DAILY CHRONICLE SATU RD AY & SU ND AY, JANU ARY 27 & 28, 2018 • $2.00 SERVING DeKALB COUNTY SINCE 1879
Daily-Chronicle.com
LOCAL NEWS
Fatherly love Parent donating kidney to son with health problems / 4 LOCAL NEWS
$500 bail Family expects to post bond for man accused of rape / 7 LOCAL NEWS
Need for ‘bigs’ Big Brothers Big Sisters seeking volunteers / 8-9
EVERYONE WINS
First National Challenge raises $50K for D-427, D-428 boosters / 3, 17-19 TODAY’S WEATHER
HIGH
LOW
46 26
A breezy and mild day with partly sunny skies to start the weekend. Sunday and Monday will be colder despite sunshine.
YEARS OF NEWS Complete forecast on page 5
Celebrating historic Daily Chronicle reporting in honor of the paper’s 140th anniversary
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition 2
SM-CL1594918
3
Photo Credit: Mackenzie Maeder // Photo + Video
140th Anniversary Edition
YOUR JOURNEY BEGINS.
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
Ceremony | Receptions DeKalb and Naperville Venues 1-866-753-0010 go.niu.edu/weddings
SM-CL1595004
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
4
140 YEARS
Stories by Eric R. Olson Section designed by Allison LaPorta
OF LOCAL NEWS
Clinton Rosette
Joseph Glidden
Frank Greenaway
Edward Raymond
An early group of Chronicle paper carriers
D
espite having 140 years to work on it, we have yet to finish the work of history known as the Daily Chronicle. This work started in 1879, when Clinton Rosette, with backing from barbed-wire magnate Joseph Glidden, produced the earliest editions of the weekly “DeKalb County Chronicle”. They found a niche: Make a paper that would be a Democratic Party organ in a heavily Republican county. They vowed to publish “all local news and the cream of the general news.” Rosette kept it going for almost 30 years until, with his health failing, the paper was sold to Frank Greenaway and Edward Raymond. Greenaway became the new editor, and Raymond the new publisher. They were both Republicans, not that it mattered. The Chronicle had dropped the Democratic Party affiliation by the time it was sold in 1909. I have the stock certificate book Greenaway and Raymond used to divvy up shares in the new company. Each man had 150 shares apiece, which were assigned a value of $100 each. No other shares were sold until the paper itself was sold to Scripps-Hagadone in 1969. Pulitzer bought the paper from Scripps in 1996; Lee Enterprises bought it from Pulitzer in 2005,
and my employer, Shaw Media, purchased the Daily Chronicle in 2007. The giants of the paper’s history, though, are Greenaway and Rosette, who were its editors for more than half the 140 years it has existed. This section would not be complete without mentioning them. But it will not be about them. Were they still around, I would have been happy to have them write something for this section – or even just to have a beer with them. But they’re not. We do, however, have a column from Barry Schrader, the oldest surviving editor of the Daily Chronicle (1969-’72). There will also be stories about gangsters and celebrities. Of police raids on “blind pigs,” and a “rump vote” so contentious that the citizens of DeKalb threw the county sheriff in jail. There’s the story of a DeKalb man who spent more than two years in a Chinese POW camp during the Korean War, another who told his experience on the day World War I ended. There’s the woman who helped build Sycamore’s first hospital before being run out of town by feckless gossips. There’s a local troublemaker the Chronicle dubbed “Malta’s Bad Boy.” These are the stories that captured the public
imagination over the years. They’re the ones that kept the paper in business, kept generations of local schoolchildren delivering afternoon papers. (So many people around town, when the Daily Chronicle comes up in conversation, recall working as children delivering the Chronicle.) I will warn you now, color photographs did not become a staple of local newspapers like the Chronicle until later in the 20th century, so there are not a lot of color images. Hopefully the color in the stories will make up for that. The archives of the Daily Chronicle are a window into who we were in DeKalb County years ago, how we’ve changed, and in a way, what we can become. Although society is not perfect now, looking over newspapers from the 1930s, the 1960s, the 1980s – it’s undeniable that we have made progress and continue to do so. But let’s get to the good stuff. I hope you enjoy some of the more interesting people and stories that have appeared in the Chronicle these past 140 years. • Eric Olson is general manager of the Daily Chronicle. Reach him at 815-756-4841, ext. 2257, email eolson@shawmedia.com or follow him on Twitter @DC_Editor.
5 140th Anniversary Edition
Then and Now...
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
140 Anniversary! th
1407 S. 4th St. DeKalb 815-758-0911 lehandrugs.com
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
Lehan’s congratulates the Daily Chronicle on it’s
HISTORIC
FRONT COVERS
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
6
News at daily-chroNicle.com | tuesday, JuNe 28, 2011 | 75 ceNts
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich comes to speak Monday to the media with his wife Patti at the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago. AP photo
Guilty * Blagojevich’s odyssey likely to end in jail
counts Blago faced 1-10 – wire fraud: Nearly all are related to the allegation Blagojevich tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat. Each count carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence. Guilty 11 – attempted extortion: The alleged attempt to force then-U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel’s Hollywood agent brother to hold a fundraiser for Blagojevich in exchange for releasing a school grant. Maximum penalty of 20 years. No Verdict 12 – attempted extortion: Alleged attempt to shake down the CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital for a campaign contribution. Maximum penalty of 20 years. Guilty
By KAREN HAWKINS and MICHAEL TARM The Associated Press CHICAGO – Rod Blagojevich, who won two terms as Illinois governor before scandal made him a national punch line, was convicted Monday of a wide range of corruption charges, including trying to sell President Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. The verdict, coming after his first trial ended last year with the jury deadlocked on most charges, was a bitter defeat for Blagojevich, who spent 2½ years professing his innocence on reality TV shows and later on the witness stand. Blagojevich becomes the second straight Illinois governor convicted of corruption. His predecessor, George Ryan, is now serving 6½ years in federal prison. When sentenced later this year, Blagojevich is virtually certain to get a significant prison term that experts said could be 10-15 years. After hearing the verdict, Blagojevich turned to defense attorney Sheldon Sorosky and asked “What happened?” His wife, Patti, slumped against her brother, then rushed into her husband’s arms. Before the decision was read, the couple looked flushed, and the former governor blew his wife a kiss across the courtroom, then stood expressionless with his hands clasped tightly. The 54-year-old former governor, who has been free on bond since shortly after his arrest, spoke briefly with reporters as he left the courthouse, saying he was disappointed and stunned by the verdict.
See BLAGO, page A9
13 – soliciting bribes: Shakedown of Children’s Memorial Hospital executive. Maximum penalty of 10 years. Guilty AP photo
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich hugs a supporter Monday as he leaves his home to head to federal court after jurors informed the judge they had reached agreement on 18 of the 20 counts against him in his corruption retrial.
Local lawmakers: Message delivered By CAITLIN MULLEN cmullen@daily-chronicle.com Illinois politicians and local residents expressed satisfaction Monday at the verdict rendered by the jury in the Rod Blagojevich retrial that found the former governor guilty on 17 of the 20 charges he was facing in his second corruption trial. State Rep. Robert Pritchard, R-Hinckley, said he was not surprised by the verdict, noting that he heard evidence about the former governor’s alleged activities during the impeachment process in the Legislature. “I was surprised about the first trial, that they couldn’t find enough evidence to
convict him, but I guess there was a juror that didn’t see anything wrong in what he was doing,” Pritchard said. But it was a different jury this time, he noted, and jurors saw that Blagojevich “abused the office and tried to get personal gains from many situations that he was involved with.” Pritchard said the state is “still not done with this,” and there is still the sentencing and the possibility of an appeal. “We can’t erase Blagojevich from our vocabulary yet,” he said. “But I think it does send a signal ... to leaders in our state that this type of corruption is not acceptable.”
See LOCAL, page A9
14 – extortion conspiracy: He allegedly conspired with an aide to shake down a racetrack executive for a campaign contribution. Maximum penalty of 20 years. Guilty 15 – Bribery conspiracy: Related to the alleged shakedown of the racetrack executive. Maximum five-year sentence. Guilty 16: attempted extortion: An attempt to shake a road-building executive down for a contribution. Maximum penalty of 20 years. No Verdict 17 – soliciting a bribe: Related to alleged road-builder shakedown. Maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Not Guilty 18 – extortion conspiracy: Related to the Senate seat. Max penalty of 20 years. Guilty 19 – attempted extortion: Related to the Senate seat. Max penalty of 20 years. Guilty 20 – Bribery conspiracy: Related to the Senate seat. Maximum of 5 years. Guilty
* Blagojevich was found guilty on 17 counts that he was being tried on, not all 20. | For the latest updates on the outcome of Blagojevich’s retrial log on to Daily-Chronicle.com/blago.
DeKalb library checking out expansion DeKalb passes budget, By ANDREW MITCHELL
prove the $1.45 million
7 140th Anniversary Edition
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
No Monthly Fees!
APY*
No Minimum Balance!
Simply follow these three easy steps to earn extreme rates... 1. Use your FREE VisaÂŽ** Debit Card for purchases 12 times a month. 2. Make an automatic payment or direct deposit. 3. Go electronic and eliminate paper statements with Free e-Statements.
(815) 756-6321 (800) 845-4122
ResourceBank.com Member FDIC
*2.55% Annual Percentage Yield (APY) paid on balances between $0.00 and $25,000, and 0.10% APY paid on all amounts above $25,000 each cycle the minimum requirements are met. If you do not meet the requirements during a given cycle, you will earn the Base Rate of 0.05% APY. Rates accurate as of November 1, 2018. We may change the interest rate and APY at any time after the account is opened. No minimum balance required. Available to personal accounts only. No monthly service charge. If you do not meet the requirements per cycle, your account will still function as a free checking account earning the Base Rate. **Replacement/Lost Card Fees May Apply.
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
2.55%
Member FDIC
ratulations to the Cong
Daily Chronicle for 140 YEARS!
avorite A DeKalb F956 Since 1
It's a tim ime e to refl eflec ectt on the pas ec ast, celebrat ce ate the presen at ent, t, and loo ook k fo forward to the fut utur ure. e.
Weekly Specials
Thank you Daily Chroni nicl cle e fo forr embracin ing g ou ourr co comm mmun mm unit itie it iess si ie since 1879 79.
Tuesday FAMILY NIGHT
Save over $5 on any 18” Pizza
Wednesday SPAGHETTI NIGHT
Any Spaghetti or Mostaccioli dinner for $5 (dine-in only)
Are You
SM-CL1600951
Tired of...
Thursday KIDS EAT FREE
(from kids menu) With purchase of any Pizza (dine-in-only)
High Rents • No Parking • Cramped Living Noisy Neighbors • No Closet Space
NOT HAVING A PLACE TO CALL YOUR OWN!
Southmoor Estates is the solution...
SEATING FOR OVER 300 Includes Game Room - Private Party Rooms
Pizza • Pasta • Chops • Chicken
By offering you affordable quiet single family homes. Come talk to our friendly staff and let us show you how easy it is to own your own home.
824 W. LINCOLN HWY., DEKALB PIZZAVILLA.COM
SM-CL1596986
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
8
(815) 756-1299 1032 S. Seventh St., DeKalb www.SouthmoorEstates.com
PAPER BATTLED TO MOVE COUNTY SEAT
n 1903, DeKalb’s leaders were so intent on voting to move the county seat to their city that they defied a court order to stop – and locked up the county sheriff when he tried to enforce it.
the Chronicle, which was giving space in the middle of its front page each day to its ongoing “County Seat Meetings,” being held in locations around the county, complete with a traveling band.
