in dangerous dam stunt
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| A stenciled warning, sometimes unheeded. |
“Their lives were in danger whether they realized it or not,” Police Chief Jeff Swoboda said. “They were very lucky to have escaped this unharmed."
Now the two 16-year-olds who went over the dam in an inflatable raft — without life jackets ... twice — and the 18-year-old who stood by to document their exploits will deal with the consequences of their actions.
The boys in the raft, whose names are not being released because they are juveniles, were charged with disorderly conduct after their trips over the dam. Ezequiel Arce, 18, of the 400 block of Hendee Street in Elgin, was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a child in addition to the disorderly conduct offense.
Four officers, two ambulances, two fire trucks, a boat, firefighters and a battalion chief responded at about 7:30 p.m. Saturday to the Kimball Street bridge after witnesses called 911.
While the police department doesn't have a particular fee it can charge the teens for launching the emergency response, a judge could impose extra fines related to the cost of tying up officers' and firefighters' time.
Mayor David Kaptain, who spent 31 years intimately acquainted with the Fox River and the Kimball Street dam as a chemist with the Fox River Water Reclamation District, said the young men may have been saved by the dry weather of late. He said the water level on the river is particularly low for this time of year.
The dynamics of the dam mean water rushes over and flows sharply downward, pulling anything nearby with it. When things — or people — get caught in that current, they are pulled down, pushed into the river floor or the dam, brought back up and sucked down again. The swirling water pattern is called a boil.
“Even experienced swimmers can't get out of there,” Kaptain said. “If that boat had tipped over they could have been in real serious trouble.”
Elgin firefighter Michael Whalen and fire Capt. Stanley Balsis both died in 1974 in an effort to save someone else who went over the dam on a bet. While the man was saved, Whalen and Balsis could not escape the powerful current. A memorial to both men stands on the southeast side of the dam.
Kaptain said the dam was modified a few years ago and, if plans for a hydroelectric project move forward, could be made even safer by reducing the strength of the boil. But up and down the Fox River are sites of horror stories like Balsis and Whalen's.
Arce's Larkin High School friends may have narrowly avoided being part of one. “They were probably within inches of potentially killing themselves, quite honestly,” Swoboda said.
Arce, who is due in court at 9 a.m. May 11, did not return messages to comment on this story.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Ravenheart's Window to the World 4/20/2012
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| Toward the front door, Friday, April 20, 2012, 8:05am - cloudy chilly morning, only 46 degrees and wet. |
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Chooch - y - Chooch - y - Choo
Long planned, there were delays due to facade improvement and energy updating grants, as well as state grants for the planned reconstruction of the riverfront. The project is finally moving forward. A definite opening date hasn't been set.
With the demolition of the crumbling old parking deck over the river and the construction of the new river walk, the owners are hoping to take advantage of outdoor seating overlooking the Fox River. It is said to be the first outdoor restaurant seating on the river in over 75 years.
Hopefully, they will have figured out how to battle the river moths and gnats at the height of summer by then. Either that, or offer them as an exotic topping.
The Elgin Daily Courier-News - The Sorry Decline
South of Prairie Street, the land along the Fox River opens up into a wide flat area. South Grove Avenue passes through the center of this range toward the southeast, terminating at National Street and the site of the once great Elgin National Watch Company plant.
These days, the Grand Victoria Casino complex, Festival Park, and a townhouse development straddle the street. At one time, however, this section just beyond the main part of the central business primarily consisted of car dealerships, the level geography lent itself perfectly to the large lots needed to store new vehicles that for sale.
It was halfway up the rise out of the valley toward the east in the 1950s that the Copley Press determined that the new headquarters of its Elgin newspaper, the Elgin Daily Courier-News should be built. It was to be a full service operation, as all newpaper operations were back then, from the reporters out on the street, through the printing of the the newpaper, right to the delivery at everyone's doorstep. It would be right in the center of the city, at the center of the action of the city's life.
