“School days, school days/Dear old Golden Rule days/’Reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic/Taught to the tune of the hick’ry stick.” Mokena’s schools have a rich tradition that stretches back to 1855, a mere three years after the arrival of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad and the subsequent laying out of the village. The school has come a long way since that first, simple structure on the public square, and students and faculty have been many over these last 167 years, and compiling a complete history of this establishment would be a gargantuan undertaking. Nevertheless, it would be impossible to understand this all-encompassing subject without first knowing Mrs. Elizabeth Cappel, one of the most honored women in Mokena’s story. Not only did she serve as a teacher in the venerated public school on Carpenter Street, but she also became the institution’s principal and superintendent.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cappel of Mokena, circa 1955. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)
Born Elizabeth M. Krusemark on November 30th, 1898, her story begins far from Mokena, on the southern border of Minnesota, where she grew up in the young community of Truman. Even teachers have to go to school, and our heroine went to hers in her hometown. Elizabeth broke the mold, and climbed the ladder of education in a time when more than a few of her contemporaries wouldn’t finish elementary school, she attending not only high school, but also graduating from teachers’ college in Mankato, Minnesota in 1925, being the proud owner of a BE degree. A newly-minted educator, she began teaching in rural Minnesota schools, while also spending a year working on an Indian reservation.
In 1929, the year of the stock market crash, the twists of chance led Elizabeth Krusemark to Mokena. While sojourning with kin in our neck of the woods, she learned that a teaching spot in the village was open, and promptly applied for it. The Mokena of 1929 was a vastly different place from today’s community, counting a little over 500 residents in a rural railroad town. Miss Krusemark was interviewed by school board members Elmer Cooper and Ona McGovney, respectfully the owner of the successful Cooper & Hostert Ford agency on Front Street and a village insurance agent. She made a good impression and ultimately got the job, although years later Mr. Cooper would remember “The only thing against her was that (I) was afraid she would only stay one year.”
Miss Krusemark went to work in the brand-new, $29,000 school on Carpenter Street, District 159 having just that year vacated the elegant yet aging older building on the corner of Front Street and Schoolhouse Road. Her workplace was state of the art, a fireproof building consisting of a gymnasium (the village’s first) and four classrooms that were used by the school’s 125 pupils, some of which belonged to Mokena’s two-year high school. Two of Miss Krusemark’s earliest students were young Hans Mueller and Eddie Yunker, both of whom continued their work with her when they later served on the district’s board of education.
The former main entrance of the Mokena Public School, today the Village Hall.
As she made her new home in Mokena, in 1930 Elizabeth Krusemark boarded with the Frederick and Violette Whitlark family on Second Street, then shortly thereafter with the Harold and Myrtle Coopers on Third Street. Alas, it wasn’t long after being welcomed within the gates of our community that wedding bells rung; a few days after New Year’s 1936, Elizabeth eloped to Iowa with Albert Cappel. A familiar face around town, Albert Cappel ran a local feed and coal business of long standing on Mokena Street with his brother Fred. Eleven years previously, Albert had become a widower when his wife Clara passed, and upon his second marriage, Elizabeth Cappel became stepmother to Wesley, Harold, and Marvin.
Having a position of authority in the Mokena school, it was inevitable that many cases requiring discipline came before Mrs. Cappel. Decades after her time in our midst, stories of reverence would still be told about her wooden paddle fashioned from part of an orange crate. In the classroom, she had to maintain an assertive stance, and didn’t tolerate fooling around, but nevertheless kept a special place in her heart for her students, and upon graduation, would let them affectionately call her Kruzi. Elizabeth wore more than a few hats in the village, having led Mokena’s first girl scout troop, and would also coach boys’ and girls’ basketball, a perennial favorite sport in town.
As the world was in the grip of the Second World War, 1944 proved to be a significant year for Mrs. Cappel’s career in more ways than one. Sunlight shone by making her principal then, but storm clouds gathered when, in the grind of war, various hardships such as lack of available teachers caused District 159’s two-year high school to go defunct. Things turned up in 1951 when, under her watch, a $52,000 addition to the school was built, consisting of two new classrooms, a kitchen and shower rooms. Three years later, in 1954, there were 225 grade schoolers in her care, at which time a contemporary said “Mrs. Cappel is both loved by her pupils and highly respected by their parents and community as a whole.” The feeling was mutual, as she would say that “the people have been so grand” in Mokena.
Mrs. Cappel retired in 1962, at that time having the superintendent’s chair. After the completion of Willowcrest five years previously, she continued to work in the old halls on Carpenter Street as well as in the new school. In her 33 years as an educator in Mokena, she taught many town youngsters whose parents had also been her students, and in early 1963 was honored by our Chamber of Commerce as one of the village’s most distinguished citizens. On August 16th of that year, Elizabeth Cappel passed into eternal memory, and the sun set upon the life and career of a Mokenian that hasn’t been equaled since. In 1975, the old school on Carpenter Street was christened the Elizabeth Cappel School, in honor of the woman who labored tirelessly there for so many years. Nowadays our city hall, it’s impossible to behold this edifice and not feel her resolute influence.
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