The fight over which town should be the DeKalb County seat was a bitter one, which spent years in local and state courts, and the Daily Chronicle – then The DeKalb Evening Chronicle – was right in the thick of it.
The Chronicle was promoting a planned vote on a proposal to move the county seat to DeKalb. Sycamore officials secured an injunction to prevent the plebiscite and urged their supporters not to participate, but the Chronicle was unimpressed.
The Chronicle was a strident proponent of bringing the county courthouse to DeKalb. In Sycamore, which had been the county seat for decades, leaders were just as intent on maintaining the status quo. In the early 1900s, the barbed-wire interests in DeKalb, including Joseph Haish and Isaac Ellwood, had pledged $20,000 each to build a courthouse in DeKalb. Sycamore responded with its own subscription drive, raising $77,000. Haish would eventually go as high as $100,000, and create a design for a grand-looking structure that looked more like a state capitol than a local courthouse. The cornerstone of the new courthouse, which would be the county’s third and is the building that still stands today near State and North Main streets in Sycamore, was laid on Oct. 29, 1903. It went unreported in
“If DeKalb get a majority of the votes cast next Tuesday, Sycamore is welcome to all that she may gain by court quibbles,” an unsigned item on Nov. 3, 1903, read. “It may take one year, it may take five, but if the people of DeKalb really want to move the County Seat, they will move it …”. A day before the vote, the Chronicle printed the locations of polling places in DeKalb, and promised a big election-night party at Chronicle Hall, with a band, dancing, and a contest promising a box of cigars to the man who had the closest guess for the number of votes to move the county seat to DeKalb. The woman with the closest guess would win a $2 bottle of perfume. The next afternoon, with the vote ongoing, Rosette could scarcely contain his glee in reporting that DeKalb police
had jailed DeKalb County Sheriff Ferd Rompf and four deputies when they tried to enforce the court order to stop the voting. “Sheriff Rompf and his coterie of little politicians were on hand in DeKalb and were promptly arrested and locked up, and it was only on personal pledge of the sheriff outfit that they would leave town at once that they were released,” the paper reported. “… The City Marshal of Sycamore came over on a friendly visit and was promptly escorted to a car and advised of private business that he had in Sycamore and he went.” The Chronicle’s nemesis, the Sycamore True Republican, had a decidedly different take on DeKalb’s “rump vote.” “The illegal vote which DeKalb tried to force on the people of the county yesterday resulted in what could be termed mob violence at DeKalb, when officers of DeKalb County attempted to serve on the law breakers a writ of injunction restraining them from proceeding with this voting,” the Republican wrote on Nov. 11, 1903. “Polls were open in nearly half the towns in the county, but the vote was very small.” The Chronicle reported a vote tally of 3,911 votes for moving the county seat to DeKalb, with only 82 against, at polling places that did not comply with orders to close. (No polls were open in
Sycamore.) The Chronicle had venom for its opponents, referring to them as “Sycamore jackals.” “The impudence of the Sycamore gang coming into DeKalb to interfere with DeKalb election is past understanding …,” the Chronicle wrote. “One single word, one single act and they would have had plenty of time to regret their fool bluff.” The True Republican was mocking in its retort. “Ha! Ha! DeKalb newspapers now, after their so-called election, advance the novel claim that their rump vote was illegal because Sycamore interfered with it,” the Republican wrote on Nov. 14, 1903. “… Now when they rub their eyes and realize that they got only 3,864 votes according to their own county, which is over 600 less than the number required to have carried the county, they say ‘as the matter now stands, the developments of yesterday decide nothing.’ ” In the end, the Chronicle’s prediction that “court quibbles” would not be enough to keep the county seat in Sycamore turned out to be wrong. After more than a year of court procedings, the Illinois Supreme Court would side with Sycamore, and the new DeKalb County Courthouse would open in 1905 where it is today. The opening went largely unnoted in the Chronicle.
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
I
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
Members of the first grand jury to serve at the new DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore pose on the courthouse steps in 1905. A plan to move the courthouse and the county seat to DeKalb led to a fierce battle, including the jailing of the county sheriff in November 1903. Daily Chronicle file photo
140th Anniversary Edition
THE CHRONICLE’S CRUSADE
9
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
10
FREEZING NIGHTS & HORSE THIEVES
19TH CENTURY CHRONICLE SHOWED HARDER SIDE OF LIFE
T
he pages of the 19th century “DeKalb Chronicle” give a look into the harder side of life in DeKalb County, where life was often tinged with some kind of dread, be it caused by the elements, the spectre of disease, or horse thieves.
Joseph Glidden
The Chronicle lent its voice in fighting against all of these troubles of the time, and also noted the day-to-day challenges of life. When it got cold – and DeKalb County saw some hard winters in the late 19th century – snow and ice were a commodity. “The thaw did not last long enough to help the housewives out on their supply of soft water to any great extent,” the Chronicle noted in February, 1893. “They are still melting ice and snow for household use.”
Clinton Rosette
A dispatch from Shabbona’s Grove dated Nov. 4, 1879, summarized the going events in that settlement at the time as: “Diphtheria, freezing nights, the election to-day, wells are going dry slowly, a light snow Saturday night.” Diphtheria was a scourge, often taking lives. In October 1891, the Chronicle printed tips from the Illinois Board of Health urging people to “keep away from public entertainments,” and “take for granted that every sore throat is incipient diphtheria.” The cold often knocked down contagious diseases, but when the weather grew warm, they proliferated. The Chronicle demanded the city’s public officials take action. “It seems that scarlet fever and diphtheria are to be allowed to
run wild in DeKalb while our heavyweight board of aldermen sit around and talk learnedly about deep wells, St. Peter’s Rock and such,” a frustrated editorial from Sept. 9, 1893, declared. “… Unless something is done, and that quickly, there will be more funerals in DeKalb during the month of September than were ever known to have taken place during a like period.” With people in the prime of life susceptible to death by infection or disease, homeless children were common. The Chronicle periodically would run appeals from the Rev. Martin Van Buren Van Arsdale seeking homes for children. Van Arsdale was a
Presbyterian minister who in 1883 launched an effort to care for homeless children – founding the organization that today is known as Children’s Home + Aid. He established an orphanage in what today is Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, sometimes taking children from the local “poor house” under his care. “Mr. Van Arsdale asks us to state that he wants homes for the following children: One boy 12 years old, one 1-year-old and another 3 years of age,” an item from May 1895 said. “He also wants a home for a beautiful baby boy of four months. … Who wants a boy?”
Photo courtesy Children’s Home + Aid The Rev. Martin Van Buren Van Arsdale is shown with some of the first children in his care. Van Arsdale’s crusade to care and find homes for homeless children led him to found the organization that would eventually become Children’s Home + Aid. The DeKalb Chronicle periodically ran appeals from Van Arsdale seeking homes for children, or noting that he had taken charge of children from the local “poor house.”
11
“The horse thieves are unusually active,” the Chronicle warned on Oct. 23, 1886. “The Marengo Republican says 16 horses have been stolen in McHenry County this summer. The Elgin News mentions the stealing of a team and wagon in the St. John neighborhood, near Genoa, Sunday evening, and a team and wagon at Hampshire the same evening. Horse owners will do well to be on their guard.”
A dispatch from Shabbona Grove printed Nov. 8, 1879.
“The two female horse thieves who stole a horse at Sandwich during the fair broke jail last Friday, but were recaptured,” the Chronicle reported a week later. “Later in the evening they attempted to commit suicide by drinking kerosene from a lamp, but only succeeded in making themselves very sick.” The Chronicle also spoke out on civic matters, be it advocating for quality roads, the growth and standing of the city, and public celebrations.
As they do today, people in the 19th century had dreams for the future. One of the revolutions they looked forward to most was electrification of America. “We shall have wires laid along every street, the electricity tapped into every house,” a piece from May 1885 postulated. “… The principle of the transmission of power by electricity fast approaches its realization. We are, in truth, just entering upon a wonderful age.”
Advertisements touting “cures” for conditions such as rheumatism and “catarrh,” and various pills and oils that claimed to benefit the kidneys, liver and other organs were a staple of the DeKalb Chronicle in the 1800s. Here are some ads that appeared April 23, 1892.
Our friendly bankers are here to help the people and businesses of DeKalb County. Call us today at 815.895.2125.
FirstMidwest.com
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
One pair of Chicago ladies made the news after a caper at the Sandwich Fair in September 1891.
The local jail couldn’t hold these two, however.
“The Fourth of July is approaching. Is DeKalb going to observe it?” a May 30, 1885 item asked. “If so, ought not preparation to be commenced at once? If you want a big crowd you need a good speaker of national reputation … If DeKalb is going to celebrate, the Chronicle hopes she will have something besides a barrel of beer and a greased pig to advertise on.”
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
Stealing of horseflesh and road carts was a regular topic of crime news.
“A $300 rig belonging to M.C. McWethy, of Hinckley, was stolen from the streets of Sandwich one day last week during the fair,” the Chronicle reported. “The outfit was captured that night at Mendota, 30 miles away, and the thieves, a couple of tough Chicago females, are now in the county jail awaiting their trial.”
140th Anniversary Edition
Horses were the primary means of transportation and provided critical farm labor. Horse shows and horse-trading ads were almost as common as auto ads would later be. If a horse had to be destroyed it merited a mention.
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
12
EARLY
WOMEN LEADERS D
eKalb County’s leading women didn’t get the credit they deserved for decades – at least, not in the newspapers.
The incident drew regional attention to Dolder, with the Chronicle noting that Chicago news “photogs” had come out to get pictures of her, posing with a revolver in her dress and badge.
News stories in the Daily Chronicle for many years were, for the most part, written by men, about men. Women eventually got their own “page.” In 1964, for example, the page was called “Women and their families.” It included photos of women’s clubs, pictures of women who recently had been engaged, ads for beauty products, clothing and carry-out meals to feed the family.
“She feeds ’em mush and makes ’em like it,” the Chicago Tribune wrote, under a photo of Dolder posing with a revolver. A different picture from that photo session, with Dolder pointing a pistol at the camera, appeared on the front page of the Chronicle. It was rare for any local person’s photo to appear on the front page of the paper, and generally, women were pictured only if they had been kidnapping or murder victims in stories of national interest.
It was typical style for women to be identified by their husbands’ names, as though the most remarkable thing about them was being someone’s wife. An example from April 20, 1964:
After asserting her authority, Dolder garnered widespread support and won the right to finish her husband’s term in the election that April, despite facing three male challengers who did not ignore her gender. Dolder carried every community in DeKalb County except the city of DeKalb and won a four-way race by a landslide.
“Mrs. Ray Serby of DeKalb, Northern Region director of Illinois Federation of Women’s Club Juniors, and Mrs. Myron Hartley, Mt. Prospect, Junior director, were honored guests at the 13th District Convention Thursday at Fulton. “Mrs. Frank Krahenbuhl, Rochelle, 13th District director, conducted business.”
In the two years that followed, Dolder was a dedicated law enforcer. She made occasional raids on illegal distilleries, shut down illegal slot machine operations, and generally seemed to have the support of the Chronicle’s editors, who continued to refer to her as “Mrs. Dolder” but never questioned her ability to serve. She’d make headlines again locally and regionally after discovering a huge amount of morphine that was sent to a prisoner at the jail, hidden in boxes of caramels.