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| If the building remains, hopefully the cornerstone will stay untouched. |
It stood on the side of the hill at 300 Lake Street, a short and steep little side street, at the intersection of Michigan Street. The building, looking at it from the front, was deceptively large, stretching nearly a block back toward the north back to where the printer was. From the side, however, it was on prominent display from South Grove Avenue, The Fox River and up on the bluff across the river on State Street. It was a proud and powerful statement that couldn't be overlooked.
The site was an attraction. Field trips to the all-inclusive newspaper operation by school children and groups were as common and as a required requisite of growing up in Elgin as much as a trip to a Chicago museum was.
From around lunch time one, Lake Street became a flurry of activity, with reporters scurrying in and deliveries going out. An afternoon daily had to hit the stands and the doorsteps of its subscribers by the end of the work day and before suppertime.
It seemed like a perfect storm of destruction began to brew, though. Elgin itself began its ugly swift descent into oblivion. Downtown Elgin, the core of the city's livelihood, had been decimated by surrounding regional shopping malls. A big recession hit in the early 1980s and the city, in desperation, closed off a main thoroughfare and turned it into a pedestrian mall that actually turned out to speed up the decline of the area. The result was a stagnant advertiser base for the newspaper. The demographics of the city were changing rapidly as well, and many people moving in had no interest in what reading was once considered to be a necessary part of life.
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| Rusting unused relics of the past, left behind. |
The aging presses were not replaced, and the printing of the paper was sent out of town. An afternoon daily printed out of town had to be shipped in, which meant any timely news of the day couldn't make a reasonable deadline, and thus the news was old by the time it hit print. The major newspaper from the East, The Daily Herald, a booming publication which was moving into every Chicago suburban territory in existence, set its sites on Elgin and initiated an Elgin edition.
The paper, along with its sister publications in Aurora and other cities, were sold to the Chicago Sun-Times. Eventually, due to poor management, a decaying building, and consolidations within their suburban newspaper system, economics eventually dictated moving the operations, including the reporting staff, of a purely American local newspaper out of town.
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| Left over sign, nothing has been touched. |
The building remains for sale. I hope whoever buys it uses it with respect and holds it in the esteem it deserves. It was the center of chronicling the daily existence of Elgin for decades.
It is hidden behind a row of townhouses now, a sign of Elgin's rise back to the top. However, it remains a nice looking building. All things considered, it still presents itself with a statement. It just needs a new life.
It is just too quiet on that street now.
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-1
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-ii
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-3
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-4
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-5
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-6
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-7
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-8
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-9
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-part-10
http://elgin.bocajump.com/Mike-Bailey/requiem-for-the-courier-news-epilogue
Summit Street - It's Getting There!
Just north of Downtown Elgin, this is a narrow but pivotal route in and out of the neighborhood, and virtually part of a gateway route to the Center City area.
Included in the project was storm sewer and and replacement. It has turned into a minefield. Suffice it to say that it appears progress is being made. New curbs were poured this week. Given the lack of street parking in this area, I feel sorry for everyone whose driveway approaches are no longer there.
Many people have taken great pains to avoid Summit Street in the meantime, including yours truly. It is apparent that everyone else is doing what I have, and using alternate streets. The ruts are unbelievable.
According to the city's website, it is scheduled for a June 1 completion date. It won't happen soon enough. Nonetheless, progress is being made.
Ravenheart's Window to the World 04/19/2012
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| Thursday, April 19, 2012, 11:10am, at the moment with sporadic showers roaming through at 55 degrees outside. Looking out the side window, over the alley and into the street, waiting for the next rain to roll through and enjoying a cup of joe. |
JFK's Elgin Campaign Stop
October 25, 1960
A grainy 8mm home movie documenting
John F. Kennedy's campaign stop in downtown Elgin.
From the Daily Herald 11/1/2010:
50 years ago: JFK’s visit to
Elgin and Kane County
Anyone who has ever had the chance to see a U.S. president whether during a time he was in office or not will tell you it is a moment they will never forget.
