Category Archives: events

Into the World

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It’s graduation season, the time when hundreds of thousands of young people will be leaving the family nest bound for college, the military, or independent grownup life.

They’re empty or near-empty vessels who will be filled with life experiences that might make them entirely different people in thirty years than they are now.  When they return for class reunions they will find with the passing years that are less a class and more a diverse community.

Kelly Pool, the former Centralia newspaper publisher who was the Secretary for the Capitol Commission Board that oversaw construction of the capitol lived to be ninety years old. Eventually he was editor emeritus of the Jefferson City Post-Tribune and wrote an entire newspaper page of reflections and inspirational thoughts each week for many years. In late 1943, he looked at the way people respond to the “youth will be served” slogan and found many people didn’t agree with it—although thousands of “youngsters” were fighting World War II.  But Pool argued the old saying is true and “more and more the world is coming to recognize the power and grandeur of youth.”

The world is young—always will be,” he wrote. “Youth will has always been in the vanguard,” he said as he put together a list to prove his point:

Alexander conquered the world at 26.

Napoleon made all Europe tremble at 25.

Cortez conquered Mexico at 26.

Alexander Hamilton led Congress at 36.

Clay and Calhoun led Congress at 29.

Henry Clay became speaker at 34.

Calhoun was secretary of war at 35.

Daniel Webster was without peer at 30.

Judge Story was on the supreme court at 32.

Goethe was a literary giant at 24.

Schiller was in the forefront of literature at 22.

Burns wrote his best poetry at 24.

Byron’s first work appeared at 19.

Dickens brought out “Pickwick Papers” at 24.

Schubert and Mozart died at less than 35.

Raphael ravished the world at 20.

Michelangelo made stone to live at 24.

Galileo’s great discovery was at 19.

Newton was at his zenith when only 25.

Edison harnessed lightning when only 23.

Martin Luther shook the Vatican at 20.

Calvin wrote his “Institute” at 21.

(“Judge Story” was a reference to Justice Joseph Story, 1779-1845, who is best known as the Justice who read the decision in the Amistad case. John Calvin as a post-Luther Reformation thinker and pastor whose writings led to the formation of Presbyterianism.)

All of which, wrote Pool, is that “our boys and girls should not let the precious hours of their youth be wasted. Begin early to make your mark in the world, and drive hard to become one of the youths who ‘will be served.”

J. Kelly Pool continued to write his “Kellygrams” pages each week for the newspaper until shortly before his death at the age of 90 in 1951.

King Canute, Charles Wilson, and the dangers of rejecting change

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We have a lot of misquotes that we like to quote to prove our points in arguments and discussions.

One arose when Charles E. Wilson was appointed by President Eisenhower as Secretary of Defense. Wilson was the President of General Motors and his position triggered intense questioning during his confirmation hearing.  When he was asked if he could, as Secretary of Defense, make a decision that would be bad for GM, he said he could although he could not think of such a situation happening because “for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa.”

Through the years his statement has been turned into the rather arrogant and erroneous quote that “What’s good for General Motors is good for the U.S.” It came to mind recently when GM announced layoffs and plant closures affecting thousands of workers in the United States and Canada.

The President has threatened GM with various penalties if it doesn’t reverse course and keep running factories and keep employing people making vehicles that consumers aren’t buying in enough quantity to justify their continued production.

It’s the equivalent of President Woodrow Wilson in 1915 ordering the thirteen-thousand manufacturers of wagons and buggies and their supporting industries (horseshoes, harnesses, buggy whips) to maintain production while people drove by their factories in Model T’s.

Paul Turner has recalled in his Adaptive Insights Blog that there were 4,600 carriage manufacturers in 1914, the year after Henry Ford fired up his first production line.  About a decade later there were only 150 of those companies and just 88 in 1929.  “Companies that tried to hang on to the past, or simply apply old world skills and technology to the new world simply failed to exist,” he wrote. One company that recognized the future and embraced the idea that it was not in the business of making wagons and buggies, but was in the transportation business was Studebaker. But changing economics, market demands, and public taste eventually drove Studebaker out of business, along with its late partner, Packard.

Think of the badges that have disappeared in recent years—Plymouth, Oldsmobile, Saturn, Mercury.  We let them slip away with some minor mourning, not paying as much attention as we might have to what their disappearance meant.  But now Ford has announced it’s getting out of the passenger car business because of changing public demand. And General Motors has ignited public awareness dramatically with its announcement that the products it makes, while good products, are not what the public wants in enough numbers to justify continued production and before GM becomes another Studebaker-Packard, it has to reprogram itself for what tomorrow’s consumer wants.  And tomorrow’s consumer appears to be leaning more toward being a rider than a driver and increasingly turning attention to electricity rather than gasoline.

We have lived through numerous non-weather climate changes and that is happening with the auto industry—worldwide—might just be the most eye-catching example.  The sprouting of big windmills and wind farms is an unmistakable indication that the way we get our energy in ten years will be much different from the way we get it today.  A former Sierra Club CEO, Carl Pope is quoted by Theenergymix.com saying “Real markets are poised to savagely strand assets, upset expectations, overturn long-established livelihoods, and leave a trail of wreckage behind them.”

Some will see the words “Sierra Club” and immediately dismiss Pope’s observations as drivel. But remember how quickly the wagon makers and their extensive support industries that employed thousands of people disappeared.  Pope wrote in 2015, just three years ago of, “fossil fuels, with coal companies declaring bankruptcy at the rate of one per month, stock exchanges delisting their stocks, and oil and gas beginning to lose market value.”

Woodrow Wilson probably could have gotten a lot of votes in some places if he promised to revitalize the horse-drawn wagon industry. But by then, Lydston Hornsted had driven his 200 hp Benz faster than 124 mph, pretty well proving one horsepower was not the future of transportation.

Change is not coming in transportation and energy alone, it is here and it is gaining momentum.

Paul Turner set forth three lessons from the transition to the car:

  1. “Only those who embrace creative destruction will make the shift…The carriage makers that didn’t invest in retooling their production failed. Most were too busy protecting their existing, dying, revenue streams. The same holds true today….”
  2. “The transition is much faster than anyone expects.” He cites the death of the wagon industry 1914-1929 and remarks, “That’s akin to a staple of the year 2000 sliding into the dust today—or perhaps today’s cars essentially being replaced by self-driving cars by the mid-2020’s. The pace of change can be disconcerting. Those that have spent their entire careers in a single industry invariably underestimate the breadth, depth, and speed of change. The speed of disruption and the unwillingness to put aside antiquated technology is a potent combination capable of bringing organizations to their knees much faster than thought possible. Innovators like Google with a self-driving vehicle, and Tesla Motors with an electric vehicle designed from the ground up understand this, while the old automakers do not.”
  3. “New innovators emerge out of nowhere, faster than the old world leaders expect.” Forty-six hundred carriage makers were in business in 1914. A dozen years later there were 3.7-million cars and trucks on the roads, some of them driving past a lot of shuttered carriage factories.

He concludes, “Holding on to the past is more risky than embracing the future.”

The Twelfth Century English Historian Henry of Huntingdon told of King Canute setting his throne by the seashore and commanding the tide to stop before it wet his chair and his robes.  Moments later the wet king rose and turned to his followers and told them, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

The tide is here and it is going to keep coming and General Motors is the latest “king” to realize sitting still is to become submerged by the future.  There is pain in change but history tells us that ignoring change or ordering us to ignore that change is asking for a mouth of salt water at best, drowning at worst.

