Monthly Archives: June 2019

Almost There

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We’re only about six weeks away from opening the new future for our past.

It’s a building. But it’s more than just a building. It’s a statement. And, My God! What a statement it is.

Employees of the State Historical Society of Missouri are overseeing the move of thousands of cubic feet of documents, artworks, microfilmed newspapers, and other items from our corner of the basement of the Ellis Library on the University Campus to the new Center for Missouri Studies on Elm Street, just across from Peace Park on the north edge of the University campus. Our manuscript collection alone totals seventeen-thousand cubic feet. If we stood all of the pages in that collection on end, they could cover six football fields. And that doesn’t count the 54-million pages of newspapers on microfilm or twenty-thousand pieces of art, or maps, or sculpture or——-

—or all of the things we have gathered in our own 121-year history that tell the story of Missouri back to the days before it was called Missouri.

We’re going to officially open the place on Saturday, August 10, the 198th anniversary of Missouri becoming a state. It’s going to be a big deal. We’re going to have an outdoor ceremony to start and then we’ll move into the awesome lobby to finish up and to serve various celebratory goodies.

It’s been thirty years or so since the society began to seriously consider moving into a better place to serve the public and to serve the cause of history. It’s been a decade or so since our executive director, Gary Kremer, began a career-long effort to create the Center for Missouri Studies and to find a way to put up a building worthy of Missouri’s heritage.

We thought of some locations that didn’t work out. We drew some plans that didn’t work out. Gary talked to governors and legislators and those conversations didn’t work out—-for a while. But then the idea began to take hold and finally, about five years ago, the legislature provided $35 million for a Center for Missouri Studies.

We were blessed with the leadership of two extraordinary people during those years. Gary, of course (on the left), and Steve Limbaugh, whose enthusiasm and counsel was so central to the effort that we changed the constitution to let him be the first society president who could be elected to succeed himself.

For Steve, there was a special link to the society and to seeing the new building materialize. In 1915, when the society moved out of its then-quarters in Academic Hall (later renamed to honor University of Missouri President Richard Jesse) into the then-new university library, a law student who became Steve’s grandfather and still later became the society president, helped carry things from the FIRST old place to what is becoming the SECOND old place. Steve’s grandpa was Rush Limbaugh Sr., or as his biographer calls him, “The Original Rush Limbaugh.”

A lot of people for several generations of society leadership dreamed of what we are about to celebrate August 10. Many of them will be with us in our memories and, we hope, in spirit.

Three years ago we broke ground on what had been a deteriorating parking lot one-half block big. Only then did I begin to grasp how large this project would become. I saw the plans, the three-dimensional model that was less than a foot tall. I saw the architects’ drawings of the building’s exterior. But even now, after many hard-hat visits, my mind has trouble grasping the scope of what is soon to open.

Throughout this process, one of our staffers already has spent more time in the building than anybody other than the workers who have transformed lines on paper into the building we will dedicate in a few weeks. When our Senior Associate Executive Director, Gerald Hirsch, joined us a dozen years ago, he had no idea he would be our designated eyes watching each detail of the construction. But he’s been the go-to guy for dealing with any problems, adjustments, or changes that we’ve had to deal with.

I look from street level at this startling structure and I am always reminded of President Lincoln’s admonition to Congress on December 1, 1862: “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.”

On this corner on the southern edge of downtown Columbia and the northern edge of the University of Missouri will be the material expression of Lincoln’s words.   The Historical Society of Missouri is moving from its easily-overlooked quarters in the library basement into this statement building. It is unique in the architecture of the university. And in its boldness, the building proclaims that history must be part of our character and that we dare not ignore it and dare not lose conscious thought that we create more of it each day.

We, today, are responsible for tomorrow’s history. And before we make that history, we should keep in mind something else Lincoln said that day: “We…will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us.”

Perhaps if we consider the history we are making, which sometimes seems not to recall the history we and our ancestors made, our prospects for the future will be better.

We’ll dedicate this building, this statement on August 10. Join us.

 

Notes from a quiet street, Monsoon season edition

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(Being a compilation of observation not reaching the level of full blogviation.)

