Yule of Yore: Christmas 1925 in Mokena

      Christmas is easily the biggest holiday on Mokena’s calendar, it being a grand finale to the year and all of its events.  Each yuletide has a special memory attached to it, recalled fondly through the passing of time. The holiday season of 1925 was quite a unique one in the chronicles of our village’s history, for in that year, a special kind of joy reigned supreme on Front Street. A well-known, out-of-town dignitary graced Mokena with his presence, for Santa Claus made a quick stopover in town. 

      So it came to pass, that in December a letter was taken in hand by the Mokena Volunteer Fire Department. Its lines bore big news, announcing the upcoming visitor from the North Pole. The village’s newspaper, The News-Bulletin, caught wind of the communication and under a headline in its December 18^th, 1925 issue, gleefully proclaimed “Oh You Kids of Mokena, Read This!” An article explained that the firemen had received a note from Santa, and that he’d be squeezing some time into his busy schedule to make a quick stop in Mokena on Monday evening, December 21^st, at the Cooper & Hostert Ford Agency on Front Street. The landmark business was the perfect place for Santa’s reception, as many Mokenians saw the garage as something akin to an informal village hall. 

The Cooper & Hostert Ford Agency was the scene of a special visitor at Christmastime 1925. (Image Courtesy of Richard Quinn)

     That evening at 7:00, the News-Bulletin noted that an “ever growing crowd assembled” there in preparation for Santa’s arrival, for which the interior of the auto showroom was festooned with a Christmas tree strewn with colorful lights. Excitement was building, and in the crowd “youngsters began to get anxious” waiting for him. At a peak moment, Nick Heiman, a resident of then-rural Schoolhouse Road, showed up at the garage with urgent news: Santa had just rung him on the phone, letting him know that his sleigh had become weighed down with gifts to such a degree that he was marooned about three miles outside town. Father Christmas urged Heiman to keep everyone calm, for Harold Cooper, the son of one of the garage’s owners, was on his way to bail him out. 

 

     Before long, Santa Claus materialized on wintry Front Street, and what an appearance he made. Amidst his sleigh bells a-ringing to the delight of Mokena’s youth, Santa made his grand entrance to Cooper & Hostert’s, where villagers young and old beheld a “jolly faced, bewhiskered, red-clad figure” who bellowed “Merry Christmas!” The man of the hour paid individual attention to the swarm of little Mokenians who welcomed him, shaking every hand, and asking each devotee what kind of gift they’d like on the big day. 

 

     He wasn’t alone, for helpers described as “assistants” lugged in huge bags filled to the brim with goodies such as candy, fruit, and nuts, which were then promptly handed out. Father Christmas didn’t forget Mokena’s parents who also turned out to see him, each one being given a plump, juicy orange. 

 

     Before long, Santa bid his admirers farewell, and swiftly disappeared from Front Street as quickly as he had arrived. Bill Semmler, editor of The News-Bulletin and a Mokena resident of some standing, was especially happy with the jolly one’s appearance in town, and made it clear on the front page of his paper. Semmler hailed the efforts of those who arranged the visit, stating that “the men who were responsible for this party and getting Santa here are to be highly commended for their unselfish and community-uplifting spirit”, also lauding the soul of the season, writing “for the time being, all creeds and religious beliefs were forgotten as members of various faiths enjoyed themselves as one big family, truly exemplifying the Christmas spirit.”

 

     The historical record isn’t exactly clear on whether it was the real Santa who paid Mokena a visit in 1925. For all we know, a townsman who fit the description might have donned his suit that evening. This author however, likes to think that it was jolly ol’ St. Nick himself. 

The Stories in the Stones: The People of Marshall Cemetery

   We Mokenians of 2021 live in decidedly 21^st century surroundings, with a fair share of the village’s historic landmarks long since disappeared from our landscape, and modern subdivisions abounding as far as the eye can see. There are comparatively few places where one can be face to face with our past, where it lives with such flavor as to be almost palpable. The further a villager drives down Regan Road, however, the more one gets a healthy taste of days gone by in eastern Will County, as the driver quickly leaves suburbia and heads down a quiet road bordered by dense foliage. Behind the hedgerow rest open fields, among the last in our once rural neighborhood. Suddenly, Marshall Cemetery is upon the visitor, emerging on the horizon like a mirage. Step through its iron gates and be surrounded by our forefathers.

 

 Marshall Cemetery on Regan Road is one of our most time-honored landmarks. (Image courtesy Michael Philip Lyons)

   While the graveyard technically lies a few rods into the perimeters of New Lenox Township, a significant number of the names found on these weathered stones lived in our village or very close to it. While the cemetery is at least 162 years old, it’s likely even older. After all these years, it’s hard to say who the first burial here was, but what is clear, is that the oldest part of the plot was set aside by Chester and Pamelia Marshall, two rugged pioneers who were among the first to settle the wilds of what would become Will County in 1833, barely a year after the end of the Black Hawk War. Natives of Onondaga County in central New York, Chester shouldered a musket as a young man in the oft-forgotten War of 1812. 

 

   Decades later, in 1878, while reflecting on our neck of the woods’ earliest settlers, Will County’s eminent historian George Woodruff penned that Chester Marshall “was… one of these Abolitionists, and a strong temperance man, always at hand at Temperance and Antislavery conventions. He was a tall, large, noble-looking man.” A deeply devout individual, he also served as a deacon in the Baptist church. Man and wife arrived on Illinoisan soil with one daughter and two sons in tow, ranging in age from 21 to 16. Their daughter, Electa Ann, would be wed to Eliphalet Atkins three years after the family’s locating here, and would live on the site of modern-day Mokena. The older of the two boys, Rollin Marshall, became a well-established farmer in far eastern New Lenox Township, and in his later years moved to Mokena, where he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a deacon in the village’s Baptist church. His younger brother, George Marshall, also took after their father, and worked as a secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. He would leave for the California gold rush to seek his fortune, and ultimately struck pay dirt, only to meet his fate aboard a ship on the way home to Illinois in 1850. One of the few Marshalls not to be interred in this historic cemetery, the Pacific Ocean became his grave.

 

   Patriarch and Matriarch of the Marshall family departed this mortal coil in 1859 and 1865, respectively. Chester’s original rectangular gravestone has long since been separated from its base, and now lies flush with the earth, its sides having been reclaimed by the loam. Although flecked with lichen, the old marker is clearly readable and in remarkably good shape for its age. Later a dignified monument of black marble was erected on the plot that Chester and Pamelia Marshall share with the families of their son Rollin and grandson Chester. 

 

Pioneer Chester Marshall's gravestone can still be easily read. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

 

   This peaceful acreage started out as a family plot tended to by the Marshall family and other near neighbors, until the Marshall Cemetery Association was established in 1917. The association cared for the land until aging board member Elmira McGovney transferred responsibility for the graveyard to New Lenox Township in the spring of 1988. These hallowed grounds contain the mortal remains of at least 13 heroes of the Union from the Civil War, including the dust of at least one who gave his life upon the altar of freedom. Edwin Marshall was the grandson of Chester and Pamelia Marshall, who as a 19-year-old volunteered for duty in the 20^th Illinois Infantry in the autumn of 1864. He was known to his friends and family as Webb, his middle name. 

   Years after the war, Webb’s brother, esteemed Will County judge Albert O. Marshall, wrote a memoir entitled Army Life based on his own experiences in the conflict. In the final pages of the book, he mournfully rued his brother’s fate. He remembered that Webb “…was stricken down, while in Camp Butler (near Springfield) with that fearful scourge of the army, typhoid fever. He was brought home sick, but all assistance was in vain. He died and was buried in the little country grave-yard near our farm home.” Webb Marshall passed on January 24^th, 1865, less than three months before the war ended. It’s unclear if he ever had his own gravestone, but he is still represented on the family monument along with his parents and siblings. 