Tea party politics, 1860

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One in ten people living in Missouri in 1860 was a slave.  A total of 24,302 slaveholders owned 114, 931 slaves.  Thirteen percent of Missouri families had at least one slave.  The division within the state on the issue of slavery played out in different ways.  The situation was serious enough that national news correspondents came here to witness it.

A seeming innocent request by a church congregation to borrow the Senate Chamber for a few hours turned into an example of the conflict within Missouri and among Missourians as the nation trembled at the precipice of a Civil War. It began because a church wanted to hold a tea party.

The Senate Journal for March 5, 1860 is the usual dry record of procedures.  “On motion of Mr. Scott;

Resolved, That the use of the Senate Chamber be granted to the Methodist Episcopal Church on Tuesday evening, the 13th inst., for the purpose of giving a tea party for the benefit of the church.”  The motion was approved with only two or three barely audible “no” votes.

But some people started thinking about that resolution overnight and the next morning “Mr. Thompson moved reconsideration of the vote granting the use of the Senate Chamber to the Methodist Episcopal Church on Tuesday, the 13th inst; Which motion was decided in the affirmative…”

A correspondent for the New York Tribune watched what the journal does not record:

This morning, Senator Thompson of Clay moved a reconsideration on the ground that the Methodist Episcopal Church is Anti-Slavery, and an enemy to “the institutions” of the state. This brought out Senator Scott, in one of the finest vindications of political and religious freedom it has been my fortune to listen to in the State. It is more valuable, coming as it did from a most decided advocate of Slavery. It is impossible to do it justice in a hasty sketch.

He said he hoped the resolution would not be reconsidered. He remembered no instance in which the chamber had been refused any other denomination. It was true the Methodist Episcopal Church was thoroughly Anti-Slavery. They had the constitutional right to be so, as much as he had to be Pro-Slavery. His right to be Pro-Slavery and theirs to be Anti-Slavery, had a common origin in the inalienable rights of man beyond the just control of human governments. He believed Slavery to be a moral, social and political blessing—best for the white man and best for the negro—and he was not afraid of Anti-Slavery sentiments or Anti-Slavery arguments in the churches or out of them. If Slavery was right, it would be maintained. There was no danger in error, when truth was left free to combat it.  He asked for himself the common rights of a citizen, of a freeman, and was willing to grant them to all others. Was Slavery so weak that it must be maintained by proscription? by a violation of the constitutional rights of our citizens? The denial of freedom of thought and religion? If so it was time it was out of the State. He was not willing to make the admission, and was sorry that anybody else was. Proscription would defeat its own purposes. The freedom of thought and discussion could not be crushed out by it. The Christian Religion had reached us through the proscription of ages, standing the test of infidel oppression, and arguments supported by local tyrannies and temporal persecutions. The Reformation swept over Europe like a tornado, unappalled by the terrors of the Inquisition. Even Mormonism flourished as long as it was animated by the fires of proscription. Driven into the Wilderness, a desert state astonished the world at the base of the mountains. Another example was the proscription of the Catholics by the Know Nothings. The charge of proscription broke up the organization. Many who were in it were now proscribing the Methodists.  Were the lessons of experience lost upon them? Would they never learn them? The Methodist Episcopal Church was one of the oldest and most numerous denominations in the country. Founded by the great Wesley, thoroughly Anti-Slavery, its discipline had undergone no change for three quarters of a century. It was now what it had  been before the division of the Church, when its members from all parts of the Union worshipped at the same Anti-Slavery alter [sic].  He was willing that they should worship God as of yore, according to the dictates of their own consciences, unmolested by the hard hand of proscription. He believed them to be obedient to the Constitution and the law. If not, he did not doubt the power of the State to bring them to punishment. To exclude them from the Senate Chamber for their religious opinions, learned from Wesley, the founder of Methodism and steadily maintained through the long history of the Church, was indiscriminately granted to all other denominations, was an attempt in violation of the Constitution of the United States, to prohibit the free exercise of religion, and in violation of the Constitution of this State, a denial that all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; an attempt, by human authorities to control and interfere with the rights of conscience, and to give preference to sects and modes of worship. He was sorry that such a wrong should become by anybody, but not surprised that it should be asked in e name of Democracy, which had long since lost its original meaning, and become synonymous with despotism.

Senator Parsons, a determined advocate of Slavery, rose to reply. He is a great, big, stalwart, black-featured specimen of humanity, whose contour and manner irresistibly suggest “Border Ruffian.”  There were some strange things in his speech. He astonished the Senate with the statement that, ‘Bishop Andrews “was driven out of the church because he wouldn’t sell a slave girl he had got by his wife to a stranger.” Whether the statement was intended to carry with it the idea that the Bishop inherited the slave girl was left to inference. But with or without inference it was a rare item of intelligence, and could only have been dug out of the voluminous church controversy by the most laborious and profound research. It has established the Senator’s character as a well-informed man, and hereafter his statements will be received with universal credence.

Senator Halliburton followed on the same side. He, too, had made a discovery. The Senate listened in breathlessness. The Senator read from a scrapbook he held in his hand the astounding intelligence the Methodist-Episcopal Church was Anti-Slavery. He seemed to have just discovered it in some concealed book of church history, and put it in his scrapbook, that the world might not lose it. Where in the world he got the information, whether in the Discipline, or whether he stumbled upon it in some profound research into church history, I do not know; but that he has it, and in a way that the world can never lose it, there can be no doubt. The fact is, I heard it myself, and the Church need no longer deny it. The Senator stoutly insisted the Anti-Slavery sentiments of the church were not religious, but political, and on that account, they ought to be excluded from the chamber.

Senator Scott said if this were so, it was nonetheless proscription. Under the Constitution and laws of the State, there were two modes of emancipation—one, to emancipate on compensation to the owners, as had been done in the West Indies; the other to amend the Constitution, and pass a gradual emancipation act. Anti-Slavery citizens had the same right to insist on the measure as he had to oppose them. It was simply a question of freedom of opinion and discussion, and he was sorry to see any advocate of Slavery to defend by proscription of any kind, religious or political. It was the worst possible defense for Slavery, and would do more to break it up than anything else.

The discussion shows the character of Slavery. It originated in wrong, and must be maintained in the same way. It cannot bear discussion, and hence, its advocates want to suppress it. I need hardly add that the resolution was reconsidered and laid on the table. This is the institution which the Constitution totes into the Territories under the Dred Scott decision; and if it cannot be toted out again, no Christian denomination can have a tea-party there without indorsing [sic] Slavery.

About three weeks later, the March 28 journal recorded:

“Mr. Goodlett offered the following resolution: Resolved, That Mr. Wm. E. Dunscomb, Commissioner of the Permanent Seat of Government, be and is hereby authorized to grant to the ladies of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the use of the Senate chamber on the evening of the 10th of April next, for a charitable purpose.”  The Senate passed the resolution a few hours later.

The Methodist Episcopal Church South favored slavery.

The Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist Churches split—the Presbyterians in 1838, the Methodist Episcopals in 1844, and the Baptists in 1845 with the Southern Baptist Convention being formed and later becoming the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

And who were these men whose actions in March of 1860 reflected the growing divide in our country?

Senator John Scott was from Buchanan County. He was elected to the Senate to replace Robert M. Stewart when Stewart was elected governor.

Senator James T.V. Thompson probably was one of the first 75 residents of Liberty.  He was part of the Confederate Senate that met in Neosho and passed an act of secession. He called himself a “an old-fashioned states’ rights Jackson Democrat” who donated the ground on which William Jewell College was built.

