Healing Hands: The Story of Two Mokena Doctors, Part II

 Be sure to read the first part of this piece, the story of Dr. Herman W. Alexander of Mokena, posted last week to this page.

   While the story of Dr. Herman W. Alexander is firmly one of the days following the Civil War, a far-off epoch when Mokena was but a young railroad town, that of Dr. Ernest G. McMahan is one that belongs to the 20^thcentury. While the two men had much in common, not only both being Mokenians, they were both war veterans and shared impeccable backgrounds in medicine; they never knew each other, nor did they even live at the same time. Nevertheless, Dr. McMahan proved himself to be a hero and healer to countless people in our community. 

 

Dr. Ernest G. McMahan of Mokena, circa 1928.

   His story begins far from Mokena. Ernest G. McMahan was born November 30^th, 1892 at Newport, Tennessee, a modestly sized town nestled up against the border with North Carolina. Possessed of an impressive Tennessean lineage, he was the son of a county judge and deacon in the Baptist church, and was raised with seven siblings. Growing up in hill country, the young McMahan finished high school in 1910, after which he pursued a course of study at the Baptist Carson and Newman College in the eastern part of the Volunteer State, ultimately receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1914. After graduation, he spent two years working as a teacher both in Oklahoma and his hometown, before coming north to Chicago where he once again became a student, this time at prestigious Loyola University. 

 

   Ernest McMahan’s studies were interrupted by World War I, and in June 1918 he enlisted in the army’s Medical Corps. It’s hard to tell after all these years if he ever made it overseas, but doesn’t appear to have, instead spending his enlistment in the service in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He left the army in the first days of 1919, and would go on to marry Miss Mae Krusemark that year. With the dust settled after the war, Ernest McMahan went back to Loyola, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1920. He spent the next year as an intern at St. Mary’s Hospital in Chicago, and during the next two years worked at St. Francis Hospital in Blue Island. In 1923, the twists and turns of fate brought Dr. McMahan to Mokena.

 

   Their first June in town, the McMahans bought the historic Moriarty residence on the northwest corner of Mokena and Second Streets. Aside from moving home and hearth into the old house, Dr. McMahan also set up his office there. A mere three years after their arrival in our midst, he was visited by disaster. On the night of November 15^th, 1926, the McMahans were jarred from their slumbers by the frantic barking of their dog, who alerted them to the fact that their home was in flames. The couple was able to get out of the burning house in time, but the domicile turned out to be a total loss, for despite the valiant efforts of the Mokena Volunteer Fire Department, it burned to the ground. In the aftermath of the conflagration, Dr. McMahan opened a temporary office in the Lizzie Moriarty residence on Front Street, where he also had rented some residential space.

Mokena Street looking south from St. John's Church, as it appeared in Doc McMahan's day. The McMahan residence is at right. 

 

  The McMahans got to work rebuilding, and in the fall of 1927, their new home was ready on the site of the old one. As was the case previously, Doc, as he affectionately came to be known, kept his office here, in an area in the southern part of the house, or to the left open entering his front door. From this vantage point, one could peek into Doc’s living room and catch a glimpse of him sitting in his rocking chair, waiting for the next patient. In 1928, a contemporary called him “one of the foremost of the younger physicians and surgeons of Will County”, in which year he was also on the staff of Silver Cross and St. Joseph Hospitals in Joliet. Upon visiting Doc at his home office in Mokena, (which would run a patient $2.00) he or she could count on being given medicine in a little paper envelope, whereupon some curious residents would later ask what color pill he gave. He was even known to make some of the medicine himself. Times being what they were, Doc also made his share of house calls, (including delivering babies at home) no matter the time, day or night. In the era when bad weather turned our roads to quagmires, he’d be shuttled to the patient by Mokenians Harold Cooper or Barney Hostert.  In the years after Mokena Public School opened on Carpenter Street in 1929, Doc McMahan and his loyal nurse, village resident Florence Niethammer, would set up on the stage to dispense vaccinations for diphtheria, smallpox, tetanus and even polio, which could be had for 25 cents. 

 

   Over the decades, Doc McMahan came to be firmly established in Mokena, and became one of the pillars of our community. A former patient, now senior in years, states that he was “way ahead of his time” and “right on pretty much everything.” After Mae McMahan passed in 1951, Doc took as his second wife Rose D. Moriarty, in a ceremony performed by Rev. William Riemann of St. John’s Evangelical and Reformed Church at her residence two doors south of Doc’s. Like her husband, the new Rose McMahan enjoyed a very prominent spot in the village, having been president of Mokena State Bank for two decades previous. The daughter of founding father and former mayor Christian Bechstein, Mrs. McMahan had been a teacher in her youth. 

