OLD KENOSHA: Wisconsin Oxygen And Hydrogen Co. Started Here 100+ Years Ago, Later Rocked By Explosions

Most Baby Boomers look fondly upon the winter holidays of their youth, whether it was lighting the first candle of Hanukkah, celebrating the birth of Jesus, or a more “Santa-tized” version of the holiday.

A stroll through the 1969 Kenosha News gives us a glimpse into the holiday of 50 years ago.

That year I was 15 years old and in all the Christmas photos of me I wore the gifts of an orange turtleneck sweater and an orange plaid A-line wool skirt. (I was a dead ringer for Thelma from the animated Scooby-Doo which debuted that year. I was nowhere near as smart as dear Thelma, but I was as nerdy.) In every photo I held my forearm across my stomach to show off my new watch.

If your mom or grandma was skilled on a sewing machine, chances are you got a cuddly soft Granny Gown. So-Fro Fabric had warm, cotton printed flannel on sale on Dec. 8, 1969, at 37 cents a yard. Plenty of time to whip up some PJs for you for Christmas. Thanks mom!

Toys, toys and more toys

The two Ben Franklin Stores, at 6136 22nd Ave. and 2027 22nd Ave., were advertising a sale on Mattel’s Swingy Dancing Doll that Christmas: a regular $14.44 at a steal for $10.97. Swingy was a 20-inch doll that weighed three pounds with those hefty “D” batteries (that, of course, were not included). She walked and swayed, strolled and danced, tossing her pretty little head to her favorite record by “The Raiders” that came in the box.

Or shall I say, was part of the box. Cardboard 45 rpm records had a vinyl coating with grooves applied to the cardboard and they actually played on your turntable. They didn’t play well or for very long as they were light and it was hard to keep the cardboard flat. (Kid’s sugary cereal boxes had them too.)

Mrs. Beasley, was the doll that little Buffy had with her constantly with the hit TV series Family Affair. Mattel wasted no time on getting it on the toy shelves, so fans could watch this family-oriented show with their own Mrs. Beasley.

In my opinion, it was one of the ugliest, plastic-faced rag dolls ever, but by 1969, my days of playing with dolls were far in my past. If you wanted one for your little sister in 1969, J.C.Penney’s at 702 58th St. had them for $9.99.

Another Mattel toy that was hot that season was the Mini-Dragon ThingMaker, which Community Discount World, 3600 52nd St., had on sale for $4.99 with coupon. (Regularly $9.44 – such a deal!)

ThingMakers were a bit dangerous. They had metal molds that you heated up on a small electric hotplate. Minutes later you had a finished product: a stretchy plastic toy.

Small children and an electric hotplate … Hey, what could go wrong?

But there was a catch to the purchase of a ThingMaker, be it a Creepy Crawler, Fun Flowers or any of the other 12 variations: you had to purchase the genuine Plasticgoop in basic colors of yellow, blue, pink and white. That