Sometime in the late 1990s, I visited the David Davis House in Bloomington, Illinois. As Lincoln’s campaign manager in 1860 — and important in getting him nominated in the first place — Davis was a behind-the-scenes man at a critical turning point in U.S. history. Lincoln put him on the Supreme Court in ’62.
On Sunday, I took a quick look at the house. As handsome as I remember.
But that isn’t why I swung through Bloomington. I wanted to see the Evergreen Memorial Cemetery. An impressive array of stones among the still-bare trees and brown grass.
Some sizable memorials, too, befitting the prosperous place Bloomington was in the 19th century.
Not a huge amount of funerary art, but some.
I’d come to visit the Stevensons. Here’s the Adlai Stevenson famed for being shellacked by Eisenhower but also for his denunciation of Soviet behavior on the world stage.
This Adlai Stevenson was 23rd Vice President of the United States, from 1893 to 1897, during Cleveland’s second term.
Had President Cleveland’s cancer in ’93 been more aggressive, or medical science not up to its extraction — a few years earlier, probably not — this is also the Stevenson who would have been president.
I didn’t know the Scotts also memorialized on the stone: Matthew and Julia Scott. Turns out Stevenson was married to Letitia, Julia’s sister. Also, Matthew T. Scott was a business partner of Adlai Stephenson, with a distinctly 19th-century CV: land speculation, newspaper publishing, a coal mine.
Just before I left, I took a look at something a little more unusual.
According to a nearby plaque, the carving memorializes an airplane that crashed into the tree that used to stand there.
“On May 31, 1948, a group of citizens gathered at Evergreen Memorial Cemetery’s Civil War Veteran’s enclosure…” the plaque begins.
That must be here, very near the tree.
“… During the ceremony, a WWII trainer plane flown by James A. Tuley and passenger Chester H. Frahm was flying over Evergreen… to drop poppies over the grounds. The plane crashed into this tree, killing Frahm and severely injuring Tuley,” the plaque continues.
“In 2015 this tree had to come down and cemetery employees felt something more needed to be done with the wood from the tree… chainsaw artist Tim Gill was contacted and he accepted the challenge.”
The Pantagraph published a fuller version of the story.
There are also smaller memorials, such as one to all U.S. service men and women, and one to honor Victor, LeRoy Police K-9 Officer from 2005 to 2012.