This was certainly the case for those who had the chance to witness Sen. John F. Kennedy’s visit to Elgin and the Fox Valley during the close of the 1960 presidential campaign.
Newspapers report that the 1960 presidential race between Republican candidate Richard Nixon and Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy became very heated in its final weeks. In a debate in early October, Kennedy accused Nixon of “using mirrors in his promise to spend more without raising taxes.” Nixon charged Kennedy with offering “retreads” of polices that failed under Truman.
Polls showed the two in an almost dead heat in Illinois a key state needed to take the election. On Oct. 20, 1960, Kennedy announced that he would visit the Elgin area.
The itinerary called for Sen. Kennedy to stop at the Meadowdale Shopping Center in Carpentersville as well as Elgin, St. Charles and Geneva. It was the first time that a presidential candidate had visited Elgin since Republican Wendell Willkie did so from the rear platform of a train in his 1940 bid to unseat Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In his speech before a crowd at the Meadowdale Shopping Center in the rapidly growing town of Carpentersville, newspapers report Kennedy talked about the need for better educational opportunities. He also noted the Soviet Union had more scientists than the United States.
The caravan then traveled to the Flexonics Corporation on Route 31 south of Big Timber Road where employees had gathered in the plant’s assembly hall, said John Diehl an industrial engineer with the firm.
“Kennedy was a big supporter of the space program which was just getting going then,” explained Diehl. “We made flexible units which could operate in high temperatures in space,” he said of the company’s work.
The entourage then made its way south on Route 31 toward Elgin. Nancy Anderson saw Kennedy as he passed the intersection of State and Kimball.
“I was carrying my infant son who was just over a month old,” Anderson said. “We were alone at the corner when he went by. ‘How’s it going?’ Kennedy asked, as he passed by. He was so handsome!”
From here it was on to Elgin’s downtown where a makeshift stage had been set up in front of the Joseph Spiess department store on South Grove Avenue at DuPage Street. Students from nearby Elgin High School who had been dismissed early to attend the event were present in the audience as well as pupils from St. Edward High School. Some sixth-grade students from Wing School located several blocks away had also walked to the downtown with their teacher.
“The area was jammed with people,” said Police Chief James Hansen. “The crowd had a difficult time staying away from Kennedy’s car as it drove down Grove Avenue. Some were pushed on top of it. I took his hand and helped him onto the stage. He was wearing a blue suit and was quite tan.”
Hansen says he remembers Kennedy speaking about U.S. prestige.
“He had Otto Kerner, candidate for governor, with him. The crowd loved Kennedy.”
The motorcade then headed south out of Elgin on St. Charles Street where Helen Childs saw Kennedy pass in front of Garfield School near May Street.
“He turned and looked right at me. I had him all to myself,” she said.
“I don’t think I voted for him in the election though,” she chuckled.
Childs wasn’t alone. Kennedy garnered just over 5,000 votes in Elgin Township, while Nixon received over three times that amount. Countywide, Kennedy tallied over 29,000 votes compared to more than 55,000 for Nixon.
While Elgin-area residents seem to have forgotten Kennedy at the ballot box, just the opposite is true when it comes to cherished memories. That cool Tuesday Oct. 25, 1960 when this charismatic candidate for president visited Elgin is a day all say they will never forget.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Ravenheart's Window to the World 04/18/2012
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| From Ravenheart Coffee's counter, Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 9:45am. A hazy sunny morning, 55 degrees, promising to be a pleasant day. Everyone is immersed in work or web surfing due to the brand new WiFi system. |
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
A Farewell to Keeney's
The owner, Patricia Keeney, passed away 16 months ago. Her mother passed away shortly thereafter.
The business had been open and running continuously since 1883, starting originally as a drug store.
There was hardly a person in town who didn't buy their gym suits and letterman's sweaters, jackets, and letters from Keeney's
It was adorned by a myriad of stuffed animals on the wall and a variety of sporting equipment. Downstairs in the basement, Pat sold collections of glassware and all sorts of other things.