 

   Pinning down the exact date of Doc’s retirement has proven to be easier said than done. When former patients of his were surveyed by the author, memories were foggy and conflicting; however, it can said with certainty that he was still active in Mokena as late as 1959. After Rose McMahan passed away in 1974, Doc moved to Texas in the sunset of his life, with his third wife, Olive Patterson, in tow. A mere two weeks after he settled there, he departed on December 8^th, 1978 after having reached the admirable age of 86 years. Dr. Ernest G. McMahan was not only a fixture in town for decades, but also a true healer, one who is fondly remembered by many in our community despite the passage of time. Even today, one patient of years past, an honored Mokenian of some decades standing, recounted to this author that when she is at her wit’s end, frustrated by contemporary physicians, she woefully looks back and sighs “Where is Dr. McMahan?”

Healing Hands: The Story of Two Mokena Doctors, Part I

   One man knew our village as place where coal-fed locomotives puffed through town and people got from place to place in horse-drawn conveyances, while his counterpart knew a community where radios beamed in the latest news from across the globe, movies were projected on Front Street, and medical wonders such as penicillin were freely at hand. Although the Mokenas they lived in were worlds apart, these two men treated our townsfolk with healing hands. Dr. Herman W. Alexander spent the years after the calamitous Civil War in our midst, while Dr. Ernest G. McMahan called himself a Mokenian in the meaty years of the twentieth century. Both men were angels sent to us. 

   Herman W. Alexander made his first appearance in our world on December 1^st, 1837 in St. Joseph County, Michigan, just a touch north of the border with the Hoosier State. As a 15-year-old lad, the Alexanders relocated to Cook County, Illinois, settling down in the Blue Island area, where they lived as farmers. However, higher education called to young Herman Alexander, and he went to engage in a course of studies at Hillsdale College in his old home state, before ultimately coming back to today’s Chicagoland to work as a school teacher. 

   In 1861, the year Alexander reached his 24^th birthday, our nation was rent apart by the outbreak of the Civil War, the defining moment of the young man’s generation. A little more than a year after the start of hostilities, on August 27^th, 1862, Herman Alexander mustered into the 88^th regiment of Illinois volunteers as a corporal. The paperwork of his enlistment recorded him as standing almost five feet ten inches tall, and noted his dark hair and coffee-colored eyes. Corporal Alexander served on the front lines of President Lincoln’s army, and became a combat veteran after the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, in the fall of 1862, which resulted in a strategic Union victory. While he emerged from the scrap in one piece, tragedy befell Herman Alexander three days after the fight ended, when his younger brother, Hiram, a member of the same regiment, died of disease at Nashville, Tennessee. 

 

   Life and limb would be risked yet again, this time in a dramatic reversal of fortune. The Battle of Stones River, Tennessee raged from New Year’s Eve 1862 to January 2^nd, 1863, and not only was this bloodbath a devasting loss for the North, but it proved to have a profound effect on the life of Corporal Alexander. On that last day of 1862, in the chaos of the Union retreat, a wagon or artillery caisson ran over the young man; the whole thing happened so quick, that he couldn’t be sure what it was that hit him. The tongue of the conveyance struck him square in the back, leaving him with a crippling injury. Alas, the rest of his military career was spent in hospitals, first as a patient, then later as a steward, when it was determined he was no longer able to shoulder a rifle. The war ended in 1865, and Herman Alexander returned to civilian life that winter. 

The Battle of Stones River, Tennessee marked a turning point in the life of Herman W. Alexander.

 

   His experiences in the war seem to have stirred an interest in medicine in the young man, and immediately after leaving the Union army he began medical school at Ohio Medical College, before furthering his education with two Chicago doctors, before ultimately graduating from Chicago Medical College. His new career brought him to Mokena in 1873, then a neat and thriving community on the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad. A new, two-story schoolhouse had been built in town the year before, one which was considered a jewel in the Will County school system. The town boasted of several hundred residents, many of them German and Swiss immigrants with their first-generation American children. 

 

   Where Dr. Alexander took up residence in Mokena has proven to be hazy after so many years, but it is known that in his first days he boarded for a time with postmaster Dewitt Paddock. The doctor set up his office and a pharmacy in the Front Street property of James Ducker, where he could be found in the forenoon and evening of each day. A contemporary said that through the Mokenians, Dr. Alexander “earned a reputation of being a most careful, conscientious and successful physician.” Typical of the cases that came before him were the nasty wound that Thomas Sutton accidentally inflicted upon his arm while trimming trees in his orchard, or the mangling that J.C. Allen’s oldest son experienced when his fingers got caught in a feed cutter. (Dr. Alexander had to amputate them) The doctor also treated Rev. Carl Schaub of the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church for “brain congestion”, while later tending to Robert Bechstein, a Mokena farmer who came down with smallpox in 1881. Despite all of his, he ultimately lost his patient, and helped prepare him for burial. 

