John Robeson sent this photo of the Moline Boys Choir singing in the 1960s, 50 years ago today.
Bruce can be located by looking above Fred Swanson's head and a little to the left.
John is the redhead on the far right, middle row.
In the future, I hope to have more information and photos about the Moline Boys Choir.
posted.
Most Garfield graduates went to John Deere Junior High, which was reasonably close to my house. Some of us were split off and exiled at Coolidge, due to crowding from the Boomers. Later, we also had split shifts at the high school. Liz Copeland sent this photo of her John Deere class, graduating in 1968 from Moline High School. I wondered if I could find something about John Deere on YouTube. The first link was a clip of the late Leo Brunner as coach at John Deere. He had a photographic memory of all the sports stats of all the professional sports teams - a real phenomenon and a very nice guy.
This photo was taken in 1918.
It shows 18,000 men preparing for war in a training camp at Camp Dodge, Iowa .
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GJ - John and Ken, when you are Googling your names or "Moline" one night and land on this blog, send in a comment. I know someone from Hollywood is often reading Moline Memories.
It would be fun to hear from our celebrities.
When I read about Ken Berry on his website, many details about Moline echoed what others have said and I have thought:
"Ken Berry was already five-eighths of the way to Mayberry when he was born in Moline, Ill., on November 3, 1933. Kenneth Ronald Berry was the second child (joining sister Dona Rae) of Bernice and Eugene Darrell Berry, who at the time of Ken’s birth was an accountant for John Deere Company."
Early career:
"When I got the job and it took me away from home, that must have been very hard for my parents," Ken says. "But they were very supportive and it was really a thrilling experience for me. After the Horace Heidt show, I came back and finished high school in Moline. I used to drive up to Chicago once a week and take a voice lesson and a tap lesson in the same studio. But that didn’t last very long. After graduation, I went back out to California to look for work. And I didn’t get much at all."
Mayberry as Brigadoon
About Mayberry, Ken says, "It’s a wonderful place to visit and people would fantasize about living there. It’s a place like Brigadoon that shows up every hundred years. It’s a place you dream about living, but you know it’s fantasy and you don’t care."
Mayberry Like Moline
He adds, "I grew up among people very much like that -- a bigger town, but not much bigger -- and the neighborhood was very much like that and the people were very much like those characters. And it was fun for me to visit, too. It was one of my favorite half hours ever on television and that was long before I met Andy."
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GJ - My wife Chris and I talk about how much we enjoyed the 40th reunion of the MHS 66 class. She has always felt a part of my class, even though she met them after graduation, when we were at Augustana.
We have had a number of discussions with people on Facebook. The common theme is how pleasant people were to each other in Moline. It is no surprise that Ken Berry had the same experience earlier.
My father knew many people from work and from graduating from MHS. We had a lapboard where all his classmates inscribed their names with a woodburner. All his classmates seemed to be named Eric Johnson, John Ericson, Eric Ericson, John Johnson, Sven Svenson, Sven Ericson, Eric Svenson, John Svenson, etc.
Once we were discussing a local politician, and dad said, "I cannot believe he would be like that. His father was one of my teachers. His word was his bond."
With my mother in the Moline school system and my father in business, I was connected to everyone - one way or another. The kindly attitude was expressed in many different ways. When I went to Augustana College, a bike ride away, my mother's classmates were there.
The daughter of Dr. Andreen taught education at Augustana. "Are you going to be a teacher, too?" she asked. I said, "No, never."
Later I learned that Dr. Andreen left his position as a noted professor at Yale to become president of a threadbare college on the banks of the Mississippi. The little portable college, which barely survived, has become one of the best liberal arts colleges in America. Looking back, we can see how much people sacrificed to create a better life for future generations. I wonder if the same will be said about us Boomers.
I can imagine Ken Berry recognizing the fictional characters of Mayberry being so much like Moliners. I will have to write about them too.
Some future posts will include the Flood, and the burial place of Charles Dickens' son.
"Transportation by river was something people were looking for," Barb Sandberg, chairman of the Moline Historic Preservation Commission, said of the city origins. "It was easier than hauling over dirt roads. It was not necessarily for the aesthetics, as we look at it today -- the entertainment, the beauty."