 

   Just steps inside the front gate, one finds the modest grave marker of Thomas Packard Parker, the stepson of the aforementioned Rollin Marshall. Born in March 1833 at Westford in Vermont, he came west as a lad and as an adult lived and farmed in the vicinity of today’s Townline Road. He answered President Lincoln’s call for volunteers with the formation of the 100^th Illinois Infantry in the summer of 1862, fighting with his Will County neighbors through the storm of shot and shell at Stones River, Tennessee that December. On September 19^th, 1863 he marched into battle at Chickamauga, Georgia, and into one of the bloodiest days in our community’s history. Thomas Parker was one of at least three other Mokenians who lost their lives on this dark day. It is unknown if his earthly remains ever made it back to Illinois, or if the small monument at Marshall Cemetery is simply a cenotaph, while his bones still rest on the battlefield, in the red soil of Georgia, far from home. His name stands on the smooth black granite stone above his infant son Willie’s, who died in 1860. The grave marker now lies toppled in the grass, which is hardly the remembrance that Thomas Parker deserves, who lay his life down in the face of rebellious despotism. 

 

As one of President Lincoln's soldiers, Thomas Parker of Mokena gave his life for the Union. He is pictured here around 1860.

 

   Another Union soldier, one of the vaunted boys in blue, is John Collins, whose name stands proudly on his weather-beaten, government-issued grave marker. An Englishman by birth, he volunteered for service in the 57^th Illinois Infantry, and served as his company’s fifer until he left the regiment after having done a stint of six months. His path eventually led to Mokena, where he lived on Front Street. He was known to villagers as a peaceable single man who kept house with what were referred to as his “canine and feline pets.” In 1906, our community’s correspondent to the Lockport Phoenix-Advertiser reckoned that he was not only the oldest resident of Mokena, but also probably the whole state, tallying his age to nearly 103. Modern research into Mr. Collins’ age is inconclusive. When he joined the army in December 1861, he gave his age as 38, indicating a birthdate of around 1823, however, when the 1900 census taker was in town, the villager stated that he was born in August 1816. Regardless of his true age, when John Collins passed away in 1907, fellow Union veteran and Mokena resident John A. Hatch, secured the simple gravestone for his townsman and brother in arms. Hatch didn’t want his old comrade to go forgotten, which is a service we could do well to remember today. 

 

   Multiple generations of the McGovney family found their rest here at Marshall Cemetery. At least 28 of them repose in these grounds, and an entire volume could be filled with their stories. A visitor can’t turn his head without seeing their venerated names chiseled in stone, all of whom dot the pages of our history. Here Elijah McGovney, there Emily McGovney, and over in a shady corner, Walter “Dick” McGovney. The gravestone of John McGovney, who departed March 12^th, 1859, has been heavily weathered and has seen over 150 summers and winters. It can only be read on a perfectly sunny day, by tracing its rough letters by fingertip and with the utmost patience.   

   There was no truer pioneer than John McGovney, who with his wife Nancy has gone down in history as the first non-native family to settle on the future site of Mokena, having arrived in an ox-drawn wagon with their five small children in tow via Adams County, Ohio on October 9^th, 1831. Not only were the McGovneys possessed of the brawny individuality that allowed them to survive in the untamed west, but the family’s head further distinguished himself by platting two additions to Mokena in the days of the hamlet’s infancy. 

 

Founding Father John McGovney's name is barely legible on his grave marker. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

 

   Clear across the cemetery from the family patriarch is the plot of Ozias and Matilda McGovney, venerated by a stately white block bearing the family name. Ozias was the third eldest son of John and Nancy McGovney, and would in his later years be known as “the grand old man of Mokena.” Named after a biblical king, he first set foot on Illinois soil the year he turned seven. As a lad Ozias McGovney was educated in a rustic country schoolhouse that predated the organization of Frankfort Township, which he would later recall as a “log house, which was fitted up with benches minus backs, which made it very uncomfortable for the pupils as they had no means of resting their aching backs.” There being no chalkboard, “a hewn slab was erected which served as a writing desk.”

   In the frosty cold of January 1846, Ozias married Matilda Jane Ellsworth, a young lady five years his junior, who originally hailed from Onondaga County, New York, the same neighborhood as her neighbors and relatives, the Marshalls. Matilda McGovney was a true woman of the frontier, who used butter to straighten her hair and was also a healer, who was known to tend to the ill in an era when doctors were few and far between. Local historian Florence Pitman wrote “When (Matilda) heard of illness, with her basket of home remedies she would set forth to care for the ailing one, unafraid of any disease; diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever – she braved them all. ” It would also be remembered that Matilda McGovney once cured an area boy with a “physic of goose grease.” One of her choice remedies was a concoction of powdered rhubarb, sugar, water, essence of peppermint and brandy that was still used in the McGovney family well into the 20^th century. A pious lady, a contemporary would describe Matilda as “faithful Christian woman” as well as being “devoted to sincerity, truth and the richness of high character.”

 

Seen here around 1880, Matilda Jane McGovney was a savior to our neighborhood's ill. 

 

   Over the years, Ozias and Matilda McGovney would come to stand at the head of a good Mokena family, raising five daughters and three sons who were born between 1848 and 1867. Like many in his generation, Ozias McGovney was deeply effected by the gathering storm of the Civil War. He was long an adherent of the Democratic party, but upon the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, (which had established a line north of which no slavery would be allowed) he became “suspicious of the political honesty of the leaders of the Democratic party” and became an early supporter of the new Republican party, with which he stayed for the rest of his days. 

   Many in the neighborhood of the not-yet formed Mokena knew Ozias simply as Squire McGovney, for he was elected to the post of justice of the peace at the first election held in the newly founded Frankfort Township in 1850. He would ultimately hold this position for twenty years, officiating at the marriages of countless local residents. Ozias later was admitted to the bar and became a country lawyer, and after the founding of Mokena in 1852, he became one our most prominent villagers. Representative of his stature in the village, he became very involved in local politics; holding not only the office of postmaster from 1875 to 1885, then again from 1889 to 1893, but also the post of Frankfort Township Supervisor from 1856, which he held on and off until 1870, at which point he “utterly refused to accept the position.” However, the township supervisor’s chair would come back to him in 1888, as it would be remembered that “the leading men of the town came to him and demanded that he accept the office again. That spring he was elected to the office of supervisor under protest, which office he held continuously for ten years.”

   Of all the hats Ozias McGovney wore over the years, his most honored place in our history was that of our first mayor, a duty he was elected to by the new village board in 1880, keeping the seat for four years. A contemporary proudly stated that “He discharged the duties of each and all the offices he was elected or appointed to, faithfully, honorably and to the entire satisfaction of his constituents.”

   Aside from his various elected positions, Ozias McGovney also kept a well-known general store in our village in the 19^th century. He crossed the great beyond in March 1914, the year he was to have turned 90, at a time when the life expectancy for an American male was just over 50. 

 

Portrayed here circa 1878, Ozias McGovney held many local offices, including that of Mokena's first mayor. 

 

   Of the eight children of Ozias and Matilda McGovney, their eldest son to survive into adulthood, Ozias Erwin, who was born in 1855, can also be found here in the family plot in Marshall Cemetery. As a tender lad of 15, he took a job with a surveyor’s crew that was blazing a path for a new railroad across Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The position was not without dangers, and Erwin, as he was called, would often be separated from his coworkers. Once in Ohio, it would be remembered that “…he was overcome with an exceptionally severe attack of the ague and sank prostrated to the ground. Fortunately an old lady discovered him and had him removed to her home and took care of him until he recovered.” 

   Upon his return to Mokena, he went into the store business with his father in 1874, and married Georgia Knapp in 1878. After a sojourn in Manhattan conducting his own store, (and incidentally serving as this village’s first mayor) the family made Mokena their permanent home beginning in 1887. As was quickly becoming a Mokena tradition, our community’s elected and appointed chairs were by and by occupied by members of the McGovney family. Erwin was Mokena mayor for a brief span starting in 1890, then again from 1903 to 1910, not to mention a long term as postmaster at the turn of the 20^th century. He breathed his last in 1910. 

 

   The sharp-eyed visitor to Marshall Cemetery will also find the modest gravestone of Ona Ellsworth McGovney, complete with masonic insignia. He is the fourth generation of the Mokena clan to be interred here. Having lived from 1879 to 1938, Ona was the son of Ozias Erwin and Georgia McGovney, and like his father and grandfather, was one of our mayors and postmasters, occupying both positions simultaneously at one point, which eventually landed him in hot water. Here too is Ona’s daughter Elmira McGovney, the last resident of our village to bear the old family name. She departed this mortal coil in 1994 at 79 years. 