Senator Wesley Halliburton moved to Randolph County from Tennessee in 1823. He helped write the state constitution of 1875, which lasted for seventy years until it was replaced by a constitution that his grandson, Senator Allen McReynolds, helped write. He was one of the incorporators of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railway Company, the only railroad that did not go bankrupt in the early days.  His southern sympathies led to his arrest by federal troops at the start of the Civil War. He was one of the first men arrested in northeast Missouri and was imprisoned in Quincy, Illinois until he was ordered released. He founded the first newspaper in Milan.

Senator Mosby Monroe Parsons was a Jefferson City lawyer who commanded a Confederate brigade in Sterling Price’s army.  He was among the rebels who refused to surrender at the war’s end and went to Mexico where he was among a half-dozen American Confederate soldiers killed by Mexican troops in August, 1865. His family home at 105 Jackson Street is one of the homes the city has taken over under a widespread eminent domain action so it can be made habitable again. It’s one of the city’s oldest homes.

Senator M. C. Goodlett, whose resolution allowing an event by the slavery supporting branch of the Methodist church, was a slave owning Warrensburg lawyer.  He went south with Governor Jackson.  On October 12, 1861, Goodlett introduced the bill in Missouri’s rebel senate to “dissolve” Missouri’s ties to the Union.  He apparently moved to Nashville, Tennessee after the war where his wife became a co-founder of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The Methodist Church, South returned to the fold in 1939 to form the Methodist Church although some congregations held out and formed the Southern Methodist Church.  The main Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren in 1968, which is why you’re most likely to have a United Methodist Church in your town.

A church tea party that never was, was much more than the Senate Journal tells us. But the names recorded in that dry journal record come to life in a reporter’s observations and in the historical records that tell us something of what we were and who we were as the people as a terrible war was about to engulf our state.

Josh and Bill

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Some capitol graybeards are watching the developing investigation of suspicions that Attorney General Josh Hawley used public money to further his successful campaign to oust Senator Claire McCaskill. We’re watching because we remember when another young, charismatic Missouri Attorney General who seemed to be a Republican shooting star crashed and burned.

Can it happen again? Let’s just wait and see.

The fact that it’s another Republican statewide office holder who has triggered this investigation adds some heft to the issue. And Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s successful involvement of State Auditor Nicole Galloway, a Democrat, in the investigation because she has subpoena powers adds more.

Hawley proclaims innocence—just as Bill Webster did throughout the long federal investigation against him while he was successfully winning the Republican nomination for governor in 1992, beating State Treasurer Wendell Bailey and Secretary of State Roy Blunt in the primary.

Circumstances will show whether Hawley’s “innocence” is genuine or whether it’s as flimsy in the end as Webster’s often-claimed “innocence” was all those years ago.

Public officials under investigation are right to maintain their innocence for two reasons. First, our justice system operates on the proposition that all of us are innocent until proven guilty.  Second, it’s important that those who supported the office holder with their money and their votes continue to believe that person is above the suspicion swirling around him or her. While confession might be good for the soul, it’s disastrous for the career.  People have survived close scrutiny, even charges and trials, and gone on to useful political careers.

But here’s something about investigations of public officials.  Once one gets started, there’s no   telling where it’s going to go.

We told friends about  a year ago that the suggestions of sexual impropriety against Eric Greitens were a she-said-he-said matter.  But, we suggested, if a prosecutor stepped in, things were suddenly much more serious.  And if a grand jury was convened, all of the cards would be wild and who knows where the story would go. The Greitens story escalated pretty rapidly and Greitens left office to keep things from becoming even more serious, particularly on issues not connected with the first suspicions, and before light was shined on his dark money supporters.

So it was with Bill Webster, son of a powerful state senator; some said he was more powerful than some governors although he was a Republican, which then was the minority party.  Some analysts thought that Dick Webster, who lost a shot at the being attorney general in 1952 and a chance to run for governor four years later, groomed Bill to reach political levels the father never could.  He provided a good part of the money for Bill’s campaigns for state representative in 1980 and ’82. And in 1984 the elder Webster called in a lot of political IOU’s from various special interests for Bill’s attorney general campaign account. Bill was elected to a second term in 1988.  He had his eyes on the governorship in 1992 as a successor to John Ashcroft (Jay’s father).

But Dick Webster did not survive heart surgery in March of 1990.  State Senator Gary Nodler, who took the elder Webster’s seat in the Missouri Senate, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch many years later that the death of the father made the son “more driven to succeed.”

The early news stories by investigative reporter Terry Ganey in the Post-Dispatch centered on the Second Injury Fund which compensated employees whose job-related injuries make an earlier health situation worse.  The early suggestions were that a second-injury fund lawyer in the attorney general’s office also was collecting campaign money for Webster’s run for the governor nomination and that private lawyers hired by Webster were getting bigger judgments for their clients than non-Webster friends.  Webster survived the primary election but his reputation took a hit when his former deputy attorney general and a resort developer who had bought some Webster property pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. Voters took notice and made Webster a big loser in the race with Mel Carnahan in November.

The investigation shifted to Webster’s use of Attorney General employees and equipment for campaign purposes. A corruption charge was dropped against him in return for a guilty plea on two charges using state resources for political campaign purposes. Almost until the unavoidable end, Webster claimed his innocence.  In fact the federal judge in his case, who ran a multiple-day sentencing hearing, gave Webster an hour at the end to consider whether he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea or whether he wanted to accept his sentence.

He went to prison for 21 months, getting out three months early for good conduct.  When he got out, he went to work for Bartlett and Company, a Kansas City agribusiness firm.  As far as we know, he’s still a Vice-President.  Life didn’t take him where once he wanted to go, but he’s done well.

Today, one of his political descendants is being investigated for using public funds while attorney general to support his senatorial campaign.

Josh Hawley, young, charismatic, is seen by some as a shooting star in the Republican Party.  He’s entitled to proclaim his innocence. It’s unfair to assume that he is another Bill Webster despite circumstances reminiscent of twenty-five years ago.  He has his protectors who say the investigation is baseless and shouldn’t go forward, just as Webster had his protectors.  He has his critics who say smoke equals fire, as Webster did.

Time will answer enough questions, one way or another, as it did in 1992 and ‘93. We can wait.

Disasters

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Almost eight years ago (has it really been eight years?) after the Joplin tornado we were curious about how it stacked up compared to other disastrous events in Missouri and we put together a list on the old Missourinet Blog that we knew was incomplete.  We’ve found some other tragic events to add to that list and have decided it’s time for an update. In fact, the number of deaths from the Joplin tornado was a premature total so we’ve updated that. Some accounts vary in the number of deaths for some of these incidents and some are only estimated numbers.

It is difficult to pin down the exact number of deaths caused by heat waves throughout Missouri. The National Weather Service has extensive records of the heat but we haven’t been able to find comprehensive numbers of deaths for  Missouri during heat waves. We’ve been able to find numbers for St. Louis in three of them but it’s quite likely the statewide totals were much higher. We’ve listed the fatalities in St. Louis to make note of the tragedies and will update the figures if we find better numbers.

Few deaths were recorded in the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes.  The areas hit hardest were thinly-populated in those days and while records were kept of the violence of the shocks it appears no effort was made to compile a comprehensive death total.

Just for the record or a record of some kind, here’s the list of disasters that have taken twenty or more lives in Missouri.