 

   Dr. Herman Alexander was married in Philadelphia shortly after New Year 1877 to Clotilde Sisson, daughter of a New York general. Despite the success of his career in Mokena and his new wife, the physician continued to be plagued by his war injury. The passage of time had only made it worse, with the trouble resting in his seventh and eighth dorsal vertebrae, which in time would be diagnosed as Pott’s Disease, a malady effecting the spine. The prognosis from Dr. Alexander’s own physicians was grim. One got straight to the point and with a gloomy tone, described him as “incurable”, and his disability as “total”, while another said that he was “gradually growing worse” and glumly writing that “he will last but a few years at best.” Dr. Alexander, while still a relatively young man, made his way around Mokena with a cane, sometimes even while leaning on a crutch. Trips to patients on the farms outside town were covered in a special carriage built to reduce jarring and jolting as much as possible. Despite the very visible evidence of his distress, Dr. Alexander kept it quiet, fearing that being ruled an invalid would hurt his livelihood. One who knew him said that he “uniformly kept his ailments and sufferings to himself.”

 

   In the summer of 1877, a correspondent from the Joliet Weekly News made a grand tour of Mokena, and upon enumerating every business house in town, found Dr. Alexander, and concerning his pharmacy wrote that “he has a neat little store, well filled. Adjoining is a snug, cozy kind of an office where the doctor seems to take much pleasure with his books, and a half dozen diplomas upon the wall.” With the coming of the 1880s, the doctor moved to the county seat in the second year of the decade, whereupon his health degenerated significantly. Dr. Alexander’s wife Clotilde tragically passed in the spring of 1888, at a point in which he required full-time aid in his day-to-day life. In those days his household consisted of his immediate family; his adopted daughter Lizzie, sister Mrs. M.J. Baldwin, and sister-in-law Naomi Sisson. 

The grave of Dr. Alexander in Joliet's Oakwood Cemetery, which bears mute testimony to his Civil War service.

 

   Dr. Herman W. Alexander crossed the great beyond at his Joliet home on May 27^th, 1889 at the age of 51 years. The ultimate cause were the many complications of the ghastly injury suffered on that winter day in Tennessee, 26 years previous. He was interred at Oakwood Cemetery, where a grand monument proudly bearing his combat record marks his last resting place. So it was, that while Dr. Alexander did not die on the battlefield, he was one of the countless men of his generation broken by the Civil War, and the ghosts thereof followed him to the end. 

 

Be sure to check back next Saturday for part two of this piece: the story of Dr. Ernest G. McMahan.

'Tis the Season: The Giving Spirt of Mokena

   It’s the time of year where magical lights cheerily brighten up Front Street, when there’s a hint of pine in the air, and cozy fires warm the hearths of the village. The Christmas season is upon us once again, and while it’s great to be greeted with gifts during the yuletide, the true meaning of the season is to give. This is something that wasn’t lost on those who went before us. Let us turn back the pages of time to reveal not only the kindness of the Mokenians of yore, but also their true Christmas spirit. 

    At the center of this story of long ago is an unassuming lady named Bertha Groth. Born in Germany in 1874, sources are foggy as to when she landed on America’s shore. Be that as it may, she came to call Will County home at the end of the 19^th century and took Charles Groth as her husband. While living in neighboring New Lenox, Bertha lost him to pneumonia brought on by harmful exposure in the spring of 1909. In the summer of the same year, as a young, widowed mother to at least eight children, she re-settled down the road in Mokena, where a relative of her husband’s kept a saloon on the northwest corner of Front and Division Streets. Living not far from the watering hole, Bertha Groth and her immediate family were not strangers in town, having lived here for a spell previously. 

Matt's Old Mokena wishes you a Merry Christmas!

 

     During the devastating fire at Front Street’s Martin Hall on July 24^th, 1912, Bertha distinguished herself by being the first to raise the alarm, effectively summoning Mokena’s bucket brigade to respond to one of the biggest disasters in village history. While she took in her neighbors’ laundry to help make ends meet, town residents knew that her financial burden was great, especially with having so many mouths to feed. Local folk gently described the Groths on one hand as being a “poor, deserving family” and on the other, simply as “destitute.” At Christmas time 1912, the congregation of what was then called German United Evangelical St. John’s Church turned their thoughts to the Groth family and put on an informal benefit of sorts for them. Hosted at a meeting space in Philippine Bechstein’s Front Street property on December 12^th, Mokena residents generously showered Bertha and her children with money, groceries, and various other gifts. 

 

     This wasn’t the first time that they felt the generosity of their neighbors, as Mokenians came together to look out for the Groths in a similar way three years earlier in 1909. That yule season, village teacher Ernest Tonn and his students surprised Bertha’s children with two boxes “filled with Christmas goodies so dear to the childish heart.” There were at least three other occasions when Bertha Groth was shown Mokena’s benevolence, including the time in the winter of 1910 when a traveling concern called the German Medicine Company put on a performance in their name, which included new-fangled moving pictures and “illustrated songs”.