 

    Heading towards the gentle slope on the eastern side of the cemetery, one happens across a short, weatherworn obelisk bearing the name Polly Marshall, who is recognized on the small monument as being the wife of Allen Denny, the father of Mokena. Behind every great man, there stands a great woman. Born Polly Marvin, she first saw the light of day on February 21^st, 1797, during the waning days of George Washington’s presidency. Like many of our pioneers, her first home was in the state of New York, but where exactly has long since been lost to the ages. Young Polly was raised by her German grandfather, passing to her a “Teutonic vigor” that she carried for the rest of her life. Around 1816 she tied the knot with Nathan Marshall, fellow New Yorker and family member of Chester Marshall, the aforementioned founder of the cemetery. 

 

Polly Denny passed away in 1884 at the age of 87, a remarkable achievement for her time. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)

 

   So it was in 1837, that Polly and Nathan Marshall came west and settled in Will County, which at that early date had only officially existed for one year. Two children were born to this union, Jane and Martin Marshall, but reflecting the tough and unforgiving times in which they lived, neither survived to adulthood. Compounding this grief, Polly’s husband Nathan also passed in October 1843. She wed 54-year-old farmer Allen Denny, another pioneer in the Hickory Creek Settlement, on the summer day of August 24, 1844, and together they made the prairie wilderness blossom as the rose.  News of the nuptials even made it into a newspaper called The Western Citizen, based in then-far-off Chicago. The Western Citizen was our region’s premier anti-slavery publication, and its notice of their wedding speaks to their standing in this circle, as Polly’s new husband was a diehard abolitionist and operator of a stop on the Underground Railroad. As the sheltering of runaway slaves was happening in her home, Polly undoubtedly also helped break the chains of slavery too, ushering those seeking freedom on their way. 

 

    Immortality at large has remembered her husband Allen for his creation of a small subdivision along the new Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in 1852, which would become Mokena. As this tiny community grew, Polly came to be known affectionately as “Aunt Polly.” She served as a midwife to many area mothers, and more than a few local residents would later say that Aunt Polly was present at their birth. Polly Denny ultimately passed away on July 9^th, 1884, at the age of 87, and as a sign of her standing in town, the most prominent men in Mokena served as her pall bearers. She can rightfully be called our founding mother. 

 

  These are but a few of the countless stories of love, bravery and sturdiness that can be found in the lives of those who came to find eternal rest within the gates of Marshall Cemetery, hallowed grounds that are among the most historic in eastern Will County. 

A Hero's Journey: The Story of Lt. Edward Lauffer

   In today’s age, we live in a world of short attention spans. The painful truth is that the sacrifices of past generations, of all of their arduous toil and hard efforts to create a better life for us, are going forgotten as the years march on. Along with our brave pioneers so often mentioned in these pages, the fighters of our wars deserve our reverence and attention, and especially worthy of our thoughts this Veterans Day are those of the Second World War, whose ranks have thinned to the degree that they’ve almost completely disappeared. They were the Greatest Generation, the sixteen million Americans who fought the Axis. Of that number, about 125 of them were Mokenians, men and women both. They were in nearly every theater of the war, with more than a few seeing bitter fighting. Some gave their lives, and some came home with injuries that changed them forever, but every one of them had a story. This Veterans Day, the author would like to share just one of them, that of local boy Edward L. Lauffer. 

Lt. Navigator Edward Lauffer of Mokena, circa 1943.

   He first saw the light of day on January 31^st, 1919, on the family farm at the southwest corner of 191^st Street and 104^th Avenue. The son of Louis and Elizabeth Lauffer, Edward was the scion of a well rooted Mokena family, his great-grandfather George Lauffer having arrived in our neck of the woods in 1846 from the German Rhineland-Palatinate. Edward grew up on the farm with two brothers and two sisters, and was an alumni of Mokena Public School, including its two year high school, being located in his day on Carpenter Street, in the same building that now houses Village Hall. Like a fair number of his classmates, he completed his final two years of high school at Joliet Township High School. Edward Lauffer was working as a welder in 1941 when the United States entered the Second World War, which had already been raging in full force for two years at that point. At first, his trade exempted him from military service, as it was deemed vital to the war effort, but eventually the young man came to enter the armed forces on July 26^th, 1943. 

 

   Edward trained for one year stateside with the Army Air Corps, where he was classified as a pilot, but as chance would have it, there were no training openings for this position. At the end of this instructional period, Edward Lauffer of Mokena got his wings, a lieutenant’s rank, and became a newly minted navigator on a four-engine B-17, with which he departed American soil on October 28^th, 1944 for the European theater of war. After bouncing around with detours in Newfoundland, Morocco, and Egypt, he ultimately touched down on November 11^th near Foggia in southern Italy, which would be the new Lieutenant’s home for the next three months. 

The B-17, also known as the Flying Fortress. 

 

   While in Italy, Lt. Lauffer and his crew became attached to the 301^st Bomb Group of the 15^th Army Air Force. As they did all of the village’s people in uniform, the Mokena Women’s Service Club took good care of Edward. In early 1945 they sent him some fudge for his birthday, which he wrote in a letter dated from Italy on January 18^th, that it was not only “some of the best fudge I have ever tasted” but that it had made it all the way across the ocean without a single piece being broken! In another letter penned a few days later, he lamented the bad weather that had been preventing him from taking off and completing missions with his crew, before ending the note with “Hope the weather clears up so we can get this over with.”

 

   Lt. Lauffer flew a total of 15 sorties, all by daylight, plotting his crew’s way through European skies marauded by Nazi fighters and raked with withering flak. With heavy bombs, they pounded the cradle of the Third Reich in Germany and Austria, as well as targets in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and northern Italy. February 13^th, 1945 was a mission laden with consequence for the young officer. That day, he was flying a run over Vienna, Austria, and as Lt. Lauffer was steadying his camera at the bomber’s small window to get a picture of the sky filled with flak explosions, his B-17 took a direct hit. He later described it as a “tremendous explosion,” and upon glancing out the windows on either side of the fuselage, saw that both wings were completely aflame, and the plane’s oxygen system had been destroyed by shrapnel. 

 

   The Mokenian ordered the crew through his intercom to put on their emergency oxygen, but the speaker was dead. There was no electricity, the hit had cut all the circuits. His B-17 stayed with their formation about two minutes, before it went into a slow, downward plunge. Having no other alternative, Lt. Lauffer bailed out at 25,000 feet. Of the normal complement of 10 airmen in his crew, three of his comrades never made it out of the plane. After his jump, Lauffer hit the bank of the Danube river, narrowly missing landing in the water itself. In no time flat, he was picked up and taken prisoner by five enemy soldiers, in what must have been a terrifying experience for our villager. 

 

   Word of Edward Lauffer’s fate took a while to reach home, but the headline of the March 2^nd, 1945 edition of the News-Bulletin bellowed in huge, stark letters “Mokena Boy Missing in Action,” reflecting the fact that, at this time, no one could confirm that he had made it out of the flaming bomber. The same day they were notified of his missing status, Edward’s parents received a letter from him, and they had no idea whether or not he was still alive. His situation must’ve struck a deep nerve of anxiety and fear for his family and many friends, especially as his cousin and fellow Mokenian Lt. Oliver Lauffer, a bombardier belonging to an England-based squadron, had also gone missing with his crew over the North Sea after a raid over Germany a year and a half before. (Ollie Lauffer would later be officially declared killed in action. See the May 14^th, 2021 entry in this blog for his complete story)

 

   After being rounded up from the banks of the Danube, Edward was transported via horse-drawn farm wagon to a Luftwaffe base in eastern Austria, where he found two of his crew mates among the other prisoners. His first Austrian captors, while members of Hitler’s armed forces, could also be viewed as victims, as their homeland was forcefully (yet bloodlessly) annexed into greater Germany in 1938. Evidence of sympathetic sentiment from captor to prisoner is seen in the fact that at least one of Lt. Lauffer’s overseers gave him a glass of wine in this time, which the young Mokenian later remembered as “an excellent vintage that was very good.” One of them also spoke English with him, having worked in Boston before the war. 