Some women, however, did earn name recognition – however briefly. Others would get their due only decades later when society changed. Sheriff Dolder hoses ’em down Helena Dolder moved from Somonauk to Sycamore with her husband, Fred Dolder, after he was elected Sheriff in 1926. Being a Sheriff’s wife at the time meant cooking for the prisoners and keeping up the sheriff’s residence at the Sycamore jail. But when Fred Dolder died of a kidney ailment in early January 1928, she was appointed to succeed him by the DeKalb County Board, with a special election set for April to determine who would fill out the remaining two years of her husband’s term. “Mrs. Dolder” was the first woman to be a county sheriff in Illinois, and she had a lot to prove. The inmates at the DeKalb County jail offered the first test of her resolve. Jail inmates were not just simple country folk – some of them were federal prisoners who had been sent to DeKalb from Chicago, others were what the Chronicle called “junkers, or dope addicts.” “Some of the prisoners at the DeKalb County jail Thursday night decided they were not in favor of being in charge of a woman sheriff,” the Chronicle reported on Jan. 14, 1928, so they refused to eat the food Dolder had prepared for them. Chicago papers had described it as “mush.” The situation apparently turned into a riot, with inmates banging spoons against plates, and shoving
DeKalb County Sheriff Helena Dolder, the first woman to be elected a county sheriff in Illinois, appeared on the front page of the Daily Chronicle on Jan. 16, 1928. It was rare for local people to appear in front-page photos, and often when women were pictured, it was because they had been the victim of a sensational kidnapping or murder.
At the end of her two years, Dolder retired. She stayed in Sycamore, and largely disappeared from the news, appearing only occasionally in society items about going on visits to see family. Dolder died in April 1974 at age 92. She is buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Sandwich. Dr. Letitia Westgate’s Sycamore hospital
tinfoil into the locks on their cells to disable electric locks, the Chronicle reported.
It’s tempting to imagine what Letitia Westgate might have done for Sycamore – if they’d let her.
“Mrs. Dolder and her deputies took the matter into their own hands and with the aid of tear gas, the drenching hose that is used occasionally on the unruly prisoners and also the presence of E.E. Crawford (a male deputy) the trouble was soon quieted,” the Chronicle wrote.
After she graduated from Northwestern University’s Women’s Medical College in March 1892 at age 25, Dr. Letitia Westgate joined her parents in Sycamore and began practicing medicine.
“… It is stated from authoritative sources that at various times it is necessary to use the fire hose to quiet some of the hopheads who are sent out from Chicago,” the report said. The hosing down had the desired effect, it appeared, and the report noted that “the men were willing to eat most anything the sheriff saw fit to prepare for them yesterday.”
She first opened an “emergency hospital” and Westgate advertised her services regularly, letting people know about her office above Sanderson’s Shoe Store. She soon found the emergency hospital inadequate and believed Sycamore should have a proper hospital, and in 1898 led an effort to form the Sycamore Hospital Association. She kept good notes on her efforts in the form of a personal journal, which the Daily Chronicle reported on in October 1976. In it, she laid out the
13 140th Anniversary Edition
Dr. Letitia Westgate, who led the drive to build the first true hospital in Sycamore, received more positive attention after her death – as in this item from Dec. 13, 1991 – than when she was alive and practicing medicine as a single woman.
Support was slow to build, but with encouragement from the editor of the Sycamore True Republican, the shares finally sold and the hospital building was completed in 1899 at a cost of $25,000. Westgate was one of two staff doctors and the general manager. It featured electric lights and steam heat. Newspaper reports of the period at times would mention her attending surgeries where tumors and abscesses were surgically removed, or fistulas repaired.
Westgate would win the case, but received only $1 in damages. She wrote in her journal that “vindication from a jury does not mean vindication from the public.” “Often the hospital’s windows were smeared with street refuse or the front lawn dug up during the night,” the Chronicle related in 1976. By 1904, the hospital was no longer solvent. A plan to secure $10,000 from Andrew Carnegie for a new Sycamore library was rejected by the Sycamore City Council. A plan to secure $10,000 from Andrew Carnegie and rent part of the building to the Sycamore Library was rejected by the City Council.
She continued to battle with local authorities, though, who in 1906 shut off water service to the building – another matter that ended up in court. Westgate left for Aurora with her parents in 1907, and the hospital building sold at auction in 1917 to the Sycamore Elks Club. It still stands today at 215 W. Elm St. “Finally, it dawned on me that it would hurt my enemies more to see me smile than anything else,” Westgate wrote in her journal, “and I have been smiling ever since.” Westgate would go on to postgraduate work in chemistry and bacteriology, and became the city chemist in Aurora, where she operated her own private laboratory.
The building at 215 W. Elm St. was completed in 1899 and was the Sycamore Surgical Hospital, a dream of Dr. Letitia Westgate. Unfortunately, Westgate’s dream was short-lived – the hospital became insolvent after she lost the confidence of people in the community, and Westgate left Sycamore in 1907 with her parents. Mark Busch mbusch@shawmedia.com
Westgate died Sept. 30, 1945, at her family home near the tiny village of Triumph, southeast of Mendota, and was buried in the family cemetery. She was 78 years old.
A few other notable moments in DeKalb County women’s history: defeat one of the best campaigners • Oldest woman to vote in Sycamore: in the business by such a margin In 1914, women in Illinois were indicates that she has strength,” allowed to vote for the first time in “local initiative” races to determine the Chronicle reported. whether alcohol could be sold there. Hanson would prove to be the most The oldest woman to cast a vote, popular candidate in the general it was widely believed, did so in election in the fall, as well. Sycamore. “She was Mrs. Margaret Swinbank, aged 101 years, who was helped from her carriage at the polling place and cast her ballot on the local option proposition,” the Daily Chronicle reported on April 7, 1914. • Rosa Hanson of Sycamore was elected DeKalb County treasurer in 1926, making her the first woman to hold countywide office. In fact, Hanson was the most popular candidate that year, which was a surprise, the Daily Chronicle wrote after she bested a male candidate in the Republican primary on April 14, 1926. “Mrs. Hanson carried every voting precinct in the county by wide margins, and the fact that she could
Hanson left office in 1930, and was succeeded by another Sycamore woman, Elsie Decker. Hanson then succeeded Decker and served another term as treasurer from 1934-1938. • First woman judge: Judge Robbin Stuckert was selected as an associate judge for the 16th Circuit in May 2001, making her the first woman to become a judge in DeKalb County. “That is a tremendous honor,” Stuckert told the Daily Chronicle at the time. Stuckert has gone on to become the chief circuit judge of the 23rd Judicial Circuit, which serves DeKalb and Kendall counties.
Christmas Worship Schedule December 2, 9 & 16 Traditional Worship 8:00 a.m. Sunday School & Adult Bible Study 9:15 a.m. Contemporary Worship 10:30 a.m. Broadcast on 1360AM WLBK at 10:30a.m. “God with Us” Midweek Advent Worship Series Wednesday, December 5, 12 & 19 7:00 p.m. Christmas at Four – A Worship Service by the Children of Immanuel Sunday, December 16 4:00 p.m. “Jesus is the Sweetest Gift” presented by: Little Lambs Preschool Christmas Program Thursday, December 20 6:00 p.m.
Sunday Worship December 23 9:00 a.m. (no 8:00 or 10:30 service/no Sunday School)
Christmas Eve Candlelight Worship Service with Holy Communion Monday, December 24 7:00 p.m. Christmas Morning Worship with Holy Communion Tuesday, December 25 9:00 a.m. Broadcast of Christmas Eve Service on 1360 AM WLBK radio at 10:30 a.m. Sunday Worship with Holy Communion December 30 9:00 a.m. (no 8:00 or 10:30 service/no Sunday School)
Immanuel Lutheran Church
511 Russell Rd. DeKalb 815-756-6669 • ImmanuelDeKalb.com
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
But the same year, after a patient’s death, she would become the subject of gossip that would eventually lead her to file a slander lawsuit against a pair of local women, who according to the True Republican, were “of irreproachable character and have many friends.”
“The women circulated a story that West was directly responsible for the death of another woman,” the Chronicle reported in 1976. “One newspaper reported that ‘every community has its female gossips, and the report going from lip to lip grew worse as it went, until finally we find the majority of the people of Sycamore had about made up their minds to swallow the story that the woman had been killed by an overdose of morphine.”
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
plan: The association would sell 500 shares of stock to cover the cost of land and building, with a mortgage to cover the rest of the debt.
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition 14
15
BOOTLEGGERS, ‘BLIND PIGS’ THRIVED
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
The Chronicle’s front page on the eve of the repeal of the 18th Amendment, Dec. 5, 1933.
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
From the time DeKalb County became “dry as a big desert,” reports of alcohol-related arrests and raids on “blind pigs” would occasionally make headlines, until the 18th Amendment was repealed on Dec. 5, 1933.
T
he 18th Amendment ended the sale of alcoholic beverages across the United States in July 1919, but DeKalb County already had been “dry” for years by then.
There were to be four saloons – but no gambling – and the licenses would cost $1,500 each, or about $34,000 in 2018 dollars. By the next year, there were five saloons. They did a booming business.
DeKalb, Sycamore, Shabbona, Malta, Kingston, Waterman, Clare and Somonauk all voted to ban alcohol sales for the first time in 1908, in an election that the DeKalb Chronicle called “one of the most memorable and exciting campaigns that Illinois has known in a generation.” The results of local votes around the state forced the closure of more than 1,000 saloons.
“Maple Park will be the Mecca of the thirsty ones from DeKalb and many of the surrounding country Saturday night when the saloons of the village will reopen,” The Chronicle noted on May 12, 1916. “… Several local ‘stew parties’ have been organized, we understand, to visit the village.”
That wasn’t the end of the fight. “Local initiative” votes on alcohol sales were a part of virtually every vote from then on, and the prohibitionists had the momentum. By April 1914, all of DeKalb County was “dry as (a) big desert,” and women, who were allowed to vote in the election, were solidly behind the idea at the ballot box. The only “oasis” between Chicago and the Mississippi River town of Fulton was Maple Park, which voted to allow liquor sales in a 1916 vote, in which 316 wets outnumbered 258 prohibitionists.
140th Anniversary Edition
COUNTY’S ‘DRY’ DAYS
A week later, the volume of stewed passengers led the Aurora-DeKalb electric rail line to add a passenger car, exclusively for service between DeKalb County and Maple Park, to meet the demand on Saturday nights. “There were occasional reports of mayhem and at least one man would be found dead of exposure near the train tracks, though he was not hit by a train.” The party didn’t last. On the eve of the 18th Amendment taking effect banning liquor sales, locals everywhere were planning one last trip to “The Park” to “drink ‘er dry.”
“Probably every old soak who makes the return trip tonight from The Park will jingle with glassware where the bottles are packed around his coat pockets and each will carry with great care a package of greater or less size, carefully wrapped up to resemble a box of shoes or some other commodity,” the Chronicle noted on June 30, 1919. Days earlier, the Chronicle looked forward to the onset of prohibition as a “great day.” It offered its own recommendation for a replacement beverage: Buttermilk, which it called “nutritious, palatable and full of zest and vim.” Many failed to heed this advice. Even before prohibition took effect, people regularly appeared in local police reports for operating what the paper called “blind pigs” – speakeasies. The Chronicle sometimes described those arrested as “foreigners” – it was common at the time to link crime and immigrants – but it was clear that many natives were also indulging. Police around the county periodically would raid homes and underground bars, searching for stills, brewing equipment, and “moonshine liquor.” Home distillers
Actress Helen Day was pictured taking a drink – legally – in the Dec. 11, 1933 Daily Chronicle.