 

     Bertha Groth continued to live in Mokena for decades, and townsfolk never forgot her. After the Christmas 1912 benefit, Joliet News correspondent and village resident Bill Semmler proudly wrote that “the Good Fellow spirit is manifesting itself in Mokena.”  We can learn from the deeds of our forefathers and should take their example this season. 

 

 

A Fresh New Look: The Rescue of a Historic Landmark

   When the subject comes up of historic landmarks in our fair village, most people immediately conjure up the stars of this category, places like Pioneer Cemetery, the Muehler Building, (nowadays home to Little Al’s Bar and Grill) and even McGovney-Yunker Farm, resplendent on LaPorte Road. However, there are many in Mokena that are just as steeped in historic charisma as the others, locales that are easily passed over. This is the story of one such site, and not only of its rich, character-filled past, but also of its rescue from an ignominious end, a twist of history that is nothing short of miraculous. Gracing Front Street with its Greek Revival eminence, roomy porch and distinctive concrete columns, today’s ReFresh ReNew Salon at 11008 Front Street can boast of a chronicle that goes back well over 160 years. 

Steeped in local lore, the old house at 11008 Front Street has seen over 160 years of history.

   To tell this story, one must first reach back to the earliest days of Mokena’s narrative. On April 22^nd, 1862, just over a year into our nation’s Civil War, a legal transaction took place when Horace Carpenter sold this lot and one the immediately north of it to his brother Chancy for the princely sum of $500. When the indenture was filed in the county seat, it was noted that the transfer included not just the parcels but “all the buildings standing thereon”, indicating that the lot had already been developed, but whether or not this included the structure standing today, is impossible to tell through the thick fog of time. The story of our village’s infancy cannot be writ without the Carpenter family. Natives of Pennsylvania, they were in our midst before the first locomotive of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad puffed over the prairie, and as Mokena was born with the arrival of the iron horse, the brothers Horace and Chancy began to invest in property, buying up lots in the freshly laid out town. 

 

   There were about nine years between the Carpenter brothers, with Horace being the elder. Chancy was a product of his time, being possessed of the rugged optimism that led him to seek fortune in the gold fields of the west. Unlike the countless others who made the trek in the same era that he did, Chancy Carpenter actually struck treasure. In 1851, the year before Mokena was founded, he set out for California; going over land the whole way with a team of horses, reaching the Golden State in a mere 90 days, considered a breeze of a trip in that era. Carpenter was there mining for three years, and over time, found gold valuing thousands of dollars in the money of the day. So proud was he of his finds that he later had one nugget that was estimated to be worth about $11 (close to $350 nowadays) mounted and worn as a scarf pin when he got back to civilization. He came home to Mokena with what one would remember as a “very comfortable fortune.”

 

   Fortune led Chancy Carpenter to try his hand at farming in Iowa in 1872, ultimately becoming the founder of a town there called Sumner. Before he left, his Front Street house was sold to Dr. Andreas Grether and his wife Elisabetha in September 1867 for the magnificent sum of $1,000. That the property was sold for such a higher amount than the last time it changed hands, indicates that it had been significantly improved in this time, which more than likely included the construction of the house extant today. Himself an interesting figure in our community’s history, Dr. Grether was born in early 1807 across the Atlantic, in far off Canton Bern, Switzerland. In 1852 he and his family came to the American shore and settled first in Cook County, and by a point in time six years later was residing in Mokena, when he contributed ten dollars to the parish of faithful worshippers that would later become the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church.

 

   Dr. Andreas Grether tended to Mokena’s sick with healing hands in the earliest days of our community, and his life was not free of hardship, being indicative of the rough, unforgiving way of life that our forefathers led. The doctor lost his first wife as a new arrival to our country in 1854, and during the calamitous Civil War sacrificed his only son, Peter, upon Columbia’s altar, to the dreaded malady of dysentery at Vicksburg, Mississippi, shortly after the fall of that city to Northern forces. Dr. Grether himself was not long for the Front Street house, for he himself passed away to some long-forgotten ailment in September 1869, two years after he and his wife acquired the property. Decades later, his funeral would still be talked about for a particularly bizarre incident. While mourners held vigil over his bier at the Mokena residence, a woman was noticed in the room, clad completely in black, paying her respects. Whispers circulated amongst those in attendance, and no one there could quite pin down who she was. She eventually passed into an adjoining chamber, and someone went after her. However, she was nowhere to be found, and had disappeared as suddenly as she appeared. To those who were there, the only explanation at hand was that she must have been a ghost. 

