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Cemetery walk recounts notable lives
By Dan Craft
dcraft@pantagraph.com
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BLOOMINGTON -- Days of the living dead are returning to Bloomington for the 14th autumn this weekend and next. As fans of the annual Evergreen Cemetery Discovery Walk have learned over the course of its history, these are the good kind of living dead.

They return from their resting places to enlighten and inform us -- not terrorize and consume us, as the movies usually have it.

Per tradition, these long-gone figures from McLean County's past are being brought back to fleeting mortality via the creative actors and writers of the Illinois Voices Theatre.

The 10 returnees range from an opera diva to a famous Bloomington power couple, from a Swedish coal miner to "an honest man among scamps, thieves and scallawags."

The resurrections are scheduled to take place over the course of two weekends and eight tours: 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and again at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Oct. 11 and 12.

The event has evolved into what is described as the McLean County Museum of History's "most successful, well-attended and longest-running public program."

The walk, which took its first footsteps in 1995, extends around a mile within the pastoral borders of Bloomington's oldest cemetery.

A collaboration between the cemetery, the museum and Illinois Voices Theatre (a unit of the Illinois Theatre Consortium), the Discovery Walk was created following discussions on the development of an educational Halloween program.

Judy Brown, director of the walk since its inception, has noted that the "event was designed, first of all, with an educational purpose, for school- children. That was the original intent. And then we decided that, well, as long as we're doing it for the kids, we might as well open it up to the public."

The walks are divided into eight groups of no more than 20 people each over the course of each day's two tour cycles at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

In selecting historical personages for resurrection by Brown and her Illinois Voices Theatre members, "one of our criteria is that the characters must be people who are buried out there for who we have archival holdings at the McLean County Museum of History."

To that end, the 10 characters on this year's tour fill the bill. They are:

• Absalom Hawkins (1855-1903), described as "an honest man among scamps, thieves and scallawags" who earned the trust of important people and the socialites in downtown Bloomington. (Written by Ron Emmons, played by David Wayne Brown and Hosaia Brown)  

• Carl Schurz Vrooman (1872-1966) and Julia Scott Vrooman (1876-1981), a Bloomington power couple who made their mark on the world -- he, as assistant secretary of agriculture and a writer; she, as a musician, writer and political wife. (Written by Julie Kistler, played by Don and Kathy Shandrow) 

• Judge Louis Fitzhenry (1870-1935), a strict constitutionalist who enforced the law even when he did not personally agree with it. He was an advocate for limiting the power of the railroad and coal industries and supported Prohibition. (Written by John Kirk, played by Todd Wineburner) 

• Carl Gustav Hanner (1840-1921), an orphan from Stockholm, Sweden, who bounced around from orphanages to foster homes before finding stability in Bloomington's Swedish community and a (dangerous) job with the McLean County Coal Company. (Written by Rhys Lovell, played by Ron Emmons) 

• Grace B. Wagner (1890-1964), who left Bloomington to seek her fortune abroad and in New York City as both an opera singer and recording artist. (Written by Judy Brown, played by Elizabeth Ducey Moss) 

• Elizabeth (Lizzy) Irons Folsom Fox (1862-1935), a court reporter for The Pantagraph who found herself going blind and left Bloomington for New York City, where she became a prize-winning writer. (Written and played by Kathleen Kirk) 

• Ellis (1816-1899) and Martha (1827-1910) Dillon, a couple who fought for Abolition and made the county the center for raising and developing world-class Percheron draft horses (Written by Jared Brown, played by Charlie Harris and Char Fesler) 

• John Edward McClun (1812-1877), a man who contributed greatly to the development of early Bloomington but didn't believe in his own record due in part to multiple family tragedies. (Written by Jared Brown, played by John Kirk)

Tickets for the walk are $14 for the general public, $12 for museum members and $4 for kids and students. A $2 discount on general public and museum member tickets is available until Friday.

Call (309) 827-0428 or go to www.mchistory.org for more information.

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