SAVE THE DATE
W
Winter Wonders Spa Holiday Monday, December 3
W
5:00 - 8:00pm
Winter Wonders Spa Holiday Open House Refreshments and Live Music 40 gift drawings from Studio One, Staff, and Vendors Receive 20% off all of our professional product, just in time for the Holidays. Meet with our professional product representatives.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
would typically sell their product for about $2 a pint, and some operated distilleries inside homes. People arrested for liquor violations – you could be arrested simply for being intoxicated – typically faced fines of $10 or $25, payable to the local authorities. No matter how many raids the authorities conducted, whether they turned up a quart of liquor or a home distillery, the blind pigs and illicit liquor traffic didn’t end – they proliferated. In a frustrated editorial in December 1928 on the heels of a raid that closed another DeKalb blind pig, the paper lamented that the city had become more “wide open” than in any time since the saloon days, and called for stronger penalties for people dealing in illegal liquor. “If the vicinity of this arrest is so honeycombed with blind pigs, why not a few municipal arrests to clean up?” the editorial asked. “If we read the signs right, things are about set for a thorough mopping up of this city, as the public indignation is getting just a bit past the muttering stage.” The 21st Amendment repealing prohibition was ratified Dec. 5, 1933,
and the next day’s Chronicle included a story about the “Quiet repeal night in Sycamore,” which had been dry since 1913. Whiskey “was selling over the bar as in days of old” for 20 cents a shot and $1.75 a pint, the reporter noted. The story said the city’s “old-time drinkers” lamented that a pint of whiskey cost what a gallon had before the town’s seven saloons were forced to close. (The story made no mention of where shopkeepers had obtained the booze being sold that night.) The Chronicle’s editors, who had wanted stricter enforcement of prohibition laws, were in no mood for celebrating on repeal. In an editorial a week later, they seemed resigned to the new “wet era.” “Prohibition, which was to have cleared up century-old problems of crime, crookedness and misery, failed because we thought we could take out of it more than we put in,” the editorial said. “… Will the people who protested against prohibition support the new laws with their pocketbooks? Or, to put it more exactly, will they stop supporting the speakeasy? “If they do, the new regime will work. If they don’t, it will fail very miserably.”
WE CELEBRATE!
“Spa Holiday” Gift Cards
November 1 thru December 3
For every $200 in gift card purchases, you will receive a $50 Spa Spending Certificate
“Holiday Glow” Gift Cards
December 4 thru December 31
For every $100 in gift card purchases, you will receive a $20 Spa Spending Certificate
Special Moments Unforgettable Memories Remarkable Milestones
26 Years of Creating the MagicYesterday, Today and Tomorrow!
3 0 3 E . H i l l c r e s t D r. D e K a l b | 8 1 5 - 7 5 8 - 3 8 0 0
1007 N. First St, DeKalb • 815-758-4508 studioonesalonspa.com
ENTER OUR HOLIDAY DRAWING!
DROP OFF THIS ENTRY @ Becky Beck’s Jewelry Store AND YOU MAY WIN A $500 BBJ GIFT CARD! Name: __________________________________________________ Address: ________________________________________________ Contact info: ____________________________________________
For advertising opportunities contact Le Print Express/New Value Magazine azinee
15
Call New Values Magazine: 815-748-7121 21
New Values Magazine.com
Winner to be drawn @ noon on 12/15; one entry per household.
SM-CL1594945
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
16
JAILBREAKS LED TO SCANDAL IN ‘30S n the 1930s, criminals with colorful nicknames and deadly exploits captured the popular imagination. Gangsters like John Dillinger, George “Baby Face” Nelson, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow – Bonnie & Clyde – became nationally infamous for their crime sprees, which often ended in their deaths.
Kenneth Kempson: Malta’s Bad Boy For a few years, Kenneth Kempson regularly appeared in the paper, becoming notorious for fighting, stealing, breaking out of jail and his vow to make Dillinger “look like a sissy.” The Chronicle dubbed him “Malta’s Bad Boy.” Kempson was born July 14, 1914, in Malta, and first made the news at age 17 in November 1931, in the first of what would be many alcohol-fueled misadventures. After spending hours drinking home-brewed beer and liquor on Thanksgiving at the home of 62-year-old Ben Decker of Malta, Kempson repeatedly hit Decker over the head with a bottle, then stole his money and his car. “That Decker did not die from the blows received is unusual,” a Daily Chronicle report from Nov. 28, 1931, noted. He later confessed, and was released from custody so he could enlist in the Navy, but by 1933 he was back in town making trouble. In October of ’33, Kempson was two days from completing a jail sentence for an August 1933 car theft when he broke out of the DeKalb County Jail. It was easy: They left the door unlocked. Sheriff Isaac W. George told the Daily Chronicle it had been left unlocked because it was broken.
As he showed himself out, Kempson stopped in a supply room to grab a .38-caliber revolver, a riot gun, and a set of handcuffs, then hit the town and got drunk. He was caught around 3 a.m. as he tried to steal a car outside a Sycamore café – where a couple of Sycamore police were eating. Sheriff George would be upbraided by a local judge in the aftermath for not keeping weapons under lock and key. Then 19, Kempson would be sentenced to a reformatory in Joliet – but he didn’t stay long. By June ’35, he was back and adding “to his record as a bad boy,” the Chronicle reported. After a night hitting local taverns, he stole a car and promptly crashed it into the porch of a house on Fisk Avenue in DeKalb. He was mad at the DeKalb police who arrested him that night, the paper reported. “Kempson vowed … that when he gets out again he is going to make Dillinger look like a sissy,” the Chronicle reported on June 3, 1935. “He threatened all of the officers with revenge and … is looking forward to a release so that he can start making amends for the injustices he has suffered at the hands of the police.” They sent him to prison in Pontiac. Two years later he was out on parole – and back to stealing cars and running from the law. In a Nov. 2, 1937 story headlined “Malta bad boy robs his dad,” the Chronicle reported that Kempson had been wanted by the law for the past few weeks after a series of vehicle thefts. The last car he stole, he left in Chicago, later sending the owner a postcard from Indiana telling them where they could find it. He’d returned to his parents’ home that night “just long enough to rob his father of $41,” the Chronicle reported on Nov. 2, 1937. “Kempson really is Malta’s bad boy,” the paper noted. “… The young man is now 23 years of age and is still going strong.”
He wouldn’t resurface until October 1939, when the Chronicle reported he had been hospitalized with a broken back after a single-car crash. The Sheriff read the story and arrested him on the auto theft warrants. They must have remembered to lock the cell door that time. At 25, Kempson was sentenced to a year at a work farm in Vandalia. That was the last time the Chronicle reported on the criminal exploits of the Malta bad boy. Kempson went on to become an electrician, who went to the Aleutian Islands during World War II. He married in 1942 and had two children. Unfortunately, Kempson made front-page news one final time, on May 19, 1959, when a huge banner headline blared, “Switch engine kills Malta resident.” Kempson had been walking along the railroad tracks near Seventh Street in DeKalb around 7:15 a.m. that morning, when he sidestepped an oncoming train and was hit by a switch engine going the opposite direction. He was 45 years old. A ‘whoopee party’ The DeKalb County jail is a crowded place these days, but in the 1930s, there was enough space available that federal prisoners commonly outnumbered the local troublemakers by a wide margin. In response to a national rise in crime, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI “G-Men” were so busy locking up mobsters and bootleggers that they were running out of space to put them. So they turned to out-of-theway places like Sycamore to house inmates. By jail standards, the DeKalb County jail was a peach. It became known as the “lace-curtain jail” for the cush treatment inmates received there. When a real gangster came to town, the whole town was buzzing.
The Nov. 2, 1937 Daily Chronicle noted the latest crime connected with Kenneth Kempson, “Malta’s bad boy.”
in Europe, and by 1934 he had been convicted in absentia in England. In order to stop extradition proceedings, he’d concocted a kidnapping story and blamed members of Roger “Terrible” Touhy’s gang in Chicago. They now wanted him dead. That was how, as a federal prisoner, Jake the Barber wound up at the lace curtain jail. On April 25, 1934, the Daily Chronicle wrote about the arrival of this luminary of “the Crime Kingdom.” “Al Capone or John Dillinger may have caused a bigger stir if they had come here, but it is doubtful,” the Chronicle reported. Field Utter, who would go on to serve as county sheriff himself from 196266, talked about being a boy living near the jail when Factor arrived in a 2004 Daily Chronicle story.
An English-born gangster affiliated with the Chicago Outfit. Factor owed his nickname to his training in hair care, a profession that made his older brother, Max Factor, enduringly famous.
“Utter … and other neighborhood children ran errands for prisoners, getting sodas and candy bars for them from downtown,” reporter Renee Messacar wrote in the July 18, 2004 edition. “He also sold to prisoners, who cooked their own food, rabbits he had raised.”
Jake the Barber was a con man, and he was good at it. He had made millions on stock and casino scams
“They were just ordinary people,” Utter told Messacar. “Some were just there for bootlegging.”
That man was John “Jake the Barber” Factor.
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
Meanwhile, DeKalb County’s jail under Sheriff Isaac W. George would develop a reputation as the “lace-curtain jail” for being accommodating – and easy to break out of. George had a rocky tenure as DeKalb County’s sheriff. Prone to automobile accidents, he would find himself admonished by a judge after one jailbreak and the subject of an FBI investigation after another one that may or may not have occurred.
“The sheriff states that Kempson must have learned the lock was not working and in this manner walked out of the cell room,” the Chronicle reported on Oct. 23, 1933.
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
I
140th Anniversary Edition
‘BAD BOY’ & ‘THE BARBER’
17
18
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
George wanted to make sure he was comfortable. Factor “was given the run of the jail” during his two-month stay, Utter recalled, staying in a private room in the jail’s hospital ward. “Mr. Factor … has a good bed with sheets and pillow cases, which are lacking on the camp cots in the cells below,” the Chronicle noted on May 19, 1934. “The principal seat in the room is the jail’s barber chair.” Factor also told the reporter he considered George a model sheriff. “Isaac George being probed,” the Chronicle headline read on May 18, 1934. “Federal authorities checking for story concerning Factor escapade.”
John “Jake the Barber” Factor, shown at a federal building in Chicago on May 30, 1931, after he surrendered to face extradition on charges he had defrauded British subjects of more than 1 million pounds. His arrival three years later in Sycamore would set the town buzzing. (AP photo)
Utter recalled that The Barber was a good tipper, too. Being that he was a celebrity, it seemed Sheriff
“The story, briefly told, is that Sheriff George, John “Jake the Barber” Factor … and two young women were on a beer whoopee party at the Leland hotel in Aurora on Wednesday night,” the paper wrote. “Sheriff George today denied the story, stating there was nothing to it.” “The United Press stated today that “just a friendly little party down in Aurora today became the concern of the State Department, the British ambassador, the federal district court, the sheriff of DeKalb County and – last but most poignantly – John Factor.
The story went on to say that a British government attorney had announced he had proof that “Factor and his supposed jailer, Sheriff Isaac George, were seen Wednesday night in an Aurora hotel sociably drinking with two attractive young women.” Witnesses described the women as “a blonde from DeKalb and a brunette from Sycamore.” But the owner of the Leland, an old friend of the sheriff, said the story “couldn’t be so.” U.S. Marshal H.C.W. Laubenheimer took the weekend to look into the story before declaring it “absolutely unfounded,” the Chronicle reported May 23, 1934. The two couldn’t have been Aurora because there was paperwork saying otherwise. The Marshals thought the rumors might have arisen out of a feud between county sheriffs. Turned out, Laubenheimer was a friend of George’s. Not everyone was convinced there was nothing to the incident. Stories abounded of Factor walking free around Sycamore. The U.S. Attorney’s office decided to have DeKalb County removed from the list of preferred jails for housing federal prisoners. It appears the FBI compiled a more
thorough, 14-page investigation of the “whoopee party” rumor. It seemed to be a gray area whether any laws would have been broken, anyway – as it could be argued that Factor had remained in the custody of the sheriff so long as they were together, U.S. Attorney Dwight Green said in a June 6, 1934, story. “Under the statutes of Illinois, all jails have been made available for the keeping of federal prisoners … but I have learned sufficient things in this report to warrant a suggestion … that no more federal prisoners be sentenced to the Sycamore jail,” Green said in the story. A couple of days later, the Chronicle reported that Green’s investigation had found prisoners received “unusual liberties” in DeKalb County, and all federal inmates with more than 30 days on their sentences were removed. Factor would later be flown back to Chicago on a private plane – George considered it too dangerous to drive him – and the federal inmates ceased coming to the county jail. Factor must have liked Sheriff George – he called him from New York City after his release to talk about his plans to move west, where Factor eventually would get back in the casino game. Utter, who died in 2013 at age 94, recalled that he missed the tips.