 

   After the passing of Dr. Grether, the ownership of the property passed to one of his stepchildren, whose family, the Schiffmanns, become long-standing owners of the place. At this date, a century and half after their time, it’s not exactly clear what was happening in those years, if the Schiffmanns actually lived there, or if they rented it out for the next two decades. What is clear, is that Nicholas and Maria Marti, prominent members of Mokena’s Swiss diaspora, purchased the house from Nicholas Schiffmann and his siblings in the spring of 1891. Retired farmers and perennial Mokena residents, Mr. and Mrs. Marti were founding members of the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church, with Nicholas also holding the office of Commissioner of Highways in the 19^th century. 

 

   After the Martis sold the place in January 1901, there were a succession of owners in the early years of the 20^th century who didn’t stay very long. Slowly getting on in years, the house was remodeled in the fall of 1913, at which point a large, new front porch was added, boasting of a concrete floor and distinctive concrete pillars, which still grace Front Street to this day. The following year, one rife with significance for the world at large, held great importance for this property as well. Not only did 1914 witness the start of the dreaded First World War in Europe, but it was also then that the Moriarty family came into the picture, figures which contain great significance in the annals of this fabled house. 

 

   The Moriartys were old hands in the area, whose estate straddled the border of Frankfort and New Lenox Townships, fronting on today’s Francis Road. George Moriarty, the second of four children in his family, would take as his wife Elizabeth Fulton, or Lizzie as she was known, on her 20^th birthday, March 12^th, 1883. Lizzie was an industrious farm girl who lived in New Lenox Township, and was known to smilingly say “Hard work never killed anyone.” The couple had two boys of their own, Herbert and Walter, born in 1884 and 1888 respectively, both of which would become important figures in their own right in Mokena’s story. In early 1911, patriarch George Moriarty retired from the fields and moved his family to our village. The Moriartys first called the old Stermer place home, and while barely settled into town, George passed away in March 1911 at the age of 61. His demise was deeply felt in Mokena, he on one hand being modestly referred to as a “good citizen”, while another of his contemporaries put it more touchingly, remembering that “the unfortunate always found in him a sympathetic friend, quick to offer aid when needed…to him a man was a man no matter whether he had one dollar or thousands.”

 

   The widowed Lizzie Moriarty found her way to the property in question in July of the fateful year of 1914, having sealed the deal with the property’s last owner, Mokenian Frank Liess, by trading him some lots of hers in Chicago for the Front Street house. Joining her was her sister Sarah Jane Moriarty, or more commonly known as Sadie, was not only was recently widowed, but also the wife of George Moriarty’s brother, Frank. Once again, visions of the heady days of the gold rush re-visited this old place, as Lizzie and Sadie’s father-in-law, Irish born Thomas Moriarty, a figure they never knew, sought his fortune in the untamed west, but unlike his contemporary Chancy Carpenter, he never returned, having disappeared from the mortal plane. 

 

   Sadie Moriarty would later take a second husband and start a separate home and hearth with him, while her sister Lizzie lived on Front Street in harmony and peace. As she got to be more senior in age, she came to be regarded as a local sage of sorts, garnering the affectionate nicknames of “Aunt Lizzie” and “Grandma Moriarty.”. It would also be said that “she maintained a marvelous Christian philosophy of happiness and good will.” She was a fixture on her Front Street porch during summer months, when many passersby, especially local youths,  were known to visit and while away the hours with her. A steadfast member of Mokena’s Methodist church, Aunt Lizzie was “interested in everything in life, in national politics and affairs of her village.”

Seen here in 1951, neighbor Elmer Cooper admires Aunt Lizzie Moriarty's knitting work on the distinctive front porch of the historic Front Street house.

 

   When her sister Sadie’s second husband passed, she came back to Mokena to live with Aunt Lizzie. After Sadie broke her hip after a 1939 fall in Chicago, her sister nursed her back to health at home, but despite Aunt Lizzie’s best efforts, Sadie would be bed ridden for the rest of her days, ultimately breathing her last in April 1944. In a strange twist of fate, Aunt Lizzie broke her own hip after falling in front of Front Street’s Royal Blue Store not long after her sister died. She was the owner of a hearty pioneer’s constitution, and was eventually able to be back on her feet. Aunt Lizzie Moriarty’s 90^th birthday in March 1953 made the front page of Mokena’s News-Bulletin, our erstwhile town newspaper. It was reported that she was doing well for herself, living alone aside from a caregiver that helped her around the house, and was still doing all her own housekeeping, excepting anything that was too heavy. On this occasion, Aunt Lizzie reflected on her life, and mused on the invention of the telephone, the automobile, new farm machinery, and also television, the cutting-edge technology of the day. 

 

   Striking a bittersweet tone, Lizzie Moriarty crossed into the great beyond at her home a little over a year after this milestone birthday, on April 21^st, 1954. She was interred in the family plot of her husband at Marshall Cemetery. 

