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BroMenn donation speaks to 125 years of community service
By Bill Kemp. Published on July 4, 2021.
Carle BroMenn Medical Center has undergone one transformation after another since its modest beginnings 125 years ago. It opened on May 8, 1896, as the 22-bed Deaconess Hospital—this nearly a quarter century before the discovery of antibiotics. Today, the medical center offers everything from cardiac electrophysiology to interventional radiology. About the only thing that hasn’t changed is its central location—where Franklin and Virginia avenues meet in Normal. Deaconess Hospital owes its origin to a group of local doctors who believed Bloomington-Normal was ready to support a second traditional hospital, specif...
Pre-Civil War Butler House survived into 1920s
By Bill Kemp. Published on February 24, 2019.
On the western edge of downtown, the no-frills, mom-and-pop Butler House was an old friend to the weary traveler and local resident ali...
Museum’s newly acquired Lincoln letter window into legal career
By Bill Kemp. Published on February 17, 2019.
The McLean County Museum of History, as part of its Presidents Day activities on Monday, will have on public display its recently acqui...
Bloomington schools integrated decade after Civil War
By Bill Kemp. Published on February 10, 2019.
Although racially segregated schools are associated with the “Jim Crow” Deep South and the Civil Rights Movement, northern communities ...
TV’s early years included short-lived Bloomington station
By Bill Kemp. Published on February 3, 2019.
Strange thought it may seem, in the early, golden days of commercial television there was an ABC affiliate right here in Bloomington....
‘Dr. Mrs. Keck’ battled male-dominated medical establishment
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 27, 2019.
Back in the 19th century when miracle pills, plasters, creams, powders and tonics promised to cure all—from mild indigestion to pancrea...
Reagan’s conservatism forged during years with GE
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 20, 2019.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan was no stranger to Bloomington-Normal, though most of his visits occurred decades before he reached the Wh...
‘I-house’ early Corn Belt architectural style
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 13, 2019.
Along Illinois Route 165 between the rural communities of Cooksville and Colfax in eastern McLean County is a long-abandoned, impeccabl...
Scrappy Ironmen earned state berth in ’42
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 6, 2019.
Three months after Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, Normal residents found their attention momentarily turned to an u...
Holidays bring turbulent year of ’68 to a close
By Bill Kemp. Published on December 24, 2018.
Fifty years ago this week, December 1968, fast-approaching Christmas and New Year’s afforded many Americans an opportunity to reflect b...
Indoor baseball once popular winter pastime
By Bill Kemp. Published on December 16, 2018.
Part of baseball’s attraction as the National Pastime is the sport’s inextricable connection to the rhythm of the seasons—how it begins...
Intrepid Pantagrapher paid visit to Santa’s North Pole
By Bill Kemp. Published on December 2, 2018.
In 1897, 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon famously wrote the New York Sun newspaper to ask if that “jolly old elf” was in fact real. One wo...
Ellen Ferguson, 19th century suffragist, polygamist
By Bill Kemp. Published on November 25, 2018.
Ellen B. Ferguson, who made Bloomington-Normal her home in the 1870s, was a remarkable but ultimately inscrutable champion of women’s s...
Memorial tablet honors ‘Great War’ dead
By Bill Kemp. Published on November 18, 2018.
One hundred years ago today, November 11, 1918, the guns in Europe fell silent after more than four years of unrelenting carnage. World...
‘Welby and Pearl,’ minstrel act with local roots
By Bill Kemp. Published on October 28, 2018.
For the better part of four decades, friends Jacob Welby Bucher and Charles Carroll Fell of Bloomington performed as the popular vaudev...
Pullman Strike left Twin Cities at standstill
By Bill Kemp. Published on September 16, 2018.
On July 3, 1894, area residents flocked to the Chicago & Alton Railroad on Bloomington’s west side. They came to support striking r...
Black farm family prominent in Bellflower Township
By Bill Kemp. Published on September 12, 2018.
McLean County farmland has always had a relatively high rate of tenancy—from the earliest years of the county’s establishment to the pr...
Million-dollar cartoonist got start in Bloomington
By Bill Kemp. Published on August 12, 2018.
Although nearly forgotten today, Bloomington-born artist Sid Smith was a towering figure in American popular culture. From 1917 until h...
Kent State shootings spark month of campus unrest
By Bill Kemp. Published on August 5, 2018.
The Vietnam War, it’s been said, was fought on two fronts—in Southeast Asia and back home, especially on college campuses. ...
Circus train wreck takes life of local aerialist Jennie Ward
By Bill Kemp. Published on June 17, 2018.
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the horrific Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train wreck, one of the deadliest in U.S. history. On Ju...
Fallen sons repatriated after World War II
By Bill Kemp. Published on May 27, 2018.
In the years following World War II, the remains of tens of thousands of American war dead returned stateside for reburial in hometown ...
Short-lived performance hall once city’s finest
By Bill Kemp. Published on May 20, 2018.
For a few years after the end of the Civil War, the Academy of Music was Bloomington’s most elegant concert and theater hall. And thoug...
Railroaders’ library once west side hub
By Bill Kemp. Published on May 13, 2018.
Many longtime Twin City residents will remember long-gone Withers Library, located at the corner of Washington and East streets in down...
Colonial Theatre once Colfax mainstay
By Bill Kemp. Published on April 29, 2018.
As with most small town movie houses, the Colonial Theatre in Colfax offered area residents more than a parade of Hollywood legends on ...
Silos sentinels of Corn Belt since late 19th century
By Bill Kemp. Published on March 11, 2018.
Farm silos, an iconic symbol of the Corn Belt, have long flummoxed city and suburban folk. Frustrated parents clueless as to the purpos...
Prof. June Rose Colby lived ‘life of the mind’
By Bill Kemp. Published on February 18, 2018.
“Miss Colby was a most unusual person,” noted Helen Marshall in her centennial history of Illinois State Normal University. “She was an...
Turner Hall lost monument to German pride
By Bill Kemp. Published on February 11, 2018.
More than a century ago, Turner Hall was the cultural hub of Bloomington’s large and influential German community. Locate...
Fearsome ‘Sudden Change’ threatened pioneer life and limb
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 28, 2018.
A cataclysmic meteorological event swept across much of Central Illinois the afternoon of Dec. 20, 1836. The “Sudden Change,” as it bec...
‘New’ Bloomington High opened in 1959
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 21, 2018.
Although it may be hard to believe, the current Bloomington High School is nearly six decades old. The school opened back in the fall o...
Stipp house was Bloomington’s oldest
By Bill Kemp. Published on January 14, 2018.
For many years, a dilapidated wood frame residence on the east edge of downtown Bloomington offered a visible reminder of the city’s ea...
Buffaloes battled for respect on hardwood court
By Bill Kemp. Published on December 31, 2017.
In late October 1921, the Bloomington Buffaloes, a “colored” basketball team, defeated a rival club called the Independents by the scor...