SM-CL1595003
19
T
he United States’ entry into World War II affected the lives of every American, and it was a constant presence in people’s daily lives. Every citizen was expected to contribute, through rationing, scrap drives, victory gardens, working in essential industries
– and supporting the war effort financially through buying war bonds. Full-page ads urging DeKalb County residents to buy war bonds early and often appeared regularly in the Daily Chronicle, appealing to people’s patriotism to get them to invest to support the coming invasion.
“Decide now to dig down – dig down deep,” read an ad in the April 16, 1943 Daily Chronicle. “Take every penny you can and go to your nearest bank or post office and turn the money into War Bonds.
than you are before this war is won. And don’t ever forget this!”
“Sure, it may hurt. But a lot of clean-cut young fellows in uniform are going to be hurt a lot worse
Here are some examples of the messages the federal government shared with citizens in 1943.
Often, pictures of local men serving in the armed forces would accompany the ads, as part of the local “honor roll.”
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
LOCALS URGED TO DO THEIR PART IN WWII
140th Anniversary Edition
ON THE HOMEFRONT
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
20
LONG JOURNEY HOME
DEKALB POW’S STORY CAPTIVATED READERS
A Chronicle photographer got this shot of Robert Saksa reaching into a jar of doughnuts at his parents’ home, shortly after his release on Sept. 16, 1953. Army Col. Robert “Bob” Saksa is shown in a clipping from the May 1, 1971 Daily Chronicle. The photo accompanied a story about Saksa being assigned to a new traffic management job at Army Headquarters in Washington D.C. He had been in Vietnam.
U.S. Army Lt. Robert Saksa’s release from a prisoner of war camp was front-page news in the Aug. 27, 1953, edition of the Daily Chronicle. Saksa would return to a hero’s welcome the following month, and go on to a distinguished Army career.
R
obert Saksa stopped at his grandparents home on South Fifth Street in DeKalb in July 1950 as he made his way from Virginia to Japan, on his way to the war in Korea.
described his guarding a bridge in Korea with his platoon, living in a thatched hut that served as a headquarters, and occasionally taking enemy soldiers prisoner.
He would not return until September 1953, when he would receive a hero’s welcome after almost three years as a prisoner of war.
“He stated that the prisoners surrendered by waving their hands, in which they held safe conduct leaflets, and that they were in the nude,” the Chronicle reported on Oct. 12, 1950.
Saksa entered the service immediately after graduating from DeKalb Township High School in 1945, leaving before the commencement ceremony. He first served with the Merchant Marine, then enlisted in the Army in 1946. He’d graduated officer training school and went to Korea with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant, serving with the Eighth Regiment of the First Cavalry Division. The Chronicle reported on a letter he sent home from Korea, dated Sept. 26, 1950, which
Weeks later, Saksa and several of his men were captured by Communist forces. A surprise attack on Oct. 31 led to his regiment being trapped in enemy territory. “… The men had been given orders to disperse and take to the hills,” the Chronicle reported. “About 20 of the group were able to struggle back to safety … some were killed while others were taken prisoner.”
As Chronicle readers would later learn, Saksa was captured Nov. 2, his right forearm wounded by machine-gun fire and mortar fragments scorching his left thigh. The wounds would take months to heal due to lack of medical supplies and prevailing filth at the Pyok-Dong prison camp to which he was forced to march. For months, Saksa’s family did not know what had happened to him. Almost a month after the attack, on Nov. 27, 1950, Saksa’s mother Irene received a telegram informing her that Robert, 23, was missing in action. In May 1951, Saksa’s name appeared among a list of prisoners being held in a prison camp in a story printed by the Daily Worker newspaper in New York. She asked the Chronicle for help finding out if it was true, but the U.S. State Department responded only that Saksa was still among the missing.
It was not until December 1951 that United Nations officials confirmed that Saksa was among the POWs being held at at the Pyok-Dong camp, an isolated site in North Korea near the border with China. By then, his mother already had received a couple of letters from him.
The years dragged on, and Saksa continued to languish. He would not be released until August 1953, almost a month after the signing of an armistice, which ended the shooting, if not the war. The family found out through a late-night phone call from a United Press reporter in August 1953 that Saksa had been released. “Throughout the night the Saksa household was a beehive of activity as calls came in frok various newspapers and the like,” a frontpage story in the Chronicle reported on Aug. 27, 1953, beneath a banner headline and pictures of Saksa and his family. “His mother and grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Goodrich, had little sleep, if any, and while a bit tired this morning they were happy and still rejoicing.” Saksa returned to the U.S. aboard a transport ship on Sept. 13, 1953, in San Francisco. His mother was waiting to greet him. Saksa returned to DeKalb on Sept. 15, 1953, and was finally able to describe his 34 months in captivity at Pyok-Dong Camp Two. It was much crueler than his censored letters home indicated. In Chronicle stories, he talked of how he had lost as much as 50 pounds, described his battle wounds and the conditions at the camp. “All of the prisoners suffered from malnutrition and subsisted nearly entirely on porridges,” a Sept. 16, 1953 story read. “As Bob put it,
The ordeal did not change his commitment to serve, however. “The lieutenant stated that he ‘loved’ the army … He added that he would best serve his purpose in life in the army.” “His smile remains unchanged,” the reporter closed. The following week, a banquet and parade were held in honor of Korean veterans, with Saksa the guest of honor. Several hundred people lined Lincoln Highway for a parade led by the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, with the guest of honor and others in vehicles. “Saksa told of how many had died of malnutrition, others from lack of medical care and of still others who froze to death,” the Chronicle reported on Sept. 24, 1953. “They maintained their faith and hope, receiving great help because they were Christians. He mentioned how one chaplain received solitary confinement for holding services.”
Congratulations to the Daily Chronicle on 140 Years!
SM-CL1596115 SM-CL1596115
“The knowledge that their families, their government and the people at home had not forgotten them also helped them maintain their hope and their courage. Lt. Saksa also stressed the need for maintaining a strong army and stated that he would continue in the service of his country. “In closing he pointed out what a wonderful country we live in and how this becams more apparent when one is cut off for three years and forced to live another life.” Saksa was serious about continuing to serve. He married a local woman, Margery Gilkison, of DeKalb, months later, then continued with his military career. He retired after 32 years in the rank of colonel, and served at Army Headquarters in Germany, Vietnam and Washington, D.C. He received medals including two purple hearts, a bronze star and a Legion of Merit during his service. After leaving the military, Saksa moved to Palatine, where he died in 1995 at age 67.
dekalbparkdistrict.com
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
Often, accounts of Saksa’s censored letters home would appear in the Daily Chronicle, in which he would say he was in good health and spirits and eager for a truce in the conflict.
He also told the reporter about smoking raw Korean tobacco the prisoners called “green death” in whatever paper could be found, and said he had learned at least two things while a prisoner: “How to hate the Chinese communists and how to roll cigarettes.”
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
The Belvidere man wrote that Saksa’s speech was “easy-like but kind of sad,” the Chronicle reported on May 22, 1951.
21
‘everything was eaten with a spoon.’ “… There were periods of three months or longer when there was not even enough water to allow a sponge bath.”
140th Anniversary Edition
Later that month, though, came more evidence that Saksa was alive: He appeared on a Chinese propaganda broadcast from enemy territory on Radio Peiping, speaking to his mother and saying he had regained full use of both arms and legs. An Army radio operator in Korea, who was from Belvidere, heard the broadcast and wrote to Saksa’s mother about what he heard.
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
22
THE FUNNY PAGES T
he “funnies” have been a staple of the Daily Chronicle since the early 1900s.
In March 1913, the Chronicle began running it’s first modern comic strip, a feature targeted at young readers – and the young at heart – called “The Nut Club.” Readers wanted more, and by the early ‘20s, a lineup of comics had a regular space in the paper. Here are a few examples of strips that have appeared in the Daily Chronicle over the decades. The dates they appeared: Page 22: “Campus Clatter” – Oct. 28, 1975 “The Story of Martha Wayne” – Feb. 14, 1955 “The Nut Club” – Feb. 5, 1914 “Mom ‘n’ Pop” – June 10, 1924 Page 23: “Frank and Ernest” – July 9, 1982 “Berry’s World” – May 24, 1968 “Freckles and His Friends” – June 6, 1936 “Arlo and Janis” – Aug. 10, 1987 “The Born Loser” – Dec. 30, 1999 “Priscilla’s Pop” – July 11, 1959 “Rose is Rose” – June 16, 1989 “Alley Oop” – May 4, 1942
23 140th Anniversary Edition
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
24
FAMOUS NATIVES OF DEKALB COUNTY
Chronicle readers received periodic updates on the career progress of DeKalb High School grad Richard Jenkins, including an early TV appearance in March 1974 (above) and a stage performance at Illinois Wesleyan in February 1967. Jenkins didn’t start acting until college.
RICHARD JENKINS The only Oscar nominee ever to come from DeKalb, Richard Jenkins has become more famous locally of late, thanks to his Oscar nominations for best actor in a leading role in 2007 for his performance as Walter in “The Visitor” and his 2017 nomination for best supporting actor for his role as Giles in “The Shape of Water.”
The Daily Chronicle had an item about a bridal shower for Jenkins’ wife, Sharon, in August 1969, shortly after both graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University. It also noted his early TV appearances, including a supporting role he had as a 26-year-old stage actor in 1974 in a production of “Feasting with Panthers,” about the life of Oscar Wilde, on PBS. “Mrs. Jenkins (Richard’s mother) said that ‘Richard has several good scenes’ in tomorrow night’s show,” the Chronicle reported.
Richard Jenkins is shown with his family in this Daily Chronicle feature story from Aug. 16, 1987.
As Jenkins’ career progressed, the paper seemed to lose track of him a bit. But when he began acting in movies in the 1980s, the paper took notice.
and you meet different people. A lot of people say movies are boring, but I don’t find it boring, especially if you have an interesting part.”
“When members of the DeKalb High School class of 1965 view ‘The Witches of Eastwick,’ ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’ and ‘Silverado’, they should recognize a familiar face, for their classmate Richard Jenkins appears in all of the above,” Bonnie Reimisch wrote in an Aug. 16, 1987, feature.
Jenkins said he tried to get back to DeKalb at least once a year, and on his most recent return in October, he was the toast of the town. Jenkins visited DeKalb High School, Northern Illinois University, and other locations. The closing act of the tour was at the Egyptian Theatre, where he received the key to the city of DeKalb and participated in a question-and-answer session with the audience after a showing of “The Shape of Water”.
Jenkins, whose latest film, “Little Nikita” was to debut that fall, had long since settled in Providence, Rhode Island. He said he had never appeared in any plays while at DeKalb High, but had settled on acting as a career while in college because it “would be better than working.” “As long as I get interesting parts in interesting movies, I’ll keep doing movies,” Jenkins said in a quote attributed to “Dick Jenkins”. “I enjoy it because you go to a different place every time,
The showing wrapped a nine-week “Richard Jenkins Film Series” at the theater. Jenkins himself had picked the films. There were a lot to choose from – Jenkins has more than 100 acting credits in his career, according to imdb.com. Jenkins still makes his home in Providence, Rhode Island. He is 71.