 

   Any landmark that has weathered the years such as this one will have seen its share of change, and so it was that Dr. J.O. Hitz of Orland Park purchased the property around New Year 1956, at which time the Henneberry family was living there. After they got settled elsewhere, Dr. Hitz had the west side of this historic house remodeled into a dentist office and waiting room, taking his first patients in March of that year. The next change occurred on November 1^st, 1960, when Elmer and Charlotte Tepper, formerly of Chicago, moved their shoe repair shop here from its old stand directly across Front Street. 

 

   While they hadn’t been here since day one, the Teppers became well-established Mokenians in no time and found success in our town. Aside from fixing shoes, they also sold Minnetonka moccasins, which were stacked wall-to-wall in white boxes, while the unmistakable aroma of leather permeated the air. In the early 1970s, their shop became one of the village’s most unique business when they kept their day-to-day trade of cobbling, but also branched out into pet sales, handling fish, turtles, and birds, while at one point, a monkey named Cindy held court in the shoe repair shop. Ever the entrepreneurs, Elmer and Charlotte Tepper also started a cleaning business, where they sent out local garments to a third party. In the same era as the pet shop, the old house’s spacious second floor was made into a boarding house of sorts. 

The domicile pictured around 1980, during the Tepper years. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   Any account of the Tepper family of Mokena would be remiss not to reflect upon Carl Tepper, the only son of Elmer and Charlotte. Only seven years old when his family moved in, in later years Carl would be known by local youth for his huge music collection, providing hours of entertainment to his friends by playing name that tune, not to mention his pool table, pinball machines, and inground pool that the house’s backyard boasted in those years. He was also a star cross country runner in his day, and later would be a familiar figure jogging on the streets of Mokena, with his long hair flowing in the wind behind him. His parents, Elmer and Charlotte Tepper passed away in 1985 and 1996 respectively, and the family shoe repair shop closed its doors for the last time in the mid 1990s, as nearly as anyone in town can remember. 

 

   Enter at this point Laura Thiel of Frankfort, who acquired this historic property in 2001. Before opening her salon here the following year, (which still flourishes to this day) she embarked on a massive project to rejuvenate this old place after years of neglect. On the inside, the historic walls were plagued with legions of silverfish who were feasting on the glue behind layer after layer of old paneling. Underneath years’ worth of décor was plaster and lathe, with a thick stuffing of newspapers between the walls that had long since disintegrated into dust, leaving the domicile with no real insulation to speak of. On the other side of the coin, the place also had no central air-conditioning. Everything was gutted down to the studs, while a small arm of the house which was tacked onto its northern side was removed and rebuilt. In the main structure, the original floors became the subfloors, while everything was done anew: fresh electric work, new plumbing, and fireproof insulation. 

 

   Laura Thiel’s hard work, which took place in stages over the span of years, saved this priceless piece of the village’s history from the tragic end suffered by so many of Mokena’s landmarks. At the end of the day, over a century and a half of life and love have been preserved for the future of our community. When we rightfully marvel at its long history, the miraculous rescue of this storied house must also be remembered. 

Stick 'Em Up: The 1931 Koeller Shooting

    Time moves in such a way as to easily obscure the past. Modern conveniences and construction of more recent vintage abound in our everyday lives, but these also bury stories that illustrate past times with piquant flavor. At 19820 Wolf Road stands what appears to be a normal building, one like many others in town. However, where now a yoga studio and other business exist, was once an auto dealership that was the site of a hair-raising case of self-defense from a brazen criminal act. 

    To set the stage for the scene at hand, we’d have to travel back to the Mokena of 1930, a community in the grip of the Great Depression. In the autumn of that year, construction started on a large automotive garage and dealership on the newly concreted Wolf Road. At the site just south of the vacant Bowman Dairy plant, Chevrolets and Whippets would be sold under the firm of Heusner & Mager from Frankfort. The grand cost of the building came out to $17,000, with village carpenters Arthur Benson and Byron Nelson having charge of the work. Touted as being fireproof, the new dealership opened its doors to Mokena on February 6^th, 1931. 

 

    By the spring of 1932, George Koeller was running things here, and was experiencing some problems with petty crime, as the place had been broken into a handful of times over the course of the past year. As the small, rural village slept in the early morning of Saturday, April 2^nd, Koeller’s 23-year-old son, also named George, was overnighting in a room next to the garage’s office. Around 3:30am he was jarred from his sleep by his trusty dog, who had been agitated by some weird activity in the office. After calming down the hound by wrapping him in a blanket, the young Koeller, sensing trouble, grabbed his revolver and went to investigate. 

 

    Upon quietly inching open the office door, he was confronted by a stranger, a tall, thin man who would later be described as having a “prominent nose.” Leveling the gun at the presumed bandit, Koeller ordered the man to put up his hands, but instead, the intruder dashed out of the building, slamming an exterior door behind him. The young man went after him, and hastily fired several rounds through the door before throwing it back open. To his shock, the would-be burglar was untouched by the gunfire, and standing by the doorway, aimed his own gun point blank at Koeller, and fired a shot that inflicted a flesh wound on him. The marauder then took off on foot southward down Wolf Road, and into the inky dark morning.