 

   As a prisoner of war, the lieutenant was shuttled around the Reich before he was eventually interned, with the Mokena News-Bulletin later commenting with an impressed mien “by being a prisoner…Lt. Edward Lauffer perhaps got to see more of Germany than he would have in his line of duty, for in the capacity of prisoner he was taken by train and truck, tho mostly by train…from one camp to another many miles apart.” One stop was made at Oberursel near Frankfurt am Main for the navigator’s interrogation. During the questioning, his captors were gentle on him and used no torture to extract information. After a hard 15-day march from Nuremberg, his journey ended on April 18^th, 1945, at the infamous Stalag VII-A at Moosburg in southern Bavaria. When Lt. Lauffer got there, the massive camp held over 29,000 Allied prisoners, finding himself surrounded not only by fellow Americans, but also by Australians, British, Canadians, French, Russians, and Serbs. 

 

  Due to his status as an officer, Lt. Lauffer was separated from the enlisted men at Moosburg. He would later reflect that his captors generally treated him and the other prisoners with respect and according to the rules of the Geneva Convention, but that there was an acute lack of food in the camp, as the Germans themselves were in dire straits at this juncture. At this time, Hitler’s Reich was in its death throes, and luckily for the Mokenian, his time spent in the gigantic prisoner camp was shorter than many of his fellow inmates, for 11 days after his arrival, on April 29^th, he was finally freed by the American 4^th Armored Division, bring an end to his harrowing experience. 

 

   On May 4, 1945, the News-Bulletin cheered “Liberated From Nazi Prison Camp” in its headline, and with a beam of sunlight in its words, announced that Louis and Elizabeth Lauffer had been notified of their son’s deliverance from Moosburg three days before. He was safe and sound, and “being nourished by Red Cross rations.” It was the first time they had heard anything about him since they received the notification that he had been shot down. Elizabeth was remembered to have exclaimed “Oh, this is fine!” when she got the news. It isn’t hard to imagine the Lauffers’ joy, and the immeasurable weight that had been lifted from their shoulders. 

 

Lt. Lauffer was granted a leave, and on June 30^th, 1945, made his triumphant return to Mokena, where the News-Bulletin was eager to interview him. Our small town paper ran a long piece detailing his story, saying that it was “hard to say which was the happiest” about his being back, Lt. Lauffer himself or his parents, and noted that “Edward…is very much in love with his job as a navigator and with flying.” The piece rounded out with a proud description of the medals adorning his uniform. Before he left the interview that day, Edward Lauffer signed the guest book that was kept in the Front Street News-Bulletin office for returning soldiers. 

Edward Lauffer in his later years.

 

   After marrying June Waters that July, Edward went on to keep a hardware store in Frankfort and would become the father of three daughters. The Lauffers later moved home and hearth to Texas, where the former navigator owned a miniature golf course. He loved playing bridge and skiing in Colorado, and in later years attended not only President Reagan’s inauguration, but the launching of the USS Reagan aircraft carrier. Decades after the war, Edward said that his faith saw him through the whole thing, and that his only regret was that not all of his comrades aboard their B-17 were able to make it out that day over Vienna. He crossed the great beyond on November 18^th, 2013 in Texas. After so many years spent away, he was borne back to his old hometown, a hero making his final journey. Within the peaceful gates of St. John’s Cemetery, one dignified headstone bears the name of Edward Lauffer, complete with flyer’s wings and the inscription “Defender of Freedom.” Those of us now must never forget his sacrifices and those of the Greatest Generation, along with their deeds done to make the world a better place. 

The Great Mokena Sandwich Heist: A Halloween Tale of 1919

   The season of tricks and treats is upon us. Ghosts, witches and black cats, our community has a long history with all of them on the All Hallows’ Eves of yore. Examining the pages of history, it can be found that Halloween in Mokena was once a rollicking time for joke playing, with the soaping of windows and privies disappearing and reappearing on rooves. In years past, the levity got so out of hand that certain residents were often deputized to reign in the day’s chaos, with more than a few of the larks stepping over the line into outright meanness and property damage. Parting the sea of time, we find a curious incident that took place in our village on Halloween 1919, one involving the excitement of a party and the temptation of its treat, which came to be the trick for some mean-spirited pranksters.  

    So it came that the Young People’s Society of St. John’s German Evangelical Church were hosting a Halloween bash at Mokena Hall, a roomy Front Street building that had already been the scene of countless hours of hometown fun.  As the youths got the Hall ready for their event that Friday evening, a tray containing a rich bounty of twelve dozen ham sandwiches was left in the basement, where it waited to be enjoyed by hungry revelers a little later. The party kicked off without a hitch, with “gayety and laughter” echoing through Mokena Hall. As the revelry carried on, some strange noises were heard at the front doors, some that would be described as a “commotion” taking place in Front Street. What started as a curiosity ended in pure confusion, when upon investigating the sounds, the young folk found the doors to be locked.   

 

Mokena Hall as it appeared circa 1913, having stood at today's 11020 Front Street. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn) 

 

    As some were left scratching their heads, a few of the youths went downstairs to fetch their mid-party snacks. Expecting nourishment, they were shocked to find that the tray laden with sandwiches was gone, having been stolen by a Halloween trickster. As if to add insult to injury, some of the sandwiches had been torn to shreds and wantonly strewn all over the basement, flattened as if by a maliciously joking foot. Some amateur detective work was done by the Young People’s Society, and it was determined that the thieve(s) slipped in through a basement window while the distraction took place at the front doors. 

 

     Cakes were quickly brought out, and the party went on, although with a slightly downtrodden manner. Over the next few days, the youths wondered aloud if they had some starving friends in their midst, saying that had they known, they would’ve been welcomed to the soiree. Their party’s crashing made the front page of The News-Bulletin, the new paper serving the small town of about 475. Under the headline “Halloween Imps Swipe Food at Church Party,” quite a few townfolk were shown to be indignant over what happened, and in his reportage over the episode, editor William Semmler opined that “it is a pity that we have so much food in this country that we can waste it, while across the seas many thousands of humans beings are starving for want of it.”

 

   A letter was also published from an author who called him or herself “An Interested Spectator”, that paints a poignant image of sympathetic outreach to the guilty party, whoever they may have been. When pen in hand, the writer extended an empathetic hand to the thieves, writing “…Dear boys and girls of that group, the league also had delicious cakes, coffee, pickles, besides all those sandwiches and they would have rejoiced to feed you, for that is their great and good work – doing for others.” This anonymous Mokenian’s words reflect his or her belief that the escapade was not done out of misguided devilment but out of desperation, retreading over Editor Semmler’s words, “For shame, that Mokena should have in her midst hungry boys and girls whom must need go to Halloween parties and run off with the food. Is there no one who will feed them?”

 

   Happy Halloween Mokenians, be sure to feel autumn’s crisp bite, feel the crunch of leaves underfoot, and make sure that all ham sandwiches get to their rightful owners. 

 

Red Hot Escape: Mokena's 1909 Jailbreak

   Our fair village is generally a peaceful place, as it always has been. However, if one knows just where to look, provocative cases of crime can be found in the pages of our history. While stories of malice and violence are hidden in certain places, most of the stories of lawbreaking in Mokena’s long history are relatively small-time affairs. Nevertheless, in brittle newspaper clippings and long-forgotten memories, there is one tale of a treacherous burglary followed by a daring jailbreak under the cover of darkness. Let us turn the hands of time back to 1909, and set the stage in John A. Hatch’s general store on Mokena Street. 

   The shop was a one-stop location for the Mokenian of the early 20^th century. From boots and shoes to groceries and even sewing supplies, Hatch had it all. One of the village’s founding fathers and a much-respected citizen, on October 8^th, 1909 he opened the store much as he did on any other morning. Inside though, something was amiss. Sometime during the night, burglars had struck the store, and plundered it of goods. After they climbed in through a window in his storeroom, Hatch figured out that that the thieves snatched 30 cents from a slot machine, as well as a hodgepodge of pipes, cigars, chewing gum and combs. To his relief, the storekeeper’s cash drawer was untouched. 

 

The former store of John A. Hatch, the scene of the 1909 burglary, at today's 19711 Mokena Street.

 

    When word spread through tiny Mokena that Hatch had been looted, some townspeople remembered having seen a pair of strangers milling around some neighboring coal sheds. Those who saw them remembered that they were young men, 16 or 17 years old, more like boys. Their light-colored suits and tan shoes stuck out and were noticed by Mokenians. On the same day of the burglary, the two were tracked down and arrested on suspicion of having been the thieves, and gave their names as Edward Clark and William Rhodes of Chicago. An early report of the arrest pointed out that the duo were “inveterate cigarette smokers.”