25 140th Anniversary Edition
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
A photo from the Oct. 13, 1951 Daily Chronicle shows Barbara Hale (center, signing an autograph) during her visit to DeKalb.
BARBARA HALE Barbara Hale was born April 18, 1922, in the DeKalb Public Hospital, and attended the McMurry School – a practice school at what is now McMurry Hall on the Northern Illinois University campus – before moving to Rockford as a child, according to Daily Chronicle reports from the time. Hale went on to a career as a model and leading woman in films in the 1940s and ’50s opposite actors including James Stewart, James Cagney, Robert Mitchum and her actor husband, Bill Williams. In October 1951, Hollywood launched a weeklong marketing initiative called “Movietime U.S.A.,” designed to bring movie stars and writers to towns across America to interact with regular people. Hale, along with Williams, actress Alice Kelly and screenwriter Valentine Davis (writer of “On the Riviera” and “Miracle on 34th Street”), came to DeKalb County on Oct. 12, 1951. They paraded through Genoa, and the Spartans marching band led them down State Street in Sycamore. Then they came to DeKalb.
A front-page story in the Oct. 13, 1951 Daily Chronicle reported that the DeKalb Township High School band led them up Seventh Street to Lincoln Highway, from there to a platform at the Memorial Clock, which at the time was at Third Street and Lincoln. About 2,000 people crowded around the platform, and the reporter noted that the visiting stars were “visibly startled with the crowds.” “You’re a grand bunch, even those of you who are not relatives,” Hale said. Later, at a luncheon at The Cabin, Hale posed for a photo with several of her relatives, including an uncle, Justus Hale of Maple Park, and his wife. “Those who saw her in DeKalb approximately four years ago for a showing of one of her movies found her friendly and unspoiled,” an unsigned Women’s Page item noted in February 1956. The visit left an impression that was remembered for years. When Hale’s next film, Columbia Pictures’ “The First Time,” was shown in DeKalb, the ads reminded the public of Hale’s “unforgettable visit to DeKalb in person last fall!”
The DeKalb theater, billed as “The Theatre of Tomorrow,” in 1953 ran a photo of “DeKalb’s own Barbara Hale” to plug the new Technicolor hit “Last of the Comanches,” in which she starred with Broderick Crawford. Hale took on the role of tenacious legal secretary Della Street in the “Perry Mason” show on CBS in 1957, and won an Emmy while working with Raymond Burr in the original series that lasted until 1966 on CBS. She reprised the role several times in Perry Mason TV movies from 1985 to ’95. Hale did return to DeKalb at least once more. A 1959 visit to see an aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Scruggs Colvin, and others, was noted in the society pages. However, after the 1950s ended, her association with DeKalb in the popular mind faded. Later mentions of her in the Chronicle rarely brought up the DeKalb connection. Hale died Jan. 26, 2017, in Sherman Oaks, California at age 94.
THE DAILY CHRONICLE STAFF TODAY Laura Shaw Publisher
Eric Olson General Manager
Lisa Angel Marketing Development Manager
Christopher Heimerman Editor
Inger Koch Features Editor
Eddie Carifio Sports Editor
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
Barbara Hale (right) in her role as Della Street opposite Raymond Burr, the title character in the long-running CBS TV series “Perry Mason.” This is a scene from the 1958 season premiere, “The Case of the Corresponding Corpse.”
26
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
Cindy Crawford was a regular in the Daily Chronicle as she rose to stardom. TOP LEFT: In an April 1982 ad for Bret’s clothing store; BOTTOM LEFT: A Sept. 28, 1986 feature on her blossoming modeling career; MIDDLE: The cover of her 2015 book, “Becoming”; BELOW: Crawford’s 1984 DeKalb High School yearbook photo.
accessories.” The story was accompanied by a photo of Crawford, looking fierce. By 1986, Crawford was all-in on modeling and the world was aware she was a talent.
CINDY CRAWFORD Supermodel Cindy Crawford, born Feb. 20, 1966 at Sycamore Hospital, is the most internationally famous person ever to come out of DeKalb. Maggie Bamman, the fashion coordinator for downtown DeKalb’s Bret’s The Fashion Place store, was one of her earliest modeling instructors. “Bret’s apparel in DeKalb has organized a fashion board, which gives teenage girls the experience of in-store and mannequin modeling, and participating in fashion shows,” Charlotte Digregorio wrote in an Oct. 9, 1981 story in the Chronicle. Above the story was a photo of the fashion board girls, which included Crawford. The photographer, Roger Legel, would help her become locally famous, although somewhat alienated from her high school classmates. Crawford began her modeling career before she graduated as valedictorian of the DeKalb High School class of 1984. She missed the first month of her senior year because she was modeling in Japan as a 17-year-old, along with another local girl, Chris Collin.
Above an Oct. 23, 1983 Daily Chronicle story about their experience modeling for Japanese print and TV ads “posing in difficult positions under hot lights” was the headline “DeKalb teens fashioning mini-careers.” After returning to DeKalb, she went to high school in the morning, then drove to Chicago in the afternoon for modeling assignments, her mother said later. “It’s a good way to make money now – it’s interesting and fun – but I couldn’t do it as a career,” Crawford told reporter Jim Fisher. “I would get burned out too fast.” Crawford did at least one more modeling job in DeKalb, in September 1985. A Daily Chronicle story about the “quaint and curious” shop called Cottage Interiors at 224 N. Second St. noted that “Cindy Crawford, a DeKalb High School graduate who has appeared in Chicago newspapers and overseas in Paris’ “Elle” magazine and the Italian edition of Vogue magazine, will model Cottage Interiors ‘country cottons’ – a line including corduroy skirts and blouses, flannel dresses and jumpers, denims, homespun cottons and
“Beautiful DeKalb product Cindy Crawford sits atop modeling world” was the headline of a Sept. 28, 1986, feature in the Sunday Daily Chronicle. Writer Dave Rossdeutcher called her a “sizzling beauty” and “an international modeling sensation.” By then, Crawford was 20. She had left Northwestern University and moved to New York City. “You make it sound like I’m a big star, and I don’t feel that way yet,” Crawford said. In the story, Crawford’s sister Chris shed some light on what things were like growing up for Cindy in DeKalb. “People thought she was stuck up, but she wasn’t,” Chris Crawford said. “It’s just hard for her to get to know people. She loves to keep to herself.” Rossdeutcher’s story also discussed Crawford’s earliest modeling days. “Cindy’s peers also had a hard time accepting her appearance on the front page of the DeKalb Nite Weekly, a television listings guide run by Northern Illinois University ‘Coed Calendar’ innovator Frank Trebusak. The paper usually features NIU coeds every week, but this particular issue had 16-year-old Cindy Crawford suited in a bikini on its cover.”
“I had a good time doing it, but it was humiliating when it came out,” Crawford said in the story, “because I caught so much flack at the high school.”
Crawford’s status as a supermodel grew, but she continued occasionally to appear in the Chronicle. A 1988 “getting to know” piece on her included the prompt, “The thing I enjoy doing most is,” to which Crawford responded “relaxing on a warm beach on St. Barth’s with a good book. Then cooling off in the ocean. Heaven!”
Buyers placed classified ads in the Daily Chronicle offering to buy yearbooks picturing Crawford for $100 apiece.
When the Chronicle did catch up with Moluf, Crawford’s mother, in 2000, they got something of an idea what her visits were like. “When Cindy comes to visit, it is usually with last minute notice because of her busy schedule,” reporter Martha Snyder wrote. “… Her mother is likely to fix Italian beef, one of Cindy’s favorites.” The story, about Moluf’s new business “The Clothes Horse” closed with what no doubt was a constant question for Cindy Crawford’s local relatives. “Jenny likes to garden and spend time with her five grandchildren, at least when she is not answering the ever-present question, ‘are you Cindy Crawford’s mother?’ ” Crawford quit modeling full-time in 2000, though she still occasionally appears. She is now married to Rande Gerber, himself a former model, and both of their son Presley and daughter Kaia are involved in modeling. They have a home in Beverly Hills, California.
“Serving Our Community For Over 40 Years” You can choose where to go for physical therapy. We want to be your choice!
A doctor prescription is no longer required to see a physical therapist! This means you can start feeling better today! Choose Northern Rehab today, and stop letting pain control your life.
5 Locations to Serve You Better: 3266 Sycamore Rd. DeKalb • 815.756.8524
232 W. Lincoln Hwy. DeKalb • 815.756.2369
1211 Currency Court, Suite C Rochelle • 815.562.3299
northernrehabpt.com
SM-CL1595778
DELANO’S Home Decorating
540 E. Main Street, Suite 5 Genoa • 815.784.6417
523 E. Railroad Street Sandwich • 815.786.1888
Decorating Area Homes and Businesses since 1945
Choose from a fine selection of: • Carpeting by Shaw, Dream Weaver Tuftex, Mohawk • Merillat Cabinets • Laminate and Hard Surface Counter Tops • Ceramic Tile • Hardwood and Laminate Flooring • Vinyl Flooring and Luxury Vinyl Tile • Custom Picture Frames • Wallpaper and Borders • Paints by Pittsburgh
We offer quality products at competitive Prices!
Custom Window Treatments: • Draperies • Soft Pleats • Mini Blinds
• Vertical Blinds • Duettes • Silhouettes
Delano’s Home Decorating
Store Hours: Monday-Friday 8am-5:30pm • Saturday 8am-4pm 223 North Fourth Street, DeKalb • (815) 756-2951 www.DelanosHomeDecorating.com
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
She would become the “leading lady” for cosmetics manufacturer Revlon, appeared on network TV shows, had her own workout videos, landed a gig hosting “The House of Style” on MTV, and married Hollywood actor Richard Gere.
“It seems that finding the Pope would be easier than finding supermodel Cindy Crawford,” reporter Theresa Kinniry wrote on Aug. 5, 1994.
27
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
As her mother, Jennifer Moluf, would later put it in a 2000 story, “At 5-foot 10-inches tall, Cindy was taller than most of the boys and in all the advanced classes. I think they were too shy to ask her out.”
When she returned for her 10-year high-school reunion in 1994, the Chronicle couldn’t catch up with her.
140th Anniversary Edition
The story also discussed how Legel, who had been photographing Crawford “for his own work”, passed pictures on to Trebusak with Crawford’s consent. Then came the bikini shots.
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
28
EVAR SWANSON Evar Swanson was born Oct. 15, 1902 in DeKalb. He was a former Daily Chronicle paper boy who grew up on Lewis Street in DeKalb and went on to play professional football and baseball. He was best known for his baseball career, which included five seasons as an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox. Swanson graduated from DeKalb High School in 1920, where he played baseball, basketball and ran track. After graduating from
Lombard College in Galesburg, Swanson spent summers playing minor league baseball and the fall playing in the NFL with the Milwaukee Badgers and Chicago Cardinals. In 1929, the Cincinnati Reds called him up to the big leagues at age 26. On Sept. 15, 1929, Swanson earned the title of “fastest man around the bases” between games of a doubleheader. As a feature story the Daily Chronicle printed years later in 1972 put it:
“In a contest with official AAU timers, Swanson, then the winged left fielder of the Cincinnati Reds, circled the bases in 13.3 seconds.”
ever made in one season was $8,500 in salary. But the money these fellas make today – good lord, why should they risk anything in a contest?”
He won $75 for the feat. The writer noted that such competitions among ballplayers had died out starting in the 1930s.
Swanson’s trips through town with the Reds sometimes included stops in DeKalb, as in August 1929.