Has it occurred to anyone else that the wrapped Capitol dome kind of looks like the Stanley Cup?   Maybe if you squint a little?   Kinda? Sorta?

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We’ve heard several folks who don’t watch hockey remark that they were glued to the Stanley Cup finals. “That’s really intense,” one of them has said a couple of times, referring to the constant, fast, physical play.   Some folks who watched the games because a Missouri team was playing—and making history by winning—are likely to watch games next year because they’re hockey.

The fact that the Royals are dismal and the cardinals have been fighting hard to achieve mediocrity probably drove some of those fans to the Blues games.

One of the observers also has remarked that the championship by the Blues makes the absence of an NFL team in St. Louis a whole lot less important.

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Back when we were covering the Senate, Eric Schmitt claimed to be the tallest state senator in Missouri history. We found some ancient references indicating he had some historic rivals but the record remained fuzzy enough that Schmitt remained firm in his convictions although we think we introduced reasonable doubt in at least one case.   He is now definitely the tallest State Treasurer in Missouri history.

But he is not the biggest man ever to work at the Capitol.

Until somebody comes along to disprove the information, we’ll report that title belongs to Clyde Perkins, a former restaurant man from Barnard. The Jefferson City Daily Democrat reported in January of 1923 that Perkins had been hired as an accountant for the House Accounts Committee. House Speaker Oak Hunter was the big guy in the capitol until then at 274 pounds.

The article about Perkins’ appointment said he had been “off his feed” since losing an election the previous November in Nodaway County, but he thought he’d be back at full strength when he regained fifty pounds. Perkins was to be paid five dollars a day. That’s about $74 a day in 2018 money, $370 for a five-day week. Probably not enough to sustain a man very long who weighed 476 pounds..

A 2008 Nodaway County history by Michael J. Steiner says Perkins topped out at 536. Steiner’s book has a picture of two women, each standing in one leg of Perkins’ bib overalls.

Clyde was called “Fatty” by the people back home in those less-sensitive times.  He was the Nodaway County Treasurer when he died at the age of 44 in April, 1936. His death certificate says a contributing cause of death was “extreme obesity; patient weighed 480 pounds.”

Better to be tall, we guess.

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Administration of the death penalty in Missouri was a local affair, hanging in the counties, until the late 1930s when the gas chamber was built at the state penitentiary.

The Cole County Democrat observed on February 7, 1907, “The residents of Jefferson City get mad at least every two years. When the legislature meets some untamed jackass introduces a bill to have all hangings pulled off in (the) penitentiary. No person with sense enough to grease a gimlet can blame them for getting angry. The idea of making Jefferson City the human slaughter pen for the state is disgusting in the extreme.”

The disgust lasted three decades.

The legislature in 1937 approved asphyxiation by lethal gas at the state penitentiary instead of hanging at county seats. The first victim of the new gas chamber was a 100-pound pig that stopped struggling three minutes after fifteen cyanide eggs were dropped into a crock of sulphuric acid on December 13. The death of the pig convinced state officials that the gas chamber could be safely used on humans.

Three months later it was. John Brown and William Wright were strapped to the side-by-side chairs at 6:18 p.m. on March 3, 1938. The fumes hit them three minutes later. Medical personnel say they died within three or four minutes. A newspaper story recounted, “Only twenty-five witnesses—as compared with thousands which often-times made ‘Roman Holidays’ out of hangings—peered through the five windows to watch the lethal gas deaths.”

Prisoners were gassed from 1938 to 1965 in Jefferson City. The first drug-induced execution, in 1989, was done in the gas chamber before executions were moved to Potosi, then to Bonne Terre. Gas couldn’t be used because the rubber seal around the chamber door had rotted through disuse and the gas would have been fatal to witnesses, too.

Today, people on tours of the old pen can go into the gas chamber. Many of them get their pictures taken sitting in the chairs.

It is still legal to use gas for Missouri executions. But there’s no place in the state where such an execution could be held safely.

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Well, that was pretty heavy, wasn’t it? Here’s something a little lighter.