In 1838 -- 10 years before Moline officially incorporated as a town -- David B. Sears and others started building a brush dam near the present 15th Street.
The dam helped power a sawmill, flour mill, machine shop and foundry -- all built by Sears. It also furnished power for a small furniture factory and helped attract blacksmith John Deere, who established a plow factory on the banks of the Mississippi in 1847.
Sears then built a second dam from the current Arsenal Island to the small Benham's Island. On the north end of this dam, he built another sawmill, a planing mill, a shingle factory and furniture works.
"You had a cheap source of power and coal, and that's the essence for everything you need for manufacturing," local historian Kathleen Seusy said. "That's what built the place."
Augustana College professor Roald Tweet has said that Deere "could not have chosen a better location on the map of the United States" than Moline. The Vermont-born Deere moved here from Grand Detour, Ill.
In the 1840s, there were almost no roads or railroads, so the only way of transporting things was by water. The Mississippi River was the main artery for national water transportation, able to connect to 42 of the 48 contiguous states, Mr. Tweet said.
One reason the railroad came to Moline in 1854 was that this is the narrowest part of the Mississippi between Minneapolis and New Orleans. In 1856, the railroad crossed the river and headed West.
Moline was ideally situated on the river also because this east-west segment is the youngest of the entire river, Mr. Tweet said. With Arsenal Island, it created a small channel, Sylvan Slough, which was useful for power.
In 1852, Moline already had 172 structures -- in what today is the downtown area -- including residences, schools and churches.
After the Civil War, a 20-foot high, half-mile long lateral wall was built on the Moline shore, creating 56 sources of power. The Arsenal and city were run by what was called "The Great Wall of Moline."
In addition to raw materials like abundant coal, Moline benefited from a large supply of available workers, which attracted people like Deere, Mr. Tweet said.
"So the farm equipment manufacturers clustered together for power and ambience," he said. "Many of these immigrants were New Englanders. They were Yankees with a strong Protestant work ethic, which Deere shared with them."
Deere and other farm-implement manufacturers helped give Moline an international reputation as an agricultural center and the nickname "Plow City." Moline in the 19th century was also a bustling industrial center, with businesses such as Moline Wagon Company, Williams & White, and Dimock, Gould & Company.
However, as the years passed, the mighty river's role in the city's history was taken for granted until the 1980s, when Moline began capitalizing on that history and scenic location. First came the develpment of Ben Butterworth Parkway along the river.
Now the site on River Drive where Deere had his original factory, now called John Deere Commons, again is in the spotlight, this time as a recreation and tourist center.
Many Deere & Co. buildings were demolished to make room for The Mark of the Quad Cities, Radisson Hotel, John Deere Pavilion, Deere office/retail complex and Centre Station.
"We wanted to save the history and tell the history at the same time," Renew Moline executive director Jay Preszler said of the Commons. The thrust behind the recent development was to honor Moline's heritage and ensure the prosperity of The Mark, which opened in 1993.
The city's oldest remaining commercial buildings are in the 400 and 500 blocks of 12th and 13th streets. The Birdsell Chiropractic building at 1201 and 1209 5th Ave. dates from 1845 and was a grocery store until the 1920s.
Some of the historic buildings that have been restored include Model Printers (1872), Finney's Bar & Grill (1884), Renew Moline (1885), Killir Outdoor Sports (1889), Gatsby's (1896), Sydney's (1897), Moline Club (1912), LeClaire Apartments (1922), C'est Michele (1922), and Bent River Brewing Company (1922).
Perhaps the oldest continuously operated downtown business is Lagomarcino's, which has occupied a 1902 building on 5th Avenue since 1918.
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Tractor books.
John Deere Heritage
Throw snowballs at the deer with antlers on fire.
M -- Fifth Avenue Building and the Home of John Deere (now location of the Mark)O -- Moline Public Hospital and Lutheran Hospital (both gone)L -- Moline Swimming Pool and the Government Bridge (both gone)I -- Sacred Heart Church and Scottish Rite Cathedral (now called Scottish Rite Center)N -- Iowa - Illinois Memorial Bridge (the 1935 span) and Fifth AvenueE -- Post Office and the Le Claire Hotel