 

   John Hatch was a man known in town for his gentle ways with area youngsters, and after the boys were taken into custody, was willing to go easy on them. It was his wish that if their parents could come to town and make good for his losses, he would not press any charges. In the meantime, the teens were locked up in the village calaboose by constable Conrad Schenkel, Mokena’s one-man police force. The Front Street jail was barely more than a small wooden shack furnished with a potbelly stove. As the autumn night descended over the village, the two youths felt a chill in the air. They mentioned to the German-born Schenkel that they were cold, and a warming fire was built for them inside the lockup. Long after Mokena was asleep, they then patiently heated a fire poker to a red-hot glow, and used it to singe a wooden post upon which the shack’s door hung. After diligently working, the door had been loosened enough for them to slip away into the darkness. 

 

    That Thursday’s issue of the Joliet Weekly News heralded the escape by screaming “Use Red Hot Poker to Gain Liberty” from its headlines. The jailbreak was even said to have caused a “mild sensation” in the county seat. Back in Mokena, uncomfortable questions began to be raised to constable Schenkel, namely as to his whereabouts that night and why he hadn’t kept a better eye on the lockup. Firing back, he defended himself by proclaiming that there was never a poker in the calaboose to begin with. He suspected that some town boys may have slid it to the prisoners through a barred window without realizing the consequences. 

The tiny, historic Mokena calaboose is now prominently featured in the Will County Historical Society's Heritage Village at Lockport. It is occasionally open to visitors. Just leave your red-hot fire pokers at home. (Image courtesy of Sandy Vasko)

 

   Schenkel phoned neighboring towns with the names and descriptions of the suspects, hoping to catch them before they got too far from Mokena. The officer’s frustration with the entire situation only got worse when he followed up on the city addresses given to him by his arrestees, as they turned out to be fake, along with their names. His vexation reached a peak two weeks later, when he took a phone call from Orland. Schenkel learned that a similar burglary had taken place there, and that two males were in custody whose looks matched that of the boys. Upon their presentation to him, he was bowled over to see that these were not the two he was looking for. To add insult to injury, in the last days of October Schenkel received what was mildly called “a comic postcard” with a Chicago postmark referencing the whole episode, and some were of the opinion that it was from his fugitives.

            

    Luckily for Conrad Schenkel, he received word from authorities in the city that a Pinkerton detective had caught his suspects, whose real names turned out to be William Reel and Edwin Scott. They were shipped back to Mokena in handcuffs on November 5th, where they stood trial by magistrate Willard Owen. They admitted their guilt under little pressure. Before long, they were sent to Joliet to withstand sentencing by the grand jury. While there, their jailer made a comment to the Weekly News in which he cracked that any fire pokers “would be kept on the opposite site of the bars from them.”

 

     In the end, William Reel and Edwin Scott were given 100 days in the county jail for their theft of Hatch’s store. The juxtaposition of the two city boys and their crime against then rural Mokena was greatly enjoyed by the day’s media. The News editorialized that the “temptations and pitfalls…presented by the city of Chicago” were ultimately responsible for Reel and Scott’s immoral act. So it was, that they earned their place in our community’s history, a footnote among other stories of love, friendship, and memories. While some may not be fond of reminiscence of tales like this one, a full understanding of our illustrious story cannot be had without them. 

From Hardware to Hot Shaves: The Story of 11014 Front Street

   Viewed as a whole, Mokena is divided up into lots and blocks, looking like a cross section of squares and rectangles. If we see it as a surveyor’s plat map, it is sliced up like a pie. Considered with a more flavorful bend, the individual flavor and persona of each slice can be fully appreciated. To look at the history of each lot in town, is to be face to face with our narrative on a grand scale. Taken as an example, 11014 Front Street is no different, boasting of a rich story that goes back almost 160 years. 

   This tale begins with the humble family of Andreas and Margaret Schuberth, late of the tiny northern Bavarian village of Wolfersgrün. They arrived in our environs in 1847, as part of the great Germanic wave of emigration to eastern Will County in that era. They settled here in a world where neither Mokena nor Frankfort yet existed, nor was there any township government to speak of. The railroads that would come to crisscross our neighborhood were but a distant dream. By 1862, the Schuberths had prospered and owned a farm of no small means on today’s 191^st Street, just east of the modern intersection of Route 45. 

 

   Aside from being early settlers to what would later become Mokena, the Schuberths also earned their place in history by being one of the founding families of the St. Mary German Catholic Church in 1864. Four years earlier, a federal census taker recorded Andreas and Margaret on their homestead with a family of four living children, ranging in age from 22 to 14. Their oldest, John, was working as a carpenter. As the Civil War began, he struck out on his own and moved to Mokena, a young and growing community that had only existed for ten years. Decades later, it would be recalled through the haze of time that John Schuberth erected a building at today’s 11014 Front Street in 1862. Typical for its era, this quaint two-story structure housed his new hardware store, and was fitted out with living quarters not only above it, but also in a small wing on the building’s east side.

 

Having formerly stood at today's 11014 Front Street, this ca 1910 image shows the historic structure was built by John Schuberth in 1862. (image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   The Schuberth family became firmly rooted in business affairs of 19^th century Mokena, as John’s younger brother Nicholas opened a long-lasting saloon not far from the hardware store around 1870. John was doing well enough by 1872 to take out a large ad in that year’s county directory, in which he described himself as a “dealer in general hardware, iron, nails, copper and sheet iron ware”, as well as highlighting the stoves and agricultural implements he had on hand. Further illustrating the array of goods that could be had at the store was an insert that appeared four years later on the front page of the Mokena Advertiser, that boasted “John Schuberth would inform his friends and the public generally, that he has just put upon the floor in his store the largest and most complete assortment of cooking ranges, stoves, parlor hard and soft coal and wood burners ever shown in Mokena or surrounding towns.”

 

This ad from John Schuberth's hardware store appeared in an 1872 Will County directory.

 

   A respected man in our community, in the spring of 1882 the town solons appointed John Schuberth the village’s police magistrate. As Mokena had no established police department to speak of at the time, the hardware dealer presided over cases of local legal infractions that were brought before him by the town constable. Typical instances were those of alcohol-fueled mayhem that occurred when area farmhands came to town to ring in the weekend in Mokena saloons. Involvement of the owners of this property in village law enforcement would become a common thread in its history, and would be seen in more than one figure in its future. 

 

   In addition to selling iron goods of just about every description imaginable, John Schuberth demonstrated his versatility by becoming an agent for steamship travel by 1888.  Somewhere in the sunset of the 19^th century he moved to Chicago, where he branched out into real estate. He lived there for the rest of his life, before breathing his last in 1927 at the age of 89, three decades past the life expectancy for an American male in this time. 

 

   As is so often the case with our history, there are a series of blank spots in the narrative of this property, things only coming back into focus with the emergence of a Mokenian named Jacob M. Zahn. The scion of an old Mokena family, he took up ownership of a new hardware store in this spot sometime in the years leading up to 1900. Zahn’s business here was successful, and in the spring of 1904 he began to carry the new-fangled spiral washing machine manufactured in Tinley Park, which users declared to be “the best made.” In 1901, mere three years after telephones made their debut in the village, the Northwestern Telephone Company put a switchboard in Jacob Zahn’s hardware store, it being operated by the faithful shopkeep and his wife, Alice. A news report from that fall described Jacob as being “busy as a hive of bees” in his diligent work manning the board. 

 

   Zahn also took a seat on the village board as a town trustee in 1897, a local office he held until 1905. His popularity amongst town folk is evidenced by the election held in the spring of 1903, when he received a whopping 50 votes from the men of Mokena, at a time when our population was barely 300. During his time as trustee, he worked on various projects around town, including the 1898 construction of our first water tower, which stood for many years on Front Street, just east of its intersection with Division Street. 

 

   Jacob Zahn was a well-known Mokena businessman in his day, but he was not blessed with good health. In the fall of 1904 he was bowled over with particularly severe case of bronchitis which resulted in his traveling to a “fresh air camp” in Ottawa in the early weeks of the following year. He manifested signs of improvement there, and also procured a tent in which he lived upon his return to Mokena to continue the treatment. However, in spite of all the efforts of early 20^th century medicine, severe hemorrhages developed, and he expired at his Front Street home on May 31^st, 1905, a young man of 38 years. Leaving behind his wife Alice and two young daughters named Viola and Pearl, his mortal remains were interred beneath the green sod of St. John’s Cemetery just outside the village. 