“We did it for pride,” Swanson said years later as a 71-year-old man. “And we did it for the money, too. Seventy-five dollars was pretty good in those days. I mean, the most I
“Evar was about the streets of the city today being welcomed by his friends and receiving congratulations of the baseball fans of the city upon his success,” the Chronicle wrote. “Upon every side the diamond pride of DeKalb was given evidence of the regard with which the city regards him.” Swanson’s best year came in 1929, when he stole 33 bases and hit .300 in 148 games. He never had much pop in his bat – he retired with 7 career home runs – but was a career .303 hitter. Swanson would later settle in Galesburg, where he ran a grocery store and later became the postmaster. A scholarship was established in his name at DeKalb High School in 1992 to go to a student-athlete with an outstanding grade-point average. Swanson died July 17, 1973, at age 70.
DeKalb native Evar Swanson’s title as “fastest man around the bases” was the subject of this Daily Chronicle and NEA sports feature from April 8, 1972.
Computers first started appearing in office uses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. First National Bank in DeKalb was said to be the first bank in DeKalb County with it’s own computer in this photo from the June 30, 1971 edition.
29 140th Anniversary Edition
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
Mel Kenyon lost most of the fingers on his left hand, but he was still able to clutch a wrench as he oversaw work on his Indy car in this photo from May 30, 1973. The Chronicle covered a race at Rockford Speedway in June 1972 when Kenyon’s “midget” race car flipped in a crash.
Mel “King of the Midgets” Kenyon was born in DeKalb in April 1933, and later moved to Sycamore. Although he eventually would finish in the top five in the Indianapolis 500 four times, he got his start at Rockford Speedway in the Rockford-Freeport area. He raced modified stock cars there early in his career. A Daily Chronicle story from July 1966 about “Mel Kenyon Night” at the Rockford Speedway recalled his early days racing there. “He drove a 1940 Ford coupe at the Speedway before moving to the USAC (U.S. Auto Club) circuit, and fans of those days will remember the eight-inch stovepipe exhaust that billowed flame from the back of his car,” the Chronicle wrote. Kenyon would make his mark racing “midget” cars – lightweight, alcohol-fueled vehicles that skid across dirt tracks. The racing was dangerous, and in 1965, Kenyon was involved in a fiery wreck that cost him almost all the fingers on his left hand. “Mel has no left hand, and burn scars mark his face,” Chronicle Sports Editor Stan Shalett wrote in a June 3, 1972, feature story. “To drive, he has his left hand stump fitted with a special type glove and has a hook that connects with a prong on the steering wheel of his car.” Kenyon’s return to racing in 1966 began a dominant streak on the midget racing circuit. His best
overall finish at Indy was a thirdplace in 1968. Kenyon would return to the area to race occasionally in “midget” vehicles, including in June 1968, when he participated in a 40-lap race at Bob-Jo Speedway, now Sycamore Speedway. He was fresh off a third-place finish at the Indy 500 and a later wreck that had turned his car into “expensive junk.”
Kenyon is shown with his Indy Car after finishing fourth at the Indianapolis 500 in this Chronicle photo from June 7, 1969.
“I’ve got a lot of friends and relations here, and it’s always great to race before a hometown crowd,” Kenyon told the Chronicle’s Jim Cox that night. “It makes a driver feel more pride and it helps him to go out and do his best.”
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
MEL KENYON
WINTER WONDERLAND Friday, December 7, 2018 • 7:00 p.m. Saturday, December 8, 2018 • 2:00 p.m.
A crowd of 1,500 people were on hand that night to see Kenyon receive an award from the speedway. He won his heat but finished third overall that night.
ARTHUR D. MONTZKA MEMORIAL CONCERT Saturday, February 23, 2019 • 7:30 p.m.
Kenyon never seemed deterred, and continued racing into his 70s. The 1972 story about his race in Rockford saw him crash, too.
SPRING POPS CONCERT Saturday, March 9, 2019 • 7:30 p.m. AARON COPLAND: AN AMERICAN MUSIC ICON Saturday, May 4, 2019 • 7:30 p.m.
“Despite the accident and the destruction of his race car, Mel was apparently calm,” Shalett wrote. “… As the crowd filed out, he and his team began to think about how to get the car ready to compete again. There was no question that he would compete again.”
All concerts are held in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall in the Northern Illinois University Music Building.
That indomitable spirit kept Kenyon racing is a racing into his 70s. He is a member of three racing halls of fame. He is 85 and lives in Lebanon, Indiana.
| SM-CL1594946
|
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
30
‘A RACIST SOCIETY’
BLACK, WHITE CITIZENS STOOD FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
The Daily Chronicle (De Kalb, De Kalb, I
On June 7, 1966, hundreds of local people announced their support for an end to housing discrimination in DeKalb. The signatories to the full-page ad in the Daily Chronicle included local churches and organizations. Local people included their full names and addresses.
A
merica’s legacy of racism is evident in the pages of the Daily Chronicle, as are the efforts of local people who led the fight against it. In the early decades of the 20th century, racial slurs and stereotypical portrayals of minorities, particularly African-Americans, were common parlance. “The n-word” appeared everywhere: in grocery ads, classifieds, comic strips and all manner of news stories, including quotes by common people and politicians alike. The last time that particular slur was used casually in a Chronicle news story was in January 1949, in an item by a syndicated columnist discussing, of all things, investing in energy stocks. The paper’s editors must have come to realize by then what many others had by the late ’40s: using slurs to describe minorities was hurtful and demeaning. “We shall never see a true democracy in our land until we realize that equality is necessary, until we become so convinced of its importance
Hymon Johnson began as a student at Northern Illinois Universit and later joined the faculty. He began as an instructor at the university’s business school and later became its first director of minority studies before leaving in 1974.
Hymon J oh ns on l eaves N IU 2 /2 3/197 4 Clipped By: eolson208 Sun, Nov 25, 2018
that we begin to act accordingly,” wrote Marcia Black students were a pronounced minority on Terwilliger, a DeKalb High School senior who had campus – in 1968, the United Press reported that Copyright © 2018 Newspapers.com. Rights 18,000 Reserved. students at NIU, only about 300 won an essay contest, in the May 3, 1949, Daily of All about Chronicle. “When we begin teaching our children – 1.6 percent – were black. But they would fight to the right way to treat their fellow men and when we make themselves heard. ourselves begin to ‘practice what we preach,’ our true democracy will form and grow.” Johnson was a fraternity president in May 1968 who was active in organizing an effort by 100 Slurs did not disappear from the Chronicle, black students to bring a list of demands to NIU though. The paper continued to print them in President Rhoten Smith. The Daily Chronicle direct quotes, including the unprintably hateful reported on the incident on May 10, 1968, a little chants from people fighting integration of schools more than a month after Martin Luther King Jr. or neighborhoods, or cursing at civil rights had been assassinated. demonstrators in the deep South, or Chicago, or other cities around the country.
But the fight for civil rights wasn’t only occurring far away, and some of the leaders of that fight were local people. In the 1960s, the explosive growth of Northern Illinois University was bringing change to the community – and also bringing black students and instructors. One of those students was Hymon T. Johnson III, who came to DeKalb from Chicago to study at NIU.
“The Black students of Northern Illinois University … feel that since NIU is an institution which has been created by a racist society, and as such is in fact a racist institution, that it is imperative that the administration … recognize the changes suggested by the black students of this university as being just,” the students’ statement read in part. The Chronicle reported thatt heir demands, included calls for increasing black enrollment to 12 percent of the student body, for establishing
“I recognize that every one of the seven grievances … are just and a just solution to every one will be found,” he said.
In 1970, Johnson would become the first black faculty member to work full-time in the NIU College of Business after receiving an MBA from the school. While teaching at Northern, Johnson would work to expose another facet of discrimination that people of color faced in communities around the country – housing discrimination. Many landlords would refuse to rent rooms or apartments to black tenants, and homeowners would refuse to sell to them. The fight against housing discrimination in DeKalb had been ongoing for years, and many locals had taken a stand against it. A notable example came on June 7, 1966. Then, with the city’s Human Relations Commission embroiled in sometimescontentious talks about creating an “open housing ordinance,” several local churches took out a full-page ad in the Chronicle headlined “Let’s open the doors in DeKalb.” “We know that some of our citizens, either because of the color of their skin, their religious affiliation or their place of origin, find the doors closed when they want to purchase or rent homes they can afford,” the text read. “We believe that every family should have the right to choose its place of residence. Therefore, we take this public way of saying we welcome neighbors on a personal basis without regard to race, creed, or place of origin.” The advertisement contained the names of hundreds of DeKalb men
In 1972, Johnson, 24, inquired of a local landlord and optometrist, Dr. Paul Yarber, about renting a duplex from him. But after Johnson went to meet with Yarber at his office, he was told that the place already had been rented. Johnson then asked a white colleague to inquire about the place. Yarber agreed to meet the white man at the duplex and told him it would be available June 1. This led Johnson to file a complaint with the city, accusing Yarber of violating the city’s open housing ordinance. Chronicle reporter Bruce Srachta laid out the details of the complaint in a July 14, 1972 story. The paper later reported that he public relations commission held a hearing and found the complaint had merit – but then the city attorney stopped things from going any further.
www.DekalbMechanical.com
In September 1972, the attorney told the city that it had no power to prosecute or fine anyone under their ordinance because it was passed a year before a state law had empowered the city to do so. So the complaint was dropped. Johnson told reporter Betty Ross in a Sept. 12, 1972 story that “my primary objective has been pretty well reached, to bring to the public’s attention one example of housing discrimination existing in DeKalb.” Johnson would continue teaching in the College of Business until August 1972, when he was named coordinator of NIU’s Black Studies Program, and was named the university’s first director of minority studies in July 1973.
DeKalb Mechanical is a well-respected and well-recognized name in the mechanical contractor field, we are also the area’s largest residential heating and air conditioning contractor. Dedicated to fast response, affordable solutions and customer satisfaction, the company is proud of its professional staff of service technicians who are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your commercial and residential heating and air conditioning needs.
Heating & Cooling Residential & Commercial 24 Hour Service Duct Cleaning
During his work with minority and black studies, Johnson would lead programs that aimed at community outreach as well as bring black speakers to campus, including Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale in February 1974. He would remain at NIU until June 1974, when he resigned to become a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. Johnson’s academic career eventually led him to California, where he is a professor emeritus at Antioch University in Santa Barbara.
DeKalb Mechanical
Heating & Cooling
815.756.6528
630.485.2071
339 Wurlitzer Drive, DeKalb, Illinois 60115 CALL FOR SERVICE
SM-CL1595937
COMMERCIAL • RESIDENTIAL HEATING • A/C • DUCT CLEANING
Now serving the Fox Valley area CALL FOR SERVICE
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
There would be lasting changes that arose from the work of the task force. It helped create the CHANCE (Complete Help and Assistance for a College Education) program, which offers relaxed admissions standards and extra support for students who show academic promise, in 1969. Hundreds of minority students each year are admitted to the university through the program. It also established the Center for Black Studies in 1971 and began teaching a racism course.
DeKalb did eventually pass an open housing ordinance in 1967. That didn’t end housing discrimination in the city, however.
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
Although some university leaders responded to such demands with defiance or expulsions, Smith agreed to work with the students, challenging them to elect five representatives to work with a recently formed Task Force for Racial Justice to implement their recommendations.
31
and women, complete with their street addresses. It also was signed by representatives of the local Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Missouri Synod Lutheran, UnitarianUniversalist, and United Church of Christ churches.
140th Anniversary Edition
courses in African-American history and a center for African-American studies on campus, and that some preference in admissions be shown to black students who may not otherwise qualify for admission.