About three years back (April of 2016) we put together a fanciful discussion of how a member of the family became his own grandfather, kind of along the lines of the famous 1940s popular and country song.

Well, friends, that song isn’t as absurd as it might seem.

Herewith is a story we discovered while trying to find something else in the State Historical Society newspaper library, straight from the Jefferson City Daily Democrat-Tribune of July 29, 1924:

HIS BROTHER WILL BE HIS FATHER IN LAW

Frank Lueckenhoff, well known and popular merchant at St. Thomas, and Miss Frances Sommerhauser, step-daughter of H. J. Lueckenhoff, the grooms [sic] brother, are to be married next month, according to word received from St. Thomas.

Mr. Lueckenhoff’s brother will be his father-in-law and his sister-in-law will become his mother-in-law.

Henry J. Lueckenhoff, the older brother married the widow of John Sommerhauser. She had two daughters and Frank Leuckenhoff (the spelling changed in this paragraph) marries the oldest one next month.

Sponsorships

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State government never has enough money to fix the roads, educate our kids, take care of those of us in our declining years, pay our prison guards and state employees  enough to get off of food stamps, maintain hundreds of buildings it owns, keep our air and water safe, and a lot of other things.

I woke up on a Monday morning a few weeks ago with the solution.  I think it was the day after I’d watched the Indianapolis 500 in person and the NASCAR 600-mile race at Charlotte that evening on the telly.  It came to me that state government could make millions if it followed an economic model based on racing.

A few years ago the stock car race at Indianapolis was called something like the Your Name Here Crown Royal Brickyard 400 Powered by Big Machine Records.  Each year the name of some citizen—a private citizen who was a veteran or someone who had voluntarily done something of public benefit would be picked to fill in the “Your Name Here” part of the event name—a nice thing to do to recognize the importance of people like most of us who do good stuff just because we do good stuff.

And if you watch any of these events, you know that the first thing the winners do in the post-race interview is thank all the sponsors whose logos adorned their cars and are sewn onto their fire-resistant driving suits. “You know, Goodyear (Firestone) gave us an awesome tire today and our (Chevrolet, Honda, Toyota, Ford) had awesome power.  I’d like to thank Bass Pro, M&Ms, Budweiser, Coke, Monster Energy, Gainbridge, NAPA, and all my other sponsors who make this possible—and the fans, you’re the BEST!!!”

Suppose state government was run like that.

At the end of a legislative session, the Speaker and the President Pro Tem, in their joint news conference, began with “We have had an awesome, productive session here at the Anheuser-Busch Capitol powered by Ameren.”

“The Monsanto Department of Agriculture driven by the Missouri Farm Bureau will be better equipped than ever to regulate corporate farming through the Tyson CAFO Division.

“The Master Lock Department of Corrections employees are getting a significant pay increase; The Depends Division of Aging is expanding its services significantly; the Tracker Marine Water Patrol is able to hire more officers; and the Dollar General Department of Revenue is going to install new computers to get our H&R Block tax refunds out faster.

“The Cabela’s Department of Conservation sales tax renewal has been put on the ballot next year.  The Wikipedia Department of Higher Education driven by Nike has been given more authority to approve such programs as the Shook, Hardy & Bacon Law School at UMKC, the Wal-Mart Business School in Columbia, the Eagle Forum Liberal Studies program at UMSL, and technology developed at the Hewlett-Packard 3-D Missouri University of Science and Technology will now be capable of building new football facilities on our campuses for pennies..  And we found additional funding for the Cologuard Department of Health and its Purdue Pharma Division of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

We also were able to put a proposal on the ballot next year to increase funding for the Quikcrete Department of Transportation.

“We couldn’t do all of the great things we’ve done in the 101st Session of the Citizens United General Assembly fueled by Laffer Economics without the support of all of our state’s other great sponsors.

“And we appreciate the participation of you citizens out there.  We couldn’t do this without all of you. You’re the BEST!!!”