  • 4,317—St. Louis cholera epidemic, Summer, 1849 (Some accounts put the number closer to 6,000.)
  • 4,000 plus—Kansas City and St. Louis Spanish Influenza 1918-1919
  • 479—St. Louis only, Heat wave of 1936.
  • 255–St. Louis tornado May 27, 1896
  • 209-300 (est.) Steamboat Stonewall fire, Neely’s Landing, Cape Girardeau County, October 27, 1869 (accounts vary)
  • 158–Joplin tornado May 22, 2011 (plus three “indirect” deaths)
  • 118—St. Louis tornado  May 27, 1896 (118 more in East St. Louis)
  • 114–Hyatt Regency Hotel Skywalks collapse, Kansas City July 17, 1981
  • 100-plus–Steamship Saluda explosion, Lexington, Apr. 9, 1852
  • 87–Poplar Bluff tornado May 9, 1927
  • 72–St. Louis tornado Sept. 29, 1927
  • 72–Katie Jane Memorial Home for the Aged, Warrenton, February 17, 1957
  • 70 (est.) Steamboat Shepherdess sinking, St. Louis, January 3,1844
  • 65–Marshfield tornado Apr. 18, 1880
  • 55–Six County tornado (southeast Missouri) May 30, 1917
  • 42–Tipton Ford train collision, (near Neosho) Aug. 5, 1914
  • 39—West Plains Dance Hall Explosion, April 13, 1928 (various accounts put the total at 33 or 37. But 39 seems to be the most commonly cited)
  • 38–Ozark Airlines FH-227 crash, St. Louis July 23, 1973
  • 37–Kansas City (Ruskin Heights) tornado May 10, 1957
  • 34–Kirksville tornado Apr. 27, 1889
  • 34—St. Louis only, Heat wave, 2007
  • 30 (est.)—Steamboat LaMascot explosion, Neely’s Landing, October 5, 1886
  • 30—St. Louis Athletic Club fire, March 9, 1914
  • 31–Gasconade River railroad bridge collapse Nov. 1, 1855
  • 28–Kansas City (Lathrop School) May 11, 1886
  • 26–Fire at Wayside Inn Nursing Home, Farmington, 1979
  • 24—Rich Hill Coal Mine Explosion, March 29, 1888
  • 24—St. Louis only, heat wave, 1980
  • 23–Cape Girardeau tornado May 21, 1949
  • 21–St. Louis tornado  Feb. 10, 1959
  • 21–Coates House Hotel fire, Kansas City, January 28, 1978

There have been other plane crashes, train wrecks, fires and tornadoes that have taken lives. We put the cutoff point at more than 20 deaths.

Tennial Time, Boat Edition

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Bi and Cen.

The new year starts an ten-year run of tennials.   Between now and August 4, 1828 we will observe a series of 200th and 100th anniversaries:

2019 is the first of the bicentennials.  We doubt that anybody was here to see these two events.  It was two years before the legislature decreed this area become known as the City of Jefferson City. On May 15, 1819 the steamboat Independence under Captain John Nelson became the first steamboat to challenge the dangers of the Missouri River .  It arrived at the now-vanished town of Franklin on May 28. It got as far as the community of  Chariton, near the mouth of the Chariton River, called by some “Missouri’s gran divide” because streams east of it flow towards the Mississippi and those to the west flow into the Missouri or into its tributaries.

A month later, on June 21another steamboat, the Western Engineer, left St. Louis.  The boat had been built for an exploratory expedition organized by the U.S. Topographical engineers and led by Major Stephen Long.  It was the first steamboat to make it all the way across Missouri, wintering at Fort Lisa near present Council Bluffs, Iowa on September 17 before going back to St. Louis in the spring.

Steamboating seems to be slow developing on the Missouri, perhaps because it took time to develop boats strong enough to run the great river.  Five boats were regularly running the river in 1836.  But travel on the river was assuming such importance a short time later than when the original government building in Jefferson City burned in 1837, a new capitol put up on the first hill to the west was built facing east. Travelers coming upriver, therefore, saw the new capitol’s impressive face as they approached.  In 1839, James Crump, built a stone building to serve as a landing point for riverboats. The upper story became a hotel popular with river men and legislators.  The building, known locally as “Lohman’s Landing,” still stands, one of the few early nineteenth century river port buildings remaining. Today it’s part of the state museum system and has been renovated to represent the kind of general store that a riverboat landing structure might have been.

May Stafford Hilburn wrote in the local Sunday News and Tribune, in 1946 that, “In 1840 fruit trees were shipped into Jefferson City by boat and sold for twelve and one-half cents each. In 1840 Captain Dunnica, a pioneer builder of the city, reported that “the Steamer Camden on key passage down the Missouri struck a snag and sunk in eight feet of water. Ship and cargo were a total loss. In 1841 a stranger who came into Jefferson City by steamboat wrote home to a relative in Lancaster Pa., this statement: ‘The boating trade of the Missouri River is increasing annually. This insures a ready market for all produce of every kind.’”

James E. Ford, who wrote a history of Jefferson City and Cole County eighty years ago, said, “In 1841 twenty-six steamboats were engaged in regular trade on the Missouri River. These boats made 312 arrivals and departures at Glasgow with freight and passengers.  The Iatan, regular packet, made twenty regular weekly trips from St. Louis to Glasgow. About forty-six thousand tons of freight were transported during the year 1841, according to the Columbia Patriot.”

The St. Louis Western Journal observed in 1842, “Two years ago it was considered foolish and dangerous to navigate the Missouri River at night, and the time by steamboat from St. Louis to Jefferson City was forty to forty-eight hours. Just one year ago thirty-six hours was considered a speedy trip. In 1842, the trip was made in twenty-four hours by several boats. The steamboat Empire made the trip last week in twenty-two hours and fifteen minutes. Now Jefferson City, one hundred and fifty miles distant from St. Louis, is within a day’s travel.”

But steamboats transported more than politicians and trade goods.  Sometimes they transported death to Jefferson City.  City Clerk James E. McHenry recalled in 1893 that when he was fourteen years old in 1849:

“On a bright May morning, I sauntered down to the river to see if there were any boats in sight, when I was surprised to see the James Madison lying at the wharf, apparently deserted.  She had no steam up, no one on board, and the passengers with their baggage lying around loose on the levee, some were vomiting and all looking forlorn and distressed. I learned the boat had arrived sometime the night before, from St. Louis, with a number of cases of cholera, had docked and abandoned the trip; her Captain and other officers had deserted the Monroe and struck out across the river for their homes and firesides, leaving the poor sick passengers to take care of themselves.

When the citizens learned of the situation, they organized and took charge of the sick passengers, gave the dead and dying all of the attention possible. After a few days I ventured uptown—we lived at the foot of Richmond Hill on Main street. I found the town a deserted, desolated looking village. There was no business in the stores, no wagons on the streets, and but few people and they were gathered in little squads talking low and looking scared and anxious. The only places doing business were the “groceries,” as saloons were then called.  After going uptown and seeing the hearse constantly on the move, going and coming, the doctors hither and thither, and the good citizens bracing himself at the “grocery,” I picked up courage enough that day to take a peek into the Episcopal Church. I saw men in all stages of the cholera; some vomiting in the first stage, some in agony of pain, some dying and some dead. I became an errand boy, going after soup and medicine for the sick. The James Monroe landed here on that May morning with 75 people on board, now only two of whom escaped death by cholera. Most of them were California emigrants. The Captain and other officers who deserted their posts, we learned afterwards died either before or after they reached home.”