Not an illustration of the events on Wolf Road, but rather an image from a late 1920s automotive magazine. Nevertheless, it helps paint a picture of the 1931 shooting. (Image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   Fueled by adrenaline and momentarily hampered by the jamming of his revolver, Koeller was able to fire four more rounds into the dark after the intruder. In a flash, a car flew past the business northbound on Wolf Road, while seconds later another barreled down the road in the opposite direction with lightning speed. Smarting from the wound, George Koeller made his way into town to the home and office of Dr. Ernest McMahan, who tended to his wound, which after all was said and done proved not to be serious. Authorities from Joliet came to the scene, but no trace of the burglar or of any accomplices would ever be found. 

 

     The elder George Koeller sold his interest in the auto business at the end of 1936, while his son moved down the road to New Lenox. Over the course of the years, the old dealership and garage on Wolf Road changed hands and came to house a foundry, which operated here for many years. Things are quiet within those four walls today, playing silent witness to an intense morning decades ago, when a Mokenian faced down an armed burglar. 

Man of the Cloth: The Story of Rev. James R. Woodcock and the Mokena Methodist Congregation

   As time marches onward, we are swept up in a never-ending news cycle, and are bombarded with momentous events, so many that the average citizen is hard pressed to keep track of them all. We live in history-making days. Even the home front is not immune, as Mokena’s United Methodist Church is winking out, and merging its ranks with our neighbors in the New Lenox congregation. The Mokena Methodists have been part of our community for 155 years, no small feat of longevity, having provided a spiritual stronghold to the hearts of countless faithful villagers since 1867. Many men and women of the cloth have tended to our local assembly over the years, and for the flock’s centennial in 1967 a tally was made that counted 49 ministers up to that point. On this long list of spiritual leaders, Rev. James R. Woodcock’s name appears, who manned the pulpit in the years 1883 to 1887. Even when his tenure was up, his association with Mokena didn’t end. 

   Even before Rev. Woodcock came to Mokena, the Methodist Episcopal church, as it was fashioned in his time, was possessed of an interesting history. As early as 1855, a mere three years after Mokena was laid out and the iron horse of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad first puffed across the prairie, Methodist religious services were being held at the new schoolhouse. This group of the faithful weathered the trauma of the Civil War, and under the leadership of Rev. Lucius Hawkins on the blessed winter day of December 15^th, 1867, finally dedicated a church of their own on Mokena’s public square. All in all, the new church, described as “very neat and commodious” cost the young congregation $1,500, which was paid for by the members of the flock. Years later, they would recall that the sale of a stray horse also helped chip in to the building fund. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church of Mokena, as seen circa 1915. This historic structure stood at today's 11099 Second Street.

 

   It is important to note that during the church’s halcyon days, their sanctuary was shared on alternate Sundays with the village’s Baptists; a Union Sunday School was even conducted under the wing of the Baptist deacon Rollin Marshall, who was a Mokena pioneer in his own right. Several decades later this accord would play out in a dramatic way, when a particularly bitter lawsuit erupted between the two congregations as to who the rightful owner of the church was. When the dust settled in 1899, the Methodists were ruled the legal owners of the property, which led to the extinction of the local Baptist assemblage for decades. 

 

   While an early historian wrote that the Methodist flock was “rather small”, they were prosperous enough in the fall of 1874 to dedicate a parsonage for the use of their pastor and his family, the house still standing today on the southeast corner of Mokena and Second Streets. The edifice cost a hefty $1,000, and the ribbon cutting was rung in with an oyster dinner. 

 

   Only two years after Mokena was incorporated, Rev. James R. Woodcock received the call to helm our Methodist Episcopal church in the fall of 1882, and for his work earned a salary of $500 a year, which was upped in his second year in the village to $550. His arrival made him tenth pastor to man the pulpit since the church’s founding sixteen years before. 

 

   Rev. Woodcock was a freshly minted 30-year-old pastor, and our community was to be his first charge. He acclimated well with the village, with our local correspondent to the Will County Advertiser noting in the October of his first year that he “is meeting remarkable success as a minister.” A year after his arrival, Rev. Woodcock’s Sunday school boasted of a robust 81 pupils, and while the Methodist sanctuary didn’t have a choir or an organ when he got to it, before his tenure was over, he had provided for both. The reverend and his wife Annie, along with their 2-year-old daughter Grace, lived in the parsonage on Mokena Street, which was the scene of a soiree given in honor of Mrs. Woodcock the following March. The same correspondent described the night as “one of those pleasant social episodes… that helps to dispel the drudging of the every-day routine of life”, the guests all arriving for tea in costumes. The hostess herself was clad as “Lady Washington”, teenage Mokenian Belle Jones was Queen Elizabeth, and 16-year-old neighbor Jennie Hatch as “Miss Fry, a Quaker.” “Games and other social amusements” were had, and at the end of the night, all who were there “declared it was the most pleasant affair of the season.” Mrs. Woodcock quickly found her place in Mokena, and also began giving painting lessons to neighborhood students. 