 

   That autumn, Alice Zahn sold the hardware store to Fred and William Niethammer of Kankakee County, while not only keeping ownership of the apartments in the building, but also continuing to run the telephone switchboard. Soon after they set down their stakes here, in the fall of 1907 village correspondent William Semmler of the Joliet Weekly News, referred to the two brothers as “wide awake hardware dealers”, and that October William bought out Fred’s interest in the store, who then went to work in Chicago, before ultimately becoming an Indiana farmer. Like those who went before him at this location on Front Street, William became active in local affairs and cared deeply about our community. He came to be an important part of St. John’s Brotherhood, a men’s organization of the church, where he served as chairman of the building committee when the new church was dedicated in 1923, as well as a school trustee and clerk of the local camp of the Modern Woodmen of America.  Like John Schuberth before him and those who would come after him at this spot, Niethammer had a hand in law enforcement in Mokena, being appointed police magistrate in the spring of 1907 by the village board. Aside from patriarch William, the Niethammer family was composed of matriarch Ida, and their two children Ruth and Hugo. The family came to live in a roomy, historic house on First Street, lending their name informally to the narrow stretch of today’s Midland Avenue that ran north to Third Street from their homestead. 

 

William Niethammer of Mokena, circa 1922. 

 

   The tenure of William Niethammer brought modernity to the old hardware store, with glistening electric light being installed for the first time in August 1913. His business withstood the trying years of the First World War, before Niethammer ultimately closed up shop in the early 1920s. The last hardware enterprise to be housed here was the store of young Mokena brothers Milton and Roy Krapp, who moved their concern two doors to the west when they traded the property to local newcomer Walter Fisher in the spring of 1923, who opened a general store here. A fresh-faced man of 26 years, Fisher was born in the Russian Empire of Jewish heritage, before he and his family flocked to America’s shore in the early part of the 20^th century, likely in an effort to escape the czar’s hostility to people of their faith. Having first come to Mokena by way of Joliet with his wife Ethel and two little daughters in 1922, Walter Fisher’s store handled everything from pail candy, union suits to fancy dress suspenders, as well as phonographs, at the going rate of $98 (or about $1,500 in today’s money) and individual records for 49 cents each. 

 

   Following the already long-established pattern of owners with law enforcement connections, Walter Fisher was appointed a Will County Sheriff’s deputy at the end of 1922 to combat Prohibition era bootlegging in the neighborhood. During his tenure he did much to fight crime in and around the village, his biggest moment being when he and Mokena constable John Frisch intercepted a truckload of illicit booze passing through the community in March 1923. Alas, Walter Fisher is one of the most tragic figures in our town’s history. While pursuing a car thief in April 1926, the Front Street storekeeper-turned lawman was shot and killed just outside Orland Park. As a hero in Mokena’s story, it bears noting that nothing in the village, neither street nor park nor public building, bears Walter Fisher’s name in memory of his fearless sacrifice. This is a glaring omission in our community. For the complete account of this case and Deputy Fisher’s life, the reader is directed to this author’s 2018 book The 1926 Orland Park Murder Mystery.

 

Walter Fisher, a hero in Mokena's history, seen here around 1920. 

 

   In the wake of Fisher’s untimely death, the property was host to several short-lived enterprises. Not only did Ethel Fisher carry on her husband’s store here for a brief period, but Fred and Alma Brown had opened a rooming house in the upstairs of the building by the end of the decade as well as a combined ice cream shop and snack shop in the structure’s one-story eastern wing. Operating at the same time in main western side of the building was the oft-forgotten Bethard Chevrolet dealership. In the crisp early morning hours of November 2^nd, 1929, a guest of Lizzie Moriarty, who lived in the house immediately east of the property in question, was jarred from her slumbers by the sounds of breaking glass and the acrid smell of smoke. Fearing the worst, she woke Mrs. Moriarty, who went outside and discovered that the west side of the Fisher building was engulfed in flames. In the way in which it can only be done in a small town, word of mouth stirred the volunteer fire department to life, who sounded their alarm on the village water tower a few doors to the east, and in no time they were out in full force, with a crowd of sleepy onlookers to boot. In what would prove to be one of the most spectacular fires in Mokena’s chronology, the firemen vigorously fought a blaze that would be momentarily tamed, only for it to reignite time and again in another part of the sprawling building. The News-Bulletin glumly quipped that the fire “was a stubborn one”, and that the flames “appeared to be between the walls.” All the equipment belonging to the Bethard dealership was lost to the conflagration, as was everything in the Browns’ section of the building, who carried no insurance to offset their loss.  

 

   By the time the last ember winked out, the story was only just beginning. Almost two weeks after the fire, the state fire marshal showed up in town, who had more than a passing interest in Mr. Bethard, whose first name has been lost to time. In an interesting detour to the story, it turned out that Bethard hadn’t been seen in Mokena since the fire, and that he was in no small amount of debt. To top things off, he had recently invested in an establishment called The Green Gables just south of the village at today’s Wolf and LaPorte Roads that the News-Bulletin referred to as a “roadhouse”, implying in the lingo of the day that shady business was afoot there. Stories were making the rounds in town that illegal alcohol was could be had there, with the News-Bulletin winking to its readers that “quite fast company was seen there” and that “the place was open all night and looked like one of New York’s famed night clubs.” Talk of Bethard’s alleged speakeasy even came up at a village board meeting, where it was intimated that “gun play” had taken place there between a scorned husband and his wife’s supposed lover. 

 

  Mokena was agog, and the gossip titillated residents. How much of it beheld the truth was never ascertained, but Mr. Bethard re-surfaced in time to communicate from Chicago to the News-Bulletin that he vehemently denied everything that was being attributed to him, and declared that he was “trying hard to get on his feet again” after the Front Street fire. In any case, he never went back into business in Mokena. The burnt hulk of this historic Front Street building was unable to be saved, and was ultimately knocked down.   

 

   In the aftermath of the 1929 fire, the lot sat vacant for years as life carried on without it. In time it became an overgrown tangle of foliage, with one account in the News-Bulletin describing it as a “young forest” in 1945. At this point in the narrative, we can open the books to a new chapter in the history of this property. Enter now the family of Anthony and Evanis Dina, both natives of Chicago. When the Dinas first arrived in our midst in 1947, they became one of the first settlers of the new Sunny Acres subdivision, which sprouted up north of the village proper in the days after the Second World War. The Dinas came to raise five children in the community, while Tony, as he was called by those who knew him, was a barber by trade, having first taken up the scissors when he was nine years old. All paths led to his becoming a tonsorial artist, for the young Chicagoan attended barbering school at the age of 13, and became the proud owner of his barber’s license as a 17-year-old. Part of the revered Greatest Generation, Dina served in the Marine Corps for one year during the war, before getting a medical discharge on account of a spinal injury suffered during judo training. 

 

   Tony Dina hung out his shingle in Mokena, and in 1950, had a new building erected of concrete blocks on the foundations of the old Fisher building on Front Street. His first local customer was the shop’s builder, who got a trim while sitting on a sawhorse. A year later their home subdivision was struck by a nasty tornado, and while the Dinas and their property were lucky enough to be spared, matriarch Evanis felt the family would be safer living in the confines of the village. So it was that comfortable living quarters were added onto the north end of the barber shop soon after, and the Dinas moved home and hearth to town.

 

The former barbershop of Tony Dina at 11014 Front Street.

 

  Tony Dina’s barbershop was quite the busy place in Mokena, and by 1955 had the luxury of not only being air conditioned, but also had a TV that customers watched as they waited their turn in the chair. The shop was very much a family place, where no racy mens’ magazines could be found, and no rough language would be tolerated, as it was common for village lads to stop in to have their ears lowered. Dina was a man who built relationships with his customers, as he was known on occasion to pack his tools into an old doctor’s bag and visit them if they should happen to be at Silver Cross Hospital, doling out haircuts, shaves and facial massages while refusing to take any payment for the same. 