On August 26, 1854, the steamboat “Timour” (number 2) was tied up at the Edwards wood yard about three miles below Jefferson City when it exploded.  Former State Treasurer Phil E. Chapell, then a barefoot boy just turned 17, was standing on the Jefferson City levee waiting to be rowed across the river, when he saw and heard “a loud report as of a tremendous blast, and the boat was enveloped in a great cloud of steam and smoke.  In a moment the cloud had blown away but alas! The boat had disappeared. The ferryman and I at once realized what had occurred, and jumping into a skiff, rowed as rapidly as possible to the wreck…We were the first to arrive, and what a horrible scene met our gaze.  All of the boilers of the boat, three in number, had exploded simultaneously, wrecking the entire forward part of the boat, and causing the hull to sink after of the forecastle. The shrieks and groans of the dying, and their piteous appeals that they be put immediately out of existence to end their sufferings were heartrending, and resound in my ears to this day, although more than a half-century has passed.  Many lives were lost—how many was never known, as many bodies were blown into the river and never recovered. Those still alive were so badly scalded as to have but little resemblance to human beings.”

The New York Times on September 6 carried a report from the St. Louis Democrat that, “There had been no record of deck hands kept, and, doubtless, there are some who have been blown into eternity whose names will never be heard again, and whose fate will always remain a mystery within the circle of relatives and friends from which they will be missed. We have learned that the complement of hands which the boat had in leaving this port was 45 or 47, and that of these but 25 have returned.”

By then, however, a competitor was making its way toward Jefferson City and it eventually would kill steamboat traffic as it is fondly remembered. In fact, a Cincinnati newspaper reported two of the Timour’s boilers had been thrown onto the nearby railroad tracks by the explosion. The third was blown into the river and some pieces of the boat were found a mile away.

The Pacific Railroad planned to start began passenger and freight service from St. Louis to Jefferson City in November, 1855, prompting this ad from the Jefferson City Inquirer on November 10, 1855.

June, 1861 brought not death, but a military invasion. When Confederate-leaning Governor Claiborne Jackson hurried back to the capital city after negotiations with federal officials in St. Louis failed to produce a promise the U. S. Army would stay out of Missouri, and fled to Boonville with several state lawmakers in tow, the Army was in pursuit.  General Nathaniel Lyon and his troops disembarked from the steamboat Iatan (a replacement of the earlier one that helped open shipping on the river) east of the penitentiary, marched behind the prison to Lafayette Street, then marched through town to occupy the Capitol. A special correspondent for the St. Louis Missouri Democrat described “an enthusiastic reception from the loyal citizens, headed by Thomas L. Price…(They) marched in good order through the city, cheered at several points, and finally occupied Capitol Hill, amidst tremendous applause.”  Price had been the city’s first mayor and long remained a prominent civic leader.

Long-time Jefferson City banker and politician Julius Conrath remembered a happier experience in about 1868:

“I can remember as a boy of about five years seeing my first circus.  It came up the river on a steamboat and landed at what was called the levee, or Lohman’s landing, at the foot of Jefferson Street. A large crowd and especially the small boys went down to see it unload…

“In those days Jefferson City boasted a wharfmaster who was one of the city officials. He had charge of all loading and unloading of steamboats.  Steamboats were plentiful on the river then, and three or four passed up and down every week.  Every boy in town knew every boat by its whistle. In summer time, as soon as we heard a boat whistle we grabbed a basket filled with peaches, apples or grapes, or whatever fruit might be in season, and rushed to the levee and sold our wares to the passengers for in those days many passengers traveled by boat.”

But the days of the steamboat being a lifeline to Jefferson City were numbered, as they were for communities along the Missouri River.  By the 1880s, the railroad had reached the farthest most point on the river served by steamboats.

It was a glorious era, however. But it was a dangerous one.  The average lifespan for a steamboat on the Missouri was only about three years.  It’s estimated more than three-hundred steamboats sank between St. Louis and Kansas City.

In 2019, we’ll observe the bicentennial of steamboats on the Missouri River, kicking off what we are calling the “tennial era” in Missouri.  We’re thinking of the best way to commemorate our steamboat history.

Christmas: Just another working day

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Merry Christmas from the Missouri Capitol.
Governor Mike Parson’s office is fully involved in the Christmas season. We don’t recall anything like this in all the years we have covered the capitol. Don’t expect to see him at his desk on Christmas day, however, although there were many times when a lot of people were at their capitol desks at Christmas.
The governor’s office often has been on display during this Christmas season because of something else Governor Parson has done that we’ve never seen done before. The double doors between the capitol hallway and the big oval office are open often with a glass barrier that people can walk up to and look into the office. The doors are closed when he’s doing governor business but at other times they’ve been opened so the visiting public can see the office and its Christmas decorations.
We’ve often thought it’s a shame that capitol visitors don’t get to see that magnificent room.
History tells us that Christmas has been through a lot of changes through the decades. For decades, it was just another day. Not until Victorian times did it begin to assume the secular commercial bonanza it is.
When the state legislature moved from its temporary home in St. Charles to the City of Jefferson, the fourth session of the General Assembly convened on Monday, November 20. Christmas day was just another regular business day, as was New Year’s Day. A reading of the House Journal for December 25, 1826 sounds similar to the House Journals today. It is—as it is now—pretty dry stuff.

MONDAY MORING, DECEMBER 25, 1826
The house met pursuant to adjournment.
Mr. Speaker appointed Messrs., O’Bryan, Grant, Thornton, Jewell, Canole, Bollinger, Nash, Johnson, Bruer, Brinker and Brock as a select committee on an engrossed bill from the senate, entitled an act supplementary to an act to organize, govern and, discipline the militia, approved 11th Feb. l825.
Mr. Grant of the committee of ways and means introduced bill appropriating money for defraying the expenses of government, which was read a first time and ordered to a second reading. On motion of Mr. Watkins, the rules of this house requiring a bill to be read three several times [sic] on-three different days was dispensed with, two thirds of the members present concurring therein, and said bill was read a second time on to-day.
On motion, said bill was committed to a committee of the whole house. Mr. Harris of the select committee to whom was referred the petition of sundry inhabitants of the counties of Chariton and Ralls, praying for the formation of a new county, reported a bill to establish the new county of Marion which was read a first time and ordered to a second reading.
On motion of Mr. Burckhartt, the rules of this house requiring bills to be read three several times on three different days was dispensed with, two thirds of the members present concurring therein, and said bill was read a second time on jo-day,
On motion of Mr. Cook, said bill was committed to a committee of the whole house.

The journal continues for several more paragraphs of routine business before the House adjourned until the next day. Representative Jewell, by the way as Dr. William Jewell of Boone County, a founder of Columbia for whom William Jewell College was named. Bollinger was George F. Bollinger, who represented Cape Girardeau in the territorial and state legislatures from 1812 until 1840. When a new county was formed of Cape Girardeau County, it was named for him.
Working on Christmas was not all that unusual in those times. It was seventeen years yet before Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published or that Sir Henry Cole, an Englishman, printed a couple thousand Christmas cards that sold for a shilling each. Christmas would not be declared a federal holiday for forty-four more years.
In 1828, the second general assembly to meet in Jefferson City took December 25 off but was back at work the next day. The practice was common for several years. In 1840, the House took the day off but the Senate did meet on Christmas day, a Friday, and on Saturday the 26th but adjourned both days because it could not achieve a quorum. Business as usual resumed in both chambers on Tuesday the 29th.
The House met on Saturday, December 21, 1844 and transacted business before adjourning until Monday the 23rd. But not enough people showed up to make a quorum again until the afternoon of December 30. The Senate met on Christmas day but only five members answered the roll call. It tried to meet each day after that but didn’t get enough members in the chamber to do official business until the 30th.
Then we get to this entry:

JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, At the First Session of the Fifteenth General Assembly, begun and held at the City of Jefferson, on Monday, the Twenty-Fifth day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight.
The Senate was called to order by the Hon. JAMES YOUNG, Lieutenant Governor and President of the Senate, and FALKLAND H. Martin, Esq., acted as Secretary pro tem.