From my own personal experience, there was seldom a time I was at the Gasthaus (another of a handful of businesses that toughed it out through the darkest days of Downtown Elgin) when she wasn't there herself. She seemed to know everyone in town.
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| Second day of auction day on Sunday, people standing outside waiting to get in. |
The website of the store can still be found on the internet:
http://www.keeneyssportinggoods.com/
There was something comforting and quaint about this shop. It was always there, always. Every time I pass by, it's like a gaping hole on the streetscape.
A testament of the love and admiration people in Elgin held for her appears at the bottom of this post, but first, a couple of recent newspaper articles explains it all better than I could:
From the Elgin Courier-News, April 12, 2012
ELGIN — Karin Jones has learned the difference between the figurines, hats, purses, compacts and vintage clothes and more that Pat Keeney loved, and those she didn’t.
The things that she loved, Jones said, didn’t have price tags on them. Those are the things that when someone asked a price, Keeney would pull a number out of the air, perhaps to discourage the potential buyer and keep from losing one of her beloved pieces.
On Saturday and Sunday, the hundreds — possibly thousands — of items Keeney collected over the years will go on auction in downtown Elgin.
Keeney, 62, passed away on Dec. 27, 2010. She co-owned Keeney’s Sporting Good and PK’s Antiques with her mother, Kathryn, who passed away just five days after her daughter, on New Year’s Eve 2010.
Pat Keeney’s story — of how her friends and neighbors stepped up to keep the store running and provide an income for the two women during Keeney’s fight with cancer — made not only local news media reports but national news as well.
As executor of Pat Keeney’s estate, Jones has been working since last fall to get the vintage and antique pieces Keeney had collected over the years ready for auction.
The proceeds from the sale will go toward the medical bills Keeney accumulated during her eight-week hospitalization, Jones said.
Two days’ worth
Keeney accumulated so many vintage and antique pieces that the auction will run over two days at two locations. The first auction is set for 11 a.m. Saturday at the Haight Building, 166 Symphony Way. The second auction is set for noon Sunday at Keeney’s & PK Antiques, 19 Douglas Ave. Both auctions are expected to take several hours to get through all of the collectibles.
A preview for the Symphony Way auction is set for noon to 7 p.m. Friday and beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday.
Each auction has about 800 lots available — with many lots of similar, bundled items.
Keeney had hundreds of vintage jewelry pieces, hats and purses; perhaps 200 Elgin American compacts made at the Elgin National Watch Co.; and hundreds of assorted dresses, coats, shoes and women’s gloves dating back to the early 1900s.
At the Douglas Avenue store, bidders will see the antique trunks, glass Christmas ornaments, Depression glass, board games and more.
The sale items were either at Keeney’s Sporting Goods or in the home the two Keeney women shared. Kathryn Keeney’s estate sale was held last summer, and the sale does not include the sporting goods and furniture from that part of the store, Jones said.
Elgin backer
One of the conversations Jones had with Keeney as she was treated for her cancer was that when it was time to have an auction, she wanted it in downtown Elgin with an Elgin auction house handling the sale, Jones said.
“It was important to her that it happened in Elgin,” Jones said. “I know it means a lot to her, that this is in Elgin and with an Elgin business.”
Auction Consultants Inc. of Elgin is handling the sale.
“She had a lot of stuff,” said Shawn Dunning of Auction Consultants. “She seemed to like Indian things. She had a lot of Indian jewelry, Mexican sterling. There are 250 lots of just jewelry.”
But like any large collection, “one person finds it a treasure, the next person does not,” she added.
Dunning, who has 45 years of estate auction experience, has seen larger personal collections, but the Keeney collection is special in that it is a piece of the local store that Elgin residents might be able to take home with them. “Or, a piece of Pat” that they can have, Dunning said.
It is bittersweet, Jones said, to see Keeney’s treasures going to auction now. “It was Pat’s dream to have a store of just the vintage things, and get rid of all of the sports equipment,” Jones said. “This is what she wanted to do. The accumulation of her stuff is unbelievable.”