 

  In his decades of residence in Mokena, Dina became a pillar of our community. He was active with the town chapter of AmVets here he served as post commander, was a founder of our Civil Defense Unit, and even served as a village trustee from 1967 to 1975. Adding to this already impressive list of accomplishments, he was a volunteer police officer, and later took a seat on the village’s police commission. Evanis Dina, known as a very caring and compassionate woman, made history when she received an appointment as our community’s first policewoman, a position in which she wore a badge issued by the town government.   

 

An idyllic scene of 1950s Mokena, Tony Dina Sr at left, with his brother Dominick on the right. The home of Mrs. Lizzie Moriarty can be seen behind them, which still stands at today's 11008 Front Street. (image courtesy of Dominick Dina)

 

  1968 saw Tony Dina Jr come to work in his Dad’s shop, cutting hair in the chair next to his father. After more than three decades years of serving Mokena, Tony the Elder retired in 1981. Tony Jr took up the torch and kept up the business in the time-honored shop on Front Street, where he was known far and wide for his adherence to the old traditions of the barbering trade. Tony Dina Sr passed away in 1989 in what would have been his 80^th year, followed by his wife Evanis, who reached the dignified age of 98, in 2016. 

 

   Many are the people in Mokena’s narrative who have some attachment to 11014 Front Street, be it business owners, customers of long standing, or simply residents who have considered the buildings here, be it the old barbershop or the much older building that went up in smoke in 1929, to be old landmarks. A fair number of the stories of these places have been remembered, being inscribed upon the old pages of local history, while others have disappeared into the ether, with all those who remembered them having long since crossed the great beyond. This historic property is now for sale, and soon, a new owner will be on the scene. Maybe the old barbershop will be mercilessly erased from our landscape like so many of the other landmarks that have graced Mokena. Whatever happens, let us never forget those who came before. 

Skyscraper of the Prairie: the Mokena Grain Elevator

   Mokena is built upon a solid foundation of agricultural bedrock. Farmers were the lifeblood of our community for well over a century, and when one looks in just the right places, traces of this old way of life can still be found amongst the blur of modern suburban living. One building in the heart of the village is a stalwart reminder of this heritage. The steel-clad eminence rises behind Mokena Street’s Eggcetera café, standing defiant against the tide of time, the weathered metal sign across its side reading “Ebert Farm Service” bearing mute witness to its former purpose. Turning the pages of history even further back, this hulk served as a grain elevator, a place where our farmers stockpiled their harvest. It may be hard to imagine a time when this old structure wasn’t here, keeping watch over Front Street and the Rock Island tracks, but it’s not even the first grain elevator to stand on this site. 

 

The Mokena grain elevator, a village landmark for over 135 years. 

 

   What can verily be called the first industry in Mokena started on this spot as early as 1855, a mere three years after the village was first platted, when early entrepreneur Noble Jones and his uncle, Cyrus Cross, had a flour and saw mill built here. These two men are inseparable with the early development of our community, and did business under the name of their firm, Cross & Jones. Alas, this enterprise’s success wasn’t written in the stars, and by 1858 the steam-powered mill had eaten up all of Noble Jones’s savings, and the concern winked out. After a succession of other owners, the huge structure was gutted and converted into a grain elevator in 1865, with the end of the Civil War. 

 

   The world of our forefathers was one of wood and open flame, that on one hand brought shelter, heat and comfort to their lives, but on the other, could prove to be the scourge of their existence. The many disastrous fires that dot the history of Mokena starkly attest to this. Business hummed along at the local elevator until the dreadful winter’s night of February 26^th, 1884, when one of the worst conflagrations on record occurred. At about 11:30 that night, while returning from a party in one of the village saloons, resident William Miller in some way happened across a fire that had started in a corner of the structure’s basement. According to the Mokena correspondent to the Will County Advertiser, Miller “immediately gave the alarm” and in no time the fire brigade and a large number of village dwellers materialized on the scene. Our community’s ladies were in fine form, and the same correspondent described “the zeal and energy shown by a number of our very best women in carrying water”, while the writer lamented what he saw as a lackadaisical effort by a few of Mokena’s men, who “stood around with their hands in their pockets.” A real scribe with a flair for the dramatic, he ended his reportage with the quip “Bah with such specimens of Homo.”

 

    Despite the sweat and toil exerted by the Mokenians who fought the fire that night, it was all for naught. The blaze made short work of the wooden building, and despite the best efforts of those who came to fight the flames, the granary was completely destroyed. Five railroad carloads of grain stored inside also went up in smoke. By the time all was said and done, the total monetary loss of the elevator alone came out to about $3,000 or close to $88,000 in today’s figures. Villagers were at a loss as to how to explain the origin of the fire, and in time it came to be assumed that it was the work of an arsonist.

 

   In the aftermath of the conflagration, a heap of scorched timbers and an empty foundation marked the site. From this smoldering ruin arose a new edifice, a marvelous phoenix from the ashes. This rebirth was had at the hands of John A. Hatch, a man whose mark is still visible in more than one place in our community. Readers of this page will be familiar with him, a lifelong Mokena area resident who was born in the wilds of the yet-unnamed Frankfort Township on February 27^th, 1842, and who later served as a hero in President Lincoln’s army at the siege of Vicksburg with great distinction. After the end of the Civil War, he married Nancy Matilda McGovney and together the couple brought nine of children into the world. A wearer of many hats in town, John A. Hatch also served as Mokena’s first village clerk upon incorporation in 1880.

 

   Hatch had already been a grain buyer in Mokena before the 1884 fire, and on June 25^th of that year, he paid the princely sum of $700 for the site upon which the old elevator had stood, a fee which included the remnants of the original building’s foundation, along with track and wagon scales and some outbuildings that still stood. Construction then began on a new granary, one of the biggest projects in the history of the village up to that point. Piece by piece, it rose over the roofs of Mokena, and when it was finally completed by the beginning of that September, the faithful village correspondent to the Advertiser was given a personal tour of the premises by John Hatch. In the lines of the paper, with great pride in his voice, he reported that:

 

“All is in readiness to receive grain. The power and shafting have been put in, and ascending to the upper floor we peered down into the depths of eight large bins with chutes accessing two separate elevators, one for oats and one for corn. Everything is handled by machinery, and the turning of two or three levers puts the grain in any part of the building from the basement to the top, or into the cars. In front of the elevator a set of railroad track scales has been put in, and also a set of platform scales has been put it in at the office. Altogether the elevator is complete in every detail. We have reason to be proud of it!”

 

   John A. Hatch kept a thriving business at this location and in the small grain office just west of the elevator, the front door of which opened to Mokena Street. He was still going strong 15 years later, when a November 1899 ad in the Advertiser stated that his firm bought grain and paid the highest market prices, sold hard as well as soft coal, (from which most of the town gained its heat) as well as all kinds of feed and did “grinding on the most reasonable terms.” 

 

The granary of John A. Hatch, seen here around 1900. Mr. Hatch stands in the foreground.

 

   In July 1902, wishing to devote all of his energy to the flourishing general store he also kept in the village, Hatch sold the granary and its associated businesses to William Henry Bechstein of Seneca. While the exact details of the transaction weren’t openly discussed in town, some said that the elevator must’ve changed hands for around $5,000. While Bechstein was late of LaSalle County, he was an old Mokena boy at heart, having been born here of robust agricultural stock on February 13^th, 1872, later being wed with Emma Cappel, daughter of a long-established Mokena family in 1895. A former employee of John Hatch’s, W.H. Bechstein was an old hand at the grain business, having been involved in this trade while he lived in Seneca, while a contemporary of his confidently wrote that Bechstein “understands the business from A to Izzard” and that he was “a hustler and a young man of the strictest integrity.” The same writer gushed that the grain man was “genial and obliging, and therefore popular with all. Mokena gains by securing him and his good wife as citizens.” 

 

   The name of W.H. Bechstein is one that is writ large in the village’s history. One of the most prominent citizens of Mokena in his day, not only did he run the grain elevator in the early 20^th century, he was also one of the founders of the Mokena State Bank in 1909, serving as its first secretary and much later having ascended to the president’s chair. Bechstein was an active Freemason, a dedicated member of St. John’s German Evangelical Church, and was also associated with the village camp of the Modern Woodmen of America. He amassed no small fortune through his business ventures in town, and would also later be remembered as the owner of the first auto in Mokena, a Ford touring car which he purchased in the spring of 1912. 