And the confetti made from 1,994 un-passed bills would rain down and the legislative leaders would spray champagne (or, more likely, shaken-up Bud) all over each other in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Legislative Victory Circle (previously known as the rotunda) and the legislative mascot dressed as the Official State Dessert would dance to a celebratory song performed by Sheryl Crowe, who next year will be chosen as a project by a third-grade class studying state government to be the subject of a bill designating her as the Official State Country Singer.

This would never work, of course.  We can’t see members of the legislature in uniforms that have state government sponsors’ patches all over them during the sessions or campaigning in outfits that have the logos of their donors.  And the Senate would just flat out refuse to tolerate anything that would eliminate Seersucker Wednesdays.

Even if government tried something like this, the Supreme Court would be tied up for years in lawsuits determining whether sponsorships should be calculated as Total State Revenue under the Hancock Amendment, thereby triggering tax refunds that would undermine the entire idea.  And Clean Missouri would get another ballot proposal approved by voters that would tie the Missouri Ethics Commission into knots trying to define whether sponsors constitute campaign donors.

Hate to say it folks.  In the real world, if we want better services or more services or better roads or prison guards who don’t have to hold two other jobs, it’s us taxpayers who will have to be the sponsors of state government.    And after all, shouldn’t we want to be

THE BEST?

“Our” disasters

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There’s something about a disaster that becomes personal even to those who are not damaged by it.   Many people take a personal ownership of it, even take a peculiar personal pride in it even if their property stays dry and intact.

We’re seeing some of that in Jefferson City in the wake of our tornado a few days before the Memorial Day Weekend and the accompanying flooding.  This is “our” disaster and we see and will see other disasters through our lens.

It’s not unusual.  Those of us who remember the 1993 flooding measure floods in other parts of the country against that one and in some odd way find satisfaction in thinking, “Theirs isn’t as bad as ours was.”   The Joplin tornado has become our measuring stick when we see reports of tornado disasters in other parts of the country.  Theirs isn’t as bad as ours was.

Until the disaster takes off OUR porch, blows down OUR house, destroys OUR business.

OUR tornado took nobody’s life.  It damaged about 200 buildings in Jefferson City, some of which will have to be removed because they cannot be repaired, but compared to Joplin it was a little thing.

Except it’s OUR thing.   And now we will consider ourselves kin to Joplin and we will see reports of tornadoes in other places through OUR lens, not in terms of extent of damage but in terms of fellowship.  We have now joined the fellowship of them.

We don’t know if the folks in Joplin, on hearing of the tornado that hit Eldon then Jefferson City, have thought inwardly, “Huh! We had it a lot worse than they did.”   But it is likely natural that some of them would have evaluated our situation against the extent of their disaster.

We’re still waiting to see if our rainy spring continues, as it did in 1993, and pushes later flood crests that establish new references that end observations such as, “Yeah, it looks pretty bad.  But back in ’93…,” the same way that the 1993 flood ended observations from the real old-timers that, “I remember back in 1951…”

In Eldon and in Jefferson City right now, though, the focus is on recovery. The comparisons with later disasters will come after the debris is cleared away, the buildings that can be saved are saved, and the buildings that cannot be rescued are bulldozed down and the lots where they stood grow new grass.

I haven’t consulted with Nancy yet, but if we win the big lottery jackpot(s) I think I’d like to offer one-million dollars to the Historic City of Jefferson, which has worked for years to revitalize East Capitol Avenue where some of the historic structures might become those grass-filled lots, to be used to supplement insurance payments to rebuild those damaged homes—even those now seemingly destined for destruction.  Gutting the destroyed interior and building a modern inside structure while salvaging the historic exterior would be a goal worth some of those lottery winnings.

But I’m not going to win the lottery.  Somebody else somewhere else always buys a winning ticket just before or just after I buy mine (I tell myself that).  I think I will send a much, much, much smaller amount, though.  And maybe others capable of greater philanthropic capacity will want to participate more grandly in saving what some think cannot be saved.

After all, it is OUR disaster. And part of comparing OUR disaster to those elsewhere in the future should include what we do now to save the things we are told can’t be saved.

History tells us an Act of God can be countered by godly acts that rescue people and the past from the worst that has happened.

I bought another lottery ticket a few days ago.  And I also wrote a check.