Carmen Smallwood: In Memoriam

   Last Tuesday, April 28^th, Mokena rued the loss of Carmen Smallwood, one of the village’s truest residents. While Carmen was originally a native of Wayne County in downstate's Little Egypt, she later made Mokena her home in the latter part of the 1960s after having attended Southern Illinois University, where she received a degree in elementary education. 

   Carmen taught countless Mokenians over the decades as a teacher in the village, and was also active in the venerable Mokena Women’s Club, having led the group as its president for many years, while also being a key member of the Mokena Historical Society. 

   My interest in our community’s history, the passion which drives my life, grew and flourished during my work with Carmen restoring the historic Denny Cemetery on Wolf Road, also known as Pioneer Memorial Cemetery. She spearheaded the efforts by the Mokena Women’s Club to bring glory back to those forlorn, hallowed grounds starting around 1997. As a history-enthused seventh grader who only knew history as it existed in such far off places as Gettysburg and Valley Forge, the happenings at the graveyard held my rapt attention. Before long a sign was put up that asked for volunteers to help the Women’s Club in their work, listing Carmen’s home phone number as the starting point. I called it one day in the summer of 1998, and spoke to her for the first time, when she invited me to come with her and a few others to the cemetery to probe the ground with long metal rods, looking for forgotten graves. 

   Within a few days, I was with her in the cemetery, and on my very first outing, we discovered the base of a decades-long forgotten gravestone, and from then on, I was hooked. Many were the days I spent with her repairing broken markers, planting flowers, and simply talking about the Mokena of yore. These were the days when my interest in our community’s past was being awoken, and Carmen was a huge part of that. 

  Carmen Smallwood’s good deeds to the village were many, and as she did them, she never searched for a spotlight, or drew attention to herself. Her many improvements to our community were done silently, without ulterior motives. She will not be forgotten.