 

   Towards the end of 1903, after having had ownership for a little over a year, W.H. Bechstein set out to improve the elevator. First, he had a new roof put on the massive structure, then ordered a new 12,000 pound hopper scale for use in weighing grain into railroad cars. By the end of February 1904, Bechstein’s concern was also the proud new owner of a six horse power gas fueled engine. The next year, a fresh business venture enticed the agriculturist back to Seneca, where he purchased a large share in another grain firm. Back in Mokena, the spring of 1905 saw the elevator rented to none other than John A. Hatch, who set forth grinding feed with his adolescent son Alfred. In November of that year, W.H. Bechstein formally sold the elevator along with its grain and coal business to Frank and Charles Liess, two Mokena brothers who also kept a general store on Front Street. They spent a total of $7,500, which included not only the stock on hand, but also figured in Bechstein’s recent improvements to the property. The Liesses had already dabbled in grain in our neck of the woods by this time, but were hindered by the fact that up to this point, they had no storage buildings to speak of. 

 

   Alas, the Liess chapter of the granary’s history is a brief one. As history often returns to familiar faces, our old friend W.H. Bechstein and is family moved back from Seneca to their old Mokena stomping grounds after only having been away for three years. On the crisp first day of 1908, papers were signed and Bechstein re-acquired the granary with its coal and feed business, and was soon back in action. By the end of the month, things were humming to such a degree that one Friday night, the machinery in the elevator was kept running until well past midnight, filling railroad cars with shelled corn. A man with an eye for betterment, Bechstein also had the elevator painted red in this era. 

 

The grain elevator during the W.H. Bechstein years, circa 1910. 

 

   The granary was a focal point for our farmers, and a place from which a good chunk of their income came. A typical case would be that of Dan Lauffer, who sold his first batch of oats for the 1910 season to Bechstein, and received 33 cents per bushel. Things were especially good for farmers six years later, when upon shipping the season’s first load of corn to the Chicago market in November 1916, Bechstein paid the highest price for the crop in Mokena since the Civil War, a hefty dollar a bushel to Conrad Bettenhausen.

 

   For the second time in the elevator’s history, the terror of fire struck again. On Sunday morning, November 5^th, 1916, Elmer Cooper, a newly minted garage owner, saw smoke pouring out of a barn that was near the granary. It was known that a horse was trapped inside, and local auctioneer Herbert Moriarty was the first on the scene to try to rescue the helpless animal, but was beat back by the dense clouds of smoke. The horse, badly burned and asphyxiated, was eventually dragged from the burning barn with a rope. A Frankfort veterinarian was summoned, but nothing could be done for the poor beast, who died that night. 

 

   While World War I was being waged overseas, its effect was also being felt in Mokena. In January 1918, the village was in the grip of a pronounced coal shortage, that also coincided with one of the worst blizzards in the community’s history. With hardly any coal to be had from local dealers, some residents were taking to soaking old ashes in their stoves with oil to gain their heat. Not wanting to leave his fellow town folk in the lurch, W.H. Bechstein took to selling wood cut to stove size to his customers in this time frame, which was better than no fuel at all. By February things had gotten a little better, but still weren’t quite where they should’ve been. On the morning of the first of the month Bechstein received a railroad car’s worth of soft coal, and by noon, it was all gone, after having been parsed out to 75 customers. 

 

   After having been in business at this old Mokena location for a combined total of 21 years, W.H. Bechstein had paid his dues and was ready to rest open his laurels. On August 7^th, 1926 he sold the elevator and its concerns to his brothers in law, Fred and Albert Cappel. They had much in common with Bechstein, as the two brothers, aside from being his kin, were also born into an old Mokena family that had much to do with the building up of the village. In Albert Cappel’s youth, he had also been an employee of Bechstein’s at the elevator.  As their predecessors did, Cappel Bros. handled grain, feed, as well as salt and tile, not to mention the all-important coal to boot. The latter they were known to deliver house to house, a service that yet a handful of Mokenians can still remember. A 1928 appendix of Mokena businesses called Fritz Cappel, as he was known, a “live, progressive man” in the village, while the same authority called his younger brother “one of the prominent young business men” in town. 

 

A 1929 advertisement for the local business of Fred and Albert Cappel.

 

   Cappel Bros. steered their business through the hard years of the Great Depression and World War II. After the war, the elevator went through a succession of hands, including the partnership of Robert Hohenstein and Harold Schuldt, who bought the granary from the Cappels in the first days of 1946. By the time of their tenure, the old elevator was starting to show its age, so a new aluminum roof was put on and the sides of gargantuan building were clad in steel, which is still in place to this day. At the time of these improvements, it was noted that the elevator had a capacity of 15,000 bushels of grain. In this timeframe, the old grain office just west of the elevator was pulled down and replaced by a bigger, steel-sided building.

 

   A new page in the history of this time-honored property was turned when Robert Niemann sold the elevator in 1966 to Chester and Dorothy Ebert. Chet, as he was known by more than a few around town, has a place in Mokena’s history that is just as venerated as John Hatch and W.H. Bechstein’s. A true son of the soil, he was born in August 1918 on a farm in Frankfort Township that stood on today’s St. Francis Road. After his family moved further north to a different farm north of the current intersection of 191^st Street and 88^th Avenue, as a lad he went to school at the old one room Summit Hill schoolhouse, and later became an alumni of Mokena’s two year high school. Like so many others of this Greatest Generation, Chet Ebert rose to our country’s defense during the Second World War, having served the duration in the Army Air Corps, spending nearly three years in Panama. 

 

Chester Ebert, far right, inspecting a corn crop in September 1963. (image courtesy of Ruth Welzen)

 

   In the years after the war, Ebert was no stranger to business in our community, and was already a familiar face here when the elevator came into his family’s hands in the 1960s. As early as 1946, he started a concern in a simple building just east of the grain elevator, selling limestone to area farmers, which they used to enrich their soil. In 1950, Chet Ebert took on Warren Mancke of Tinley Park as a business partner for a brief period and expanded into a phosphate service, becoming a pioneer in this line. Phosphate was favored by local agriculturists who valued it for its use as a fertilizer, who would receive it delivered by Ebert, who would also spread it in their fields. To accommodate his growing business, the same year Chet Ebert had a large storage bin built just to the east of the grain elevator, it measuring 25 feet high by 16 feet in diameter, with a respectful capacity of 175 tons. 

 

   Aside from being a successful Mokena businessman, Ebert wore many hats in town as a respected local leader, having a seat on the boards of Immanuel Lutheran church, Mokena Public School, the Will County Farm Bureau, as well as the village board of trustees from 1969 to 1973. In conjunction with the phosphate business, he also founded Ebert Farm Service, which for many years operated out of the steel-clad building on Mokena Street immediately west of the grain elevator. A wide array of products could be had here, all reflective of the needs of Mokenians in this era. A 1976 ad listed everything from “feed, seed, grain, fertilizer and horse supplies” to “lawn and garden supplies”, making the store truly a one-stop shop for villagers. 

 

The grain elevator and Ebert Farm Service on Mokena Street, as they appeared in the 1970s. (image courtesy of Ruth Welzen)

 

   The family business reached into the end of the 20^th century, when Chet Ebert’s daughter Ruth, and her husband Dave Welzen, took over the former Ebert Farm Service in 1981 and re-christened it The Feed Bucket, to let Mokenians know that the concern was under new ownership. The Welzens started out primarily selling livestock feed, which would come to town on pallets, which would be stacked inside the now century-old grain elevator. Live ducks, geese and turkeys were also for sale here, along with baby chicks, which a visitor to the store would find in wooden crates bathed in golden light. 

 

   The era in which The Feed Bucket existed, was a time of great change for Mokena. With the population climbing to astronomical heights, the village was rapidly changing from the rural farm town it had been for generations to a Chicago suburb. By the 1990s, Main Street America was in decline as big box stores made their headway into our environs. One of the many casualties of this unfortunate development was The Feed Bucket, which ultimately shut its doors on Mokena Street in 1996. 

 

   Today we can look back over a century and half of history at this storied location. Most of the figures that make up the long narrative of this landmark we can only see through the hazy eye of memory. Their contributions to our community were great, and they deserve our dearest reverence. The grain elevator still stands triumphant, a monument to their love, work and lives in Mokena.