MURDER MYSTERY
IDENTITY OF VICTIM TOOK 13 YEARS TO LEARN
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
32
T
F
or more than a decade after she was murdered on an abandoned farm outside Sycamore, Elizabeth Grabow was known to police only as Jane Doe. Two children playing around a collapsed shed on property on Whipple Road east of Moose Range Road on Sept. 20, 1976, were the first to find her body. DeKalb County Sheriff Wilbur Scott told the Daily Chronicle the body had laid there for months. “Having looked at the body, I can’t see how it can be anyone local,” Scott said in a Sept. 21, 1976, Daily Chronicle story.
The next day’s edition brought more grisly details: The body had a gunshot wound to the head, and two others to the midsection. Clothed in faded jeans and a purple halter top, with a 27-inch belt with a distinctive buckle depicting a bronco rider. “She was between 17 to 21 years of age, light brown hair, 5-foot 2-inches tall, and we are assuming she was white,” Scott told Chronicle reporter Kathy Vance. It was clearly a murder case now. But not only did police not have any suspects – they didn’t know who their victim was.
Learning Grabow’s true identity would take more than 12 years – and after a national search, police would discover the answer was never that far away. As the years passed, police continued to seek any publicity or information they could for a case that seemed to turn up no good leads. Grabow’s burial in 1978 in a grave marked “Jane Doe” at Fairview Cemetery became a media event, and by August of that year, police had receive more than 5,000 inquiries. With none of them seeming to lead anywhere, nothing was off the table.
Grabow was 17, already married and divorced, when she was killed. She had been missing since July 24, 1976, two months before her body was found, the Chronicle reported. Her family members came forward in May of 1989.
“He said he was a bit angry that the area was saturated with information about Doe and the Aurora police department did not pick up on it when Grabow’s missing person report should have been fresh in their minds,” reporter Tracy Moeller wrote on June 28, 1989. “It’s a case that has haunted law officials for years,” Wilbur Scott told the Chronicle. Grabow, whose remains were exhumed so police could try to match dental records, was reburied at Fairview Cemetery in July 1989.
Police announced they had identified Grabow’s body – and her killer – in this story from June 28, 1989.
“This isn’t the first time Scott has met with a psychic about Jane Doe,” reporter David Dee wrote in an opinion piece on Aug. 28, 1978. “He has received numerous letters from psychics, or people who think they’re psychic, and Scott’s policy is to check out any information they may offer.” “... [Scott] asked editors at True Detective and other pulp magazines to run stories about Jane Doe ... He cooperated with NBC-TV to help put together an episode of the series ‘Quincy’ about the process used to reconstruct Jane Doe’s face because NBC promised to show her picture at the end of the show. They never did show her picture ...”. Pictures of an artist’s reconstruction of Grabow’s face were posted in store windows around the area, and the case would even become a subject of discussion in a junior high school class, when Sheriff’s detectives spoke to a group of Sycamore Junior High School teacher Ray Lambert’s social studies class during a field trip. “The lady who worked with the investigators was a forensic anthropologist,” Lambert told the Chronicle in a Nov. 18, 1981 story. “It’s certainly tied in to social studies; in fact, we’ve been studying early man and ancient civilizations.” Roger Scott would later succeed his brother as county sheriff in 1985, and continue the investigation. In April of
that year, Scott sent investigators to Texas to question notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who had been implicated in hundreds of murders and by that point was confessing to many things – some of which, he may not have actually done. “Lucas also said he had killed a woman in this area in about September of 1975,” reporter Sarah Peasley wrote in the April 18, 1985, Chronicle. “But there were discrepancies in his story, Scott said.” The story closed on a determined but resigned note. “We will never close this case until we come up with an answer,” Scott told Peasley. “And we may never come up with an answer.” In the end, what cracked the case was a local newspaper story. In 1989, almost 13 years after Grabow’s body was found, a woman named Elizabeth Trossman wrote a story about the case. She had been a student at Northern Illinois Univerity in 1976 and remained curious about the mystery. First printed in a Naperville newspaper, it was picked up by the Aurora Beacon-News. “Grabow’s brother and sister-in-law, Gary and Linda Grabow ... saw a picture of Jane Doe’s reconstructed face and called police,” the Chronicle reported on June 28, 1989, after a news conference announcing
This Daily Chronicle photo published July 2, 1989, shows family and friends of Elizabeth Grabow paying their respects at Fairview Cemetery in DeKalb.
• Saturday, December 1, 2018
An artist’s rendering of what police thought the victim, Elizabeth Sue Grabow, might have looked like was released appeared in the Chronicle on Aug. 16, 1976.
33
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
About a month later, police went public with the break in the case: They said not only did they finally know their victim, but they also said knew her killer: Ralph Dyson Jr. of Aurora, the person last seen with Grabow when she disappeared that day. Dyson had died a year earlier, on June 27, 1988, of a cocaine overdose, the Chronicle reported.
After the case was solved, Wilbur Scott was relieved, but also frustrated that a department mere miles from DeKalb had not figured out the link.
140th Anniversary Edition
that the victim finally had been identified.
MY TIME AS CHRONICLE EDITOR
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
34
BARRY SCHRADER A young Barry Schrader, 28, seated behind his manual typewriter in his Livermore, California, newspaper office just before his return to DeKalb to become editor of the Daily Chronicle.
In early 1969 I saw an advertisement looking for an editor at the DeKalb Daily Chronicle. At the time I was editor of a suburban daily in Livermore, California, having moved there from Genoa where I had owned the Genoa Republican, DeKalb County (Kirkland) Journal and a started a new weekly, The Sycamore Sun. In 1966, they had been bought by DeKalb County Press, a corporation headed by Attorney John Castle.
faster than anyone around, yet took the time to ask about an unusual name or possible error that they might spot.
I submitted my resume to the new owners of the Chronicle, the ScrippsHagadone chain of papers, interviewed with Publisher John McGaugh a month later and convinced him I was perfect for the job.
I enjoyed visiting the “backshop,” which meant all the men working in the composing and press rooms. They were a congenial bunch, and I can remember names like Don Merwin, Gene George, Wareen Larson, Doc Telford, Quentin McDowell, Tom Engstrom, and David Hegberg, my wife’s first cousin.
So I was hired and moved back to DeKalb in April 1969. My early months were spent getting acquainted with the staff and other departments in the newspaper’s plant on East Locust Street, and the public, including elected officials, and those who managed the city and held county offices. I had the advantage of knowing many of those people outside DeKalb when I was growing up. Another way of keeping in touch with the community was through the work of a large number of “country correspondents,” mainly women who knew their neighborhoods, social and school activities and had the skill to write about it. County News Editor Ina Glover managed the roster, which at one time included 26 women. They were paid the paltry sum of 25 cents a published inch, so Ina had to measure the number of column inches each one produced every month and issue checks for those small amounts, some less than $10. I remember some of them still today’s there was Fern Worden from Kirkland, Win Bradford from Kingston, Mrs. B.P. Stroberg from Genoa, Sada Lillia and Martha McCabe from Sycamore, and Sara Mendez and Erdine Gletty from Waterman. Unfortunately for Ina, only two or three of them could type, so she had to transcribe piles of handwritten pages for our Linotype operators (using metal typesetting machines that created the justified columns which were assembled and locked into page forms to be placed in the letterpress for printing each day’s paper). I especially remember two Linotype operators, Jimmy Jarvis and Jay Elliott, who could set type
We also had proofreaders. The one I remember is Eileen “Tessie” Tessier, who was an encyclopedia of knowledge and an expert grammarian. She “saved our bacon” more than once by catching errors before they got into print. I still instituted a “corrections” column on page 2, which still exists to this day.
During my tenure, Scripps-Hagadone converted the production of the Chronicle from the old-fashioned letterpress printing plants into an offset-printing operation, which produced higher quality papers with sharper photos, more color and faster press times. The new method required very few “backshop” employees.
active in community organizations like Kiwanis and chambers of commerce, while having to deal with budget and personnel issues. There also was a startup competing newspaper, the DeKalb County Journal, a morning tabloid-sized paper, which went head-to-head with us. They had hired former WLBK station manager Ralph Sherman as publisher and a former NIU classmate of mine, Jerry Smith (now DeKalb’s mayor), as editor. Jerry and I both tried our best at scooping each other’s I even kept score in our newsroom. But eventually the Journal was sold to the Chronicle owners, who folded it. Jerry and I have renewed our friendship since my return to DeKalb 12 years ago, and now enjoy reminiscing about the “good old days.” The biggest local story during my tenure was the NIU student riots in the wake of the Kent State shootings in May 1970. I, along with several of our news staff, stood behind a police line at the west edge of the Kishwaukee River bridge on Lincoln Highway. Students marched on the line, which held. Some demonstrators threw some objects, but no tear gas was used. This was after a night of business district vandalism and destruction of vehicles, window-smashing and small fires in the campus area. My most exciting front page was the one heralding the first moon landing. With the help of the backshop we found some big wood type and filled half the page with “MAN STEPS ONTO MOON.” It has been reproduced in this section.
We were known as a conservative Republican paper, a legacy of decades of ownership by the Greenaway and Raymond families. Characteristically, we backed the incumbent Republicans from the courthouse to the statehouse. I also encouraged the firebrand Democratic County Chair Martin David Dubin to write more frequent letters to the editor, something my predecessors never would have allowed. Dubin was tickled by our new letters policy, as was the controversial attorney Paul Nehring Jr., who was another irritant to many city and county officials locally. In early 1972, I began looking around for new opportunities. Seven months later, I was hired as editor of a new daily in Alameda and Contra Costa counties in California. I packed the moving van, dragging my wife Kay, and sons Todd and Darrin, back west. This time the career move lasted 33 years. Kay and I returned to DeKalb in late 2006, after I retired. Someone back here remembered me, so I was invited to return to the Chronicle as a columnist. I’ve been cranking out “DeKalb County Life” columns more or less weekly ever since. The rest is history. • Barry Schrader was editor of the Daily Chronicle from spring 1969 to fall 1972. His columns still appear in the Daily Chronicle.
When the Chronicle moved from the Locust Street plant to its new stateof-the-art printing plant and offices at 1586 Barber Greene Road in spring 1971, almost all of the backshop employees were laid off, so it was a sad time for me. Meanwhile, I was overwhelmed with the move and learning all the new techniques of producing a completely redesigned Chronicle by the offset method. When I arrived two years earlier, we were still using manual typewriters and in that short period of time went to the precursors of computers. At the time of the move, our publisher wanted the paper redesigned with different headline types and reduced from a nine-column page to six wider columns. He also decided we should change the name of the paper, from “DeKalb Daily Chronicle” to just “Daily Chronicle.” Our new slick-looking product with new typefaces and layout did not please many of our longtime subscribers, and we were forced to rethink part of the new look. As editor, it was my role to hire staff, assign beats, select front-page story placement and instruct new reporters. I also wrote editorials, had a weekly column called “Barbed Wires,” was
$500 OFF Full Braces $1000 OFF Invisalign Treatment CALL FOR A FREE CONSULTATION TODAY! Call us at: 815-756-5200 • 2335 Sycamore Rd., DeKalb, IL. 60115
Must bring coupon Offer applies to new patients only. Cannot be combined with other discounts oroffers. Cannot redeem for cash. Not valid on partial treatments. Other restrictions may apply. Offer expires December 28, 2018
35 140th Anniversary Edition
| Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
NIU BRINGS WORLD-CLASS ARTS EVENTS HOME
Experience our wealth of talent in theater, dance, art and music.
Be the first to know about upcoming events and interesting stories:
go.niu.edu/artsblog
Please Shop Local this Holiday Season!
Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com • Saturday, December 1, 2018
| 140th Anniversary Edition
36
The Sycamore Chamber, First National Bank, and Blumen Gardens wish you and yours a Happy Holiday Season! SM-CL1594943