Lots of history
Since she and other friends and volunteers started sorting through Keeney’s years of collecting, Jones said she has felt as if she got to know the woman she considered a friend a little better.
“We would laugh, finding cupboards filled with compacts in her bedroom. She loved the vintage stuff,” Jones said.
Because there is so much to look through, Dunning recommended that those interesting in bidding come to one of the preview events prior to the auction.
“Come to the preview,” Dunning said. “Look at the things, look at the condition. There are treasures everywhere, and it is a fun outing,”
Dunning also encouraged parents to bring their children along, too. “Bring your kids through there, to see period clothing and show them, ‘This is what we wore in the 1960s and 1970s.’ Don’t let having kids hold you back” from attending.
From the TribLocal, December 30, 2010:
Friends of Patricia Keeney locked up her downtown Elgin store one last time, not knowing if it will ever reopen.
But they took solace last week in knowing that their efforts to keep Keeney’s Sporting Goods/PK’s Antiques open right up until the shopkeeper’s death put her at peace.
“We kind of all agreed mission accomplished,” said close friend Karin Jones. “We did what we set out to do.”
Keeney, 62, died Dec. 27, less than two months after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma. She had been running the store at 19 Douglas Ave. since her father’s death in 1993, but the family’s history as business owners in Elgin actually dates back 127 years.
Friends who oversaw the business while Keeney was sick say the fate of the store is in the hands of her attorney.
“It’s been a from-my-heart experience,” Jones’ husband, Gentry, said of volunteering. “It’s time to move on.”
The store was crowded as customers said they wanted one more chance to look through Keeney’s array of goods.
Cassie Hurt of Elgin was wide-eyed as she sifted through vintage dresses in the basement shop. Nearby, Keeney friend Ron Weiner, who owns Mr. Cheap’s Mattresses, was looking through postcards from the early 1900s.
“These are anthropologists’ treasures here,” he said.
Upstairs in the shop where John Janiszewski bought his Elgin High School letterman jacket in 1977, he checked out the sporting goods.
“I’m going to miss the fact that it’s some place to come down and talk on your way passing through town,” he said. “The door was always open for anybody.”
Karin Jones said while her best memories of Keeney are from before her illness, they also shared quite a few laughs the past two months. She smiled as she recalled how mad Keeney became when she got out of the hospital and saw that her window displays had been changed. Jones told her friend she would change them back to just the way she wanted, but Keeney eventually calmed down and relayed the real reason for her anger.
“She said, ‘I got to thinking when I walked back in that store, it wasn’t that you guys had rearranged the windows, it was that I wanted my life back and I wanted to be able to work all day,’” Jones said as her eyes welled with tears.
Sales stopped about 6 p.m. Tonya Hudson, executive director of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, led more than 50 people in the store in a brief closing ceremony.
“You weren’t just a customer if you came into her store. You were a friend and she had friends from all walks of life,” Hudson said. “They were as diverse as the products in her store.”
Those friends took turns sharing memories of Keeney.
Bill Jones had the group laughing with the story of how Keeney was robbed several years ago, but didn’t really start fighting until the robbers started to take her signature turquoise jewelry. She sent them running out the door.
Jones applauded the volunteer efforts that kept the store open while Keeney was sick.
“I just want to say how proud I am to be part of this community. … This is such a special loving experience,” he said.
Keeney’s cousin, Robert Mulroney, also expressed his gratitude.
“This is her family,” he said of the volunteers. “She loved this town and everybody in it.”
The lights were turned off and the shop was locked. Those who pass by will see a large banner across the front gates.
“Thank you, Keeney’s, for 127 years of memories,” it reads. “Rest in peace, Patricia. You are missed.”
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| A big get well poster placed outside the store before Pat Keeney passed away and signed by many in the community was framed and placed on the wall of Ravenheart Coffee. The owner of Ravenheart, Victor Gonzalez, a good friend of Pat's, passed away a few months ago himself. |
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