That’s right. The 1848 legislative session began on Christmas Day. And it happened again just six years later:

JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, AT THE FIRST SESSION, BEING THE REGULAR SESSION, OF THE EIGHTEENTH GENERAI ASSEMBLY, BEGUN AND HELD AT THE CITY OF JEFFERSON, ON MONDAY THE 25TH DAY OF DECEMBER, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD ONE THOUSAND EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR, THAT BEING THE DAY FIXED BY LAW FOR THE MEETING OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

The Senators were called to order at 11 o’clock, A. M., by the Hon. Wilson Brown, Lieutenant Governor, and President of the Senate.

Lt. Governor Brown was one of about thirty people killed in the Gasconade bridge disaster on Nov. 1, 1855, the day the first passenger train was to have arrived from St. Louis.


In this building, long ago, Christmas was just another day for many years. There were times, though, when it appears some members of the general assembly left town for a few days, leaving the House and Senate without enough members to transact business although a few members who lived too far from home in those pre-highway, pre-bridge, pre-railroad days when the rivers were too icy to travel by boat stayed in Jefferson City, a town of no paved streets, few amenities, and fewer than three-thousand people before 1860.
The new Missouri Constitution adopted in 1865 established the January start date for the legislature, ending the winter sessions. Although the observance of Christmas had been slowly building, it was not until the Reconstruction years that December became the biggest month of the year for retail sales.
In a couple of weeks, today’s legislators will start a new session in today’s capitol. By then the Christmas decorations will be gone and the present capitol will feel, as the old one undoubtedly felt, the quickening pulse within it. Christmas and the old year are gone. A new year and new careers soon will begin to take shape. And so will the new journals that somebody else might read 170 years hence.

Appointment King

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Governor Parson is making a new place in Missouri history for himself with each appointment of someone to an otherwise elective office at the top level of state government.   By the time he appoints a new state treasurer, he will have appointed three of the remaining top five state government officials and four of the top six jobs will be filled with people who were  not chosen by a public vote to fill those offices: governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer.

But this is not the first time most top state offices have been filled by people not elected to those positions. But the only other time involved war/

As Missouri was being sucked into the Civil War, pro-South Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called a convention of 99 men to decide if Missouri should join the confederacy.  He was shocked to find that not a single secessionist was elected.  When he fled the capitol in the face of advancing Union troops in June, 1861, twenty members of the convention went with him.

The executive committee of the Convention of 99 met in Jefferson City in late July and called for remaining members of the convention to reassemble.  On July 30 the remaining convention members declared all existing state offices vacant.  It then installed former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Hamilton Gamble as the provisional governor and appointed other Union loyalists to other state offices.  All seats in the legislature were declared vacant and the convention members became the acting government.  The constitutional propriety of all of these actions has been a matter of speculation from that time to this but as historian Duane Meyer, the author of the standard Missouri history book used for decades has noted, when the U. S. Army is present to make sure the actions of the governing group are carried out, the niceties of the law or the constitution are secondary. Meyer wrote that the state convention

obviously …had no authority to take such actions (as vacating offices), since Governor Jackson was the popularly-elected chief of state. However, in the time of war, legality is frequently supplanted by expediency, and in so acting, these Missouri politicians established an illegal provisional government to fill the breach left by the secessionist exiles…In retrospect, we must admit that the actions of the state convention were unprecedented, brash, and illegal. However, since federal troops in Missouri upheld the actions of the convention, no one could argue.

Former Congressman Willard P. Hall of St. Joseph was appointed Lt. Governor and succeeded Gamble when he died at the end of 1864.  The office, incidentally, remained vacant until Lt. Governor George Smith was elected in the election of 1865.  Former Congressman Mordecai Oliver of Richmond became Secretary of State until ‘65’s elections.  When Treasurer Alfred W. Morrison refused to take a loyalty oath after being caught by federal troops while he was fleeing with thousands of state dollars in his pockets, he was replaced by artist George Caleb Bingham.  When Attorney General J. Proctor Knott refused to take the loyalty oath he was replaced by Aikman Welch of Johnson County.

William S. Moseley of New Madrid County took the loyalty oath and remained as state auditor.

So during the Civil War when the remains of the Convention of 99 replaced the legislature, FIVE  of  our six state officers were not elected by the people to their positions.

We’re waiting for the Missouri Supreme Court to rule on whether Mike Kehoe can continue to occupy the Lt. Governor’s office and Eric Schmitt won’t be the new Attorney General until January.  But it appears Governor Parson will be remembered as the governor who appointed three top state leaders and this will be a time when four state leaders are serving in offices they were not elected to fill.

The nice thing about the current situation is that it hasn’t taken a war to create it.

A GODDESS COMES TO EARTH

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Ceres, a lady of myth and mystery who has extended blessings to state capitol visitors for ninety-four years, has been brought to earth by mortals who love her and care for her.
She’s in Chicago now and will be staying there about a year before she comes home to the capitol.
She’s a ten-feet four-inches tall, two-thousand pound bronze statue whose presence among flesh-and-blood humans was an emotional event for many of those who spoke quietly in loving terms as they walked around the flatbed trailer on which she’d been carefully laid after days and hours of preparation for her removal from the capitol dome.
She’s beautiful.
We’re going to spend some time in this entry telling her story, which is as ancient as the Greek and Roman empires, as recent as last week, and is beginning a new chapter. We’ll be drawing on the research we did for The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Stone, and Bronze and for the upcoming book about the history of the building.

WHO IS CERES?
Ceres is a figure from Roman mythology whose Greek counterpart is Demeter. She’s the goddess of grain, of agriculture, of fertility, a representative of Mother Earth. We’ll use the Roman version of her story here. She was a sister of Jupiter who was impregnated by Jupiter (family relationships among gods and goddesses apparently were not frowned upon in the myth
The family weirdness continues with Pluto kidnapping Proserpina with plans to marry her and live in the underworld. Mama Ceres, as you might expect, was not favorably disposed to such an arrangement. As she searched for her daughter, she stopped the growth of crops and caused deserts, acts that alarmed Jupiter to send Mercury to the underworld to convince Pluto to let Proserpina return to the surface.
Pluto blackmailed Proserpina. He forced her to agree to return to the underworld for part of the year. When Proserpina showed up, Ceres was happy and as long as the two were together the earth was fertile and crops grew, trees had leaves, and the grass grew. But when Proserpina has to return to Pluto, Ceres becomes depressed and the earth begins to lose its productivity and the trees start to lose their leaves and the lawn finally stops growing.
So we have brought Ceres to earth at a time when she supposedly becomes depressed because she misses Proserpina—which might explain the chilly and snowy day of falling leaves and dying lawns when she came down. Although the capitol restoration workers say she’ll be put back up in a year, regardless of the weather, we think it would be more appropriate to put her back in place at a time when the wind blows warmer, the trees are budding, the days are growing longer, and so is the grass.
That’s the best we can figure out this complicated family relationship of gods and goddesses in ancient Rome and ancient Greece.
Regardless, let’s hope that Proserpina, unknown to her mother, already is living in Chicago (known for many years for its underworld history) and hears that Mom is going to be in town, and that they get together. We’re ready for a quick return of spring.