 

   While the seat of Rev. Woodcock’s ministry was Mokena, he was also responsible for the Methodist congregations at Goodings Grove in Homer Township and what in his era was informally called the English Settlement, which corresponded to an area in today’s Orland Township. He traversed his circuit by horse and buggy, nothing to sneeze at in the days when road conditions in our neck of the woods were often less than ideal. He was adored by his flock, as was abundantly shown on October 26^th, 1883, when the Woodcocks were surprised at the parsonage by about 25 Orlanders. A bountiful dinner was had, and our friend at the Will County Advertiser said that “best of all, English settlement folks never come empty handed”, for they showered Rev. Woodcock with butter, eggs, flour, cheese, corn, oats and “a little pile of Uncle Sam’s script and coins.”

 

   The reverend and his family were transferred to a new charge in Nebraska in September 1884, and thus their time in our quiet railroad town came to a conclusion. The years marched forward and life went on, and the Methodist Episcopal church stood like a rock in Mokena, weathering every change that came its way. Along the way, pastor Woodcock picked up the additional title of doctor, and after the passage of many years, in the fall of 1926, he made his triumphant return to Mokena. He found many changes in our fair burg, the village was now lit by electricity, autos plied the streets, and the rugged farm lane just west of town now carried a proper name, that of Wolf Road. One of the first things he did after arriving in Mokena was to visit his old church, and in doing so, re-discovered a veritable Rosetta Stone of the congregation’s history. He found a marble-topped communion table in the sanctuary, and after knowingly removing the marble top, he brought to light an inscription on its bottom from the church’s earliest days, it having read:

 

“This church was dedicated on the 15^th day of December, 1867. The dedicatory sermon was preached by Rev. Dr. Kidder of Evanston, Ill. The pastor of the church was Rev. Lucius Hawkins. P.E. (Presiding Elder) of the District – Rev. W.F. Stewart.”

 

   It was said the words were just as legible then as the day they were inscribed. This tablet, a priceless piece of local history, has since been lost to the winds of time. 

 

   A little over a year later, in December 1927, the Methodist congregation marked a big anniversary, namely 60 years since their sanctuary was dedicated. At this time, Mokenian Ella Cooper, a dedicated member of the church, reached out to Rev. Woodcock at his home in southern California to see what he might remember of his days in the village. Dr. Rev. Woodcock and Mrs. Cooper began exchanging letters and renewing their acquaintance.

 

   The newfound correspondence between the two piqued the interest of William Semmler, the editor of our erstwhile newspaper, The News-Bulletin, who in a very prescient move, preserved their letters for posterity by printing them in his publication. In a note dated April 11^th, 1927, Dr. Rev. Woodcock remembered how “a commodious barn belonged to the parsonage property”, and further reminisced on his first wedding in Mokena: 

 

“We had not tacked down our carpets, when some friends from Joliet, where we had been living drove up and insisted that I should marry them, and after some hesitation on my part, I did. We had no cake to pass out, but did have a merry-making time.”

 

   He also reflected on his preaching beat, and the roughness of travel in that era: “How piercing cold those winters were. I froze myself on one trip around the circuit, and many times the snow was so deep that I drove over the top of stake-and-rider fences.” Aside from dealing with grueling weather, ministering was also physically demanding, as Dr. Rev. Woodcock recalled that in the beginning “I had to lead all the singing, do the preaching, and then follow up with strenuous exhorting.” Reflecting the mostly Germanic makeup of Mokena in his day, he went on to note “I was the only English-speaking minister for miles around, the Germans abounded; and so it was that I married a good many people, conducted numerous funerals, and baptized a lot of children and adults.” As Dr. Rev. Woodcock reflected upon his flock, he remembered one couple in particular: 

 

“How wonderfully the Lord saved them! He was the most profane man in the neighborhood; he swore so loud he could be heard a half mile, and some people wouldn’t have him work for them on their buildings, he was a carpenter, but when God saved him, He did a complete work, and he became one of the most humble and sweet-spirited men I ever knew, and his wife was just as devoted. It was he whom I secured to build the Goodings Grove church.”

 

   Dr. Rev. Woodcock kept up his holy work until he passed away in the spring of 1942 in Missouri. His story is but one of the many over the decades to be closely associated with this local group of the faithful. As the sun sets upon the Mokena United Methodist Church, may we remember those who built the congregation, and those who labored with all of their hearts over the past century and a half to keep it afloat. 

School Days: The Story of Elizabeth Cappel

   “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 30^th, 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 16^th 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.