WHY CERES?

Simple. She’s the goddess of agriculture, among other things.  Although Missouri is becoming more urban, its number one industry remains agriculture. It was even moreso when she was commissioned, cast, and put into place.

THE MISSOURI CAPITOL WAS NOT HER INTENDED SITE
It not only was not the intended site, but the statue of Ceres appears to be less than an original design.
For example, the Smithsonian Learning Center has this statue titled “Maidehood,” a version of which also is in the Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina.
The hand is up, not down, and the gown is more revealing than the attire of Ceres. But the design similarities are unmistakable.
Then there is this work from the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, also by Sherry Fry:
She’s called “Peace” in this version.
Fry originally intended the statue to fulfill a commission for Grant’s Tomb in New York. But an undated newspaper clipping in the papers of Decoration Commission member Cora Painter says, “When he visited the Missouri Capitol, he was struck with the thought that there was the building to which his theme was fitted and he executed the model for Missouri instead of New York.”

SHE’S NOT THE ONLY CAPITOL CERES
We aren’t the only state capitol with a statue of Ceres. Vermont’s capitol in Montpelier has had a Ceres statue since 1858. As this is written, sculptor Chris Miller is carving—from Honduran Mahogany— the third Ceres statue to adorn the statehouse dome. The clay model he is working from was done by Jerry Williams, who usually works in granite. The first two wooden statues fell victims to rot after about eighty years each.
(The picture is from Sevendaysvt.com)

WHO DECIDED SHE SHOULD BE UP THERE?
The original decision was made by the State Capitol Commission Board, the predecessor of the Capitol Decoration Commission. And for a time, there was some consideration of making her out of something else.
The capitol architectural firm of Tracy and Swartwout (pronounced Swart-out) proposed a ten-foot statue of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture “fully robed and head erect.” They suggested, “In her right hand she carried the torch of education and in her left, which hangs by her side, are a few blades of wheat.” The Capitol Commission Board approved the idea in September, 1915 then wondered whether the statue should be made of sheet copper instead of bronze, what the thickness of copper should be if that was the material of choice, and what would be the cost difference.
By mid-1916 the board was waiting for the great bonze doors to arrive for the south front of the building and had started casting up sums to see what else it could buy. It thought there would be enough for a statue of Ceres on the dome, among other things. The W. F. Norman Sheet Metal Manufacturing Company of Nevada, the home town of commissioner Theodore Lacaff, sent the board a plaster model of a proposed twelve-foot ball statue that could be made of 48-ounce of sheet copper for $2,480.
But the board was hit with a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that almost drained its bank account, leaving it without funds for the statue or to hire sculptors to carve figures for the main pediment.

Architect Egerton Swartwout called the board’s suggested cost of the statue “absolutely inadequate” and noted the price of bronze had gone up so much since war broke out in Europe that the board could not afford the bronze for the statue much less pay for casting it. He warned of vendors who would “sell you a lot of junk which they too often put on court houses and other such buildings, like the Civil War Memorials that are scattered through the land, made out of stamped tin.”
Swartwout suggested the statue be made of hammered sheet copper, the material used in the Statue of Liberty. Norman said copper and bronze were scarce because the government was not allowing their use for anything but war work. Norman endorsed the idea of Ceres “since such stress is being laid upon the importance of cereals” at the time and the Missouri War Production Board was encouraging, and getting, great improvements in state agriculture production. Although Norman later got an option on some copper of the same weight used in the Statue of Liberty, the Ceres project wound up on the Capitol Commission Board’s scrap heap.
The Jefferson City Daily Capital News observed that the war had caused Ceres “to gracefully sidestep the honor of standing on top of the capitol dome and beaming down upon a peaceful world. Gallantly Ceres gives way for old glory who will proudly wave over the most beautiful state capitol in the Union.” But, forecast the newspaper, “When victory ends the war, Ceres will have her inning.” Sherry Fry’s bronze Ceres statue was hauled to the top of the dome in the fall of 1924, made of bronze. It would be more than six decades before the Norman Company got some of its products in the capitol, when it installed the tin ceiling in the office of Senator Harold Caskey.

THE SCULPTOR
The statue was designed by Sherry Edmundson Fry, an Iowa-born sculptor who began his career when he shaped a figure from clay scooped from a ditch near his Creston, Iowa home. His father refused to support his desire to study are in college so Fry picked potatoes to work his way through Grinnell College.
After graduation, Fry worked with sculptors Lorado Taft and Charles Milligan in Chicago before moving to New York to work for Karl Bitter, who created the original “Signing of the Treaty” panel that is on the river side of the capitol. He signed on as a crewman aboard a cattle boat bound for France so he could study at the leading art institutes in Paris. Fry continued his studies in Italy before returning to France where he met Des Moines businessman James Edmundson who hired him to create a sculpted image of his father. Fry so admired Edmundson that he took the man’s last name as his middle name. (The Archives of American Art in Washington, D. C., has the only photograph of Fry we have been able to track down.
)During World War I, Fry was part of the newly-formed Army Camouflage Corps, one of the leaders of which was Evarts Tracy, whose architectural firm designed the Missouri Capitol. Tracy appears to have been the connection that got Fry the Ceres commission. He was paid $15,000 for this work (about $215,000 today).

THE REAL WOMAN, PERHAPS
We have suggested that the inspiration for the figure on our capitol’s dome might have been Audrey Munson, considered the country’s first supermodel. We have only circumstantial evidence because the records of the Capitol Decoration Commission have disappeared (we maintain a hope somebody will find some dust-covered file boxes in their attic or in a long-forgotten closet corner that will contain those records) and we have not located any of Fry’s personal papers

 Audrey was the favorite model for New York sculptors—the New York American referred to her as the “queen of Artists’ Studios”—including those who decorated our capitol, for more than a decade. She was such a popular subject that the organizers of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco published a guide book of the exposition statues that featured her face and body. More than half of the statues at the exposition were of Audrey.
Audrey Munson went into movies and became the first woman to appear nude in an American mainline movie. Her family put her in a mental institution in 1931. She died there in 1996 at the age of 104, thirty years after Fry’s death.

SIZE

Some of those who saw Ceres on the trailer after she was brought down were surprised that she isn’t bigger. It’s a matter of proportion and the Capitol Decoration Commission that commissioned the statue wanted to make sure the statue did not overwhelm the building’s design nor would it be insignificantly small. When Sherry Fry submitted a design, a steeplejack made a two-dimensional wallboard silhouette that he hoisted into position atop the dome. Commission members and others on the ground walked around the dome to study the figure from all angles and found, as one chronicler put it, the statue “stood out, bold, distinct, and beautiful.”
By contrast, Thomas Crawford’s statue of “Freedom” on our nation’s capitol is nineteen feet-six inches high and weighs fifteen-thousand pounds. The statue was cast in Rome, where Crawford had his studio. It was shipped to this country in six crates and put together atop the capitol in 1863. Your loyal observer frankly thinks that she is too large for that dome but—to the surprise of some, perhaps—he was not around in 1863 to protest. Neither was Crawford, who died in 1857.

BRINGING HER DOWN

No one is alive today to see her return to earth who saw Ceres, or at least the top part of her, hoisted to the dome in 1924. For most of a century we have had only photographs from airplanes or long lenses to show us her beauty.
Unless you went to Columbia.
Before Sherry Fry was allowed to cast a bronze statue, he had to submit a half-size preliminary sculpture to the Decoration Commission. Many of the preliminary drawings, paintings, window designs and sculptural models were taken to the University of Missouri School of Art and Archaeology by commission chairman John Pickard, the founder of the university’s art history department. Some preliminary painting are in the Ellis Library. The plaster models of the south front frieze line some of the hallways on the top floor of Jesse Hall, the main administration building. Unfortunately (as of our last visit there) there are no signs telling anyone what those encased things are.

For years, Fry’s preliminary model of Ceres was in Pickard Hall on the Francis Quadrangle but when that building was closed after it was found to be contaminated by radioactive elements left from research in the early 1900s the museum was moved to what’s known as Mizzou North, the former Ellis Fischel Cancer Hospital on the business loop. The statue is still there although it has lost a hand and some toes.

In 1995 some folks made their way to the top of the dome to check on Ceres’ condition. A few days before she was brought down, the Office of Administration had a photographer on the dome with her. Until workers started preparing to bring her down several days ago, nobody had gone face-to-face with the goddess since ‘95. Unless they’d been to Columbia.

It’s hard to compare the face of the plaster model with the face of the final bronze statue because of light and perspective. But it appears to us Fry made a slight alteration in the face of Ceres, perhaps slightly lengthening it, when he made the final version. (Compare with the statue’s face at the end.)

Two guys were essential to the safe return of Ceres to earth. One was Zack Franklin who ran the big crane that reached up and over to Ceres and gently lifted her from her perch and gently lowered her to the trailer below. Lt. Governor Mike Kehoe (who commemorated their roles) called Franklin “the most important man in Missouri during the five to seven minutes Ceres was in the air.”

The eyes for Franklin on the platform far above was James Stafford, talking by radio to the crane operator as the delicate task of attaching the hook to the carefully-wrapped harness around the statue. It was fitting that Stafford should be intimately involved in the process. His great-grandfather had been one of the workers who constructed the building that Ceres has presided over all this time.

 

So she came down, wrapped in a state flag that was a last-minute thought earlier that morning, turning to seemingly bless the building over which she presided or maybe to wave goodbye for a little while, and then for the first time in more than nine decades, she was allowed to lie down.

 

FACING THE WRONG WAY?
We don’t know where this got started, the idea that when Ceres was winched to the dome in 1924 that workers turned her the wrong way before anchoring her. We have never found any contemporary accounts saying that.
We’re not sure what the rationale is for that idea other than north Missouri is the state’s main corn, wheat, and beans producing region while the south (except for the Bootheel) is better at raising rocks.
One person has suggested she faces south to reflect Missouri’s Confederate heritage, in effect turning her back on the North. Again, we have never found any contemporary comment or account indicating that is the case. It is true that “Dixie” was part of the inauguration ceremonies for new governors in those days but we do not believe the Capitol Decoration Commission was in any way motivated to turn its goal of appropriately decorating the building into a political statement.

So why does she face south—and WILL face south when she returns from Chicago (as shown in Lloyd Grotjan’s photo from our Art book)? Because the south front of the Capitol is where the people come for admittance to the halls of their government. Her hand is extended in blessing to the people of Missouri who gather below her for inaugurations, rallies, concerts—-for some years in the hot summers the mainline Protestant churches held joint worship services on the lawn—or just to visit the state’s greatest symbol. It would be extremely poor manners if the patron goddess of Missouri turned her back on her people.
We wouldn’t be surprised if that was what the commission thought when Ceres ascended in 1924.

AND A FINAL NOTE—
Some of us think the beauty of Ceres should not be so far away that Missourians cannot be touched by it for another century or so. Perhaps those restoring the Capitol would consider doing what has been done with “Freedom” in the National Capitol.
The full-size plaster model for that statue that was used to cast the bronze statue on top of the building was stored in pieces for more than 130 years before it was restored by the Architect of the Capitol in 1929. It stands today in Emancipation Hall of the U. S. Capitol’s Visitor Center.
The United States Capitol Historical Society sells a nine-inch tall version of the statue made of crushed marble removed during the renovation of the east front of the building and mixed with resin. It sells for forty-six dollars. An much smaller replica is available as a Christmas ornament.
Oklahoma, which finally put a dome on its Capitol is topped by a twenty-two foot tall statue, a nine-foot replica of which is in the rotunda.
Today’s laser scanning and 3-D printing technology could produce an accurate reproduction of Ceres that would make a striking attraction in the Capitol Museum or to the Capitol visitor’s center that is talked about from time to time. And a small but well-detailed version made of the dust from the stones removed during the present restoration and repair project could be a solid seller at the tour desk.

Beauty should not be hidden, even if it is in plain sight, 250 feet above those who would admire it.

 

What would you save?

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We caught some video a few weeks ago of North Carolinians who had fled their homes and who had taken refuge at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, which was providing parking space for trailers and RVs, camping facilities, and food service to hurricane refugees.  Some of the folks were interviewed about what they had brought with them.

One woman’s pickup truck contained a small chest freezer with all of her home’s frozen food, ready for hookup to an electrical supply.  She also brought along a generator.  A family of seven brought five dogs.  One family brought some children’s drawings and a blanket with family handprints on it. Another family brought things it would use while away from home; the father had stayed at the house in a rural area to prevent looting.

Watching news coverage of various and recent natural disasters such as forest fires and hurricanes and floods, we started thinking about a group consensus exercise we have done from time to time.

If you had a few minutes or a few hours, to flee from your endangered home, what would you take?   We are assuming your first priority is yourself and any other family members.  But after that?  Here’s a list of possibilities.  Feel free to add others in the comment section below.

Computers

Wallet

Passport

Pets

Cell phone

Coin collection

Television(s)

Clothes

Children’s (Grandchildren’s ) Refrigerator drawings

Family archives

Financial records

Video games

Family heirlooms

Jewelry

Medicines or medical supplies

Wedding dress and/or album

Art collection (prints, posters, originals, etc.)

Favorite furniture

Mom’s recipes

Cameras

An additional vehicle or vehicles

Antiques

Baseball card collection

Food

Guns

Family Bible

Insurance policies

Sleeping bags

Tools

I’ve run consensus exercises with groups using a similar list.  Admittedly the exercise assumes there is at least SOME time to grab things although many disasters such as house fires in the middle of the night require instant escape in whatever sleeping attire is being worn—or whatever clothing can be grabbed on the way out.

The answers show generational differences.  Younger people are more likely to take the material things—the television set, the pets, the tools, the jewelry.  Older folks are likely to make memories the priority—pictures, recordings, some family heirlooms.  Younger folks grab things they can replace. Older folks grab things that cannot be replaced.

When I was a high school freshman, I dashed out the front door of my house one morning to get on the school bus.  Six hours later a man met me in the principal’s office to tell me that my parents were okay but all we had left were the clothes we were wearing, the family car, and whatever was in my gym locker.  A person never forgets what was lost in a disaster. A small nugget of fear deep inside never goes away.  And sometimes people spend the rest of their lives trying to recover what was lost (which is why I have a complete set of Fran Striker’s Lone Ranger novels on the bookshelf five feet from where I am sitting).

Many people have their family photographs, documents, and all kinds of other things stored in the cloud, which might alter the disaster-grab priorities.  But a lot of us haven’t gone there yet.

There are three places in our home where we keep family archives, one of them a basement cabinet filled with thousands and thousands of slides.  I’ve made up my mind that if I had the time, those would be the first things to go in the minivan—after the second row seats had been removed, if possible—then the computer. What would you save, beyond yourself, if you had the time to save something?   It’s worth thinking about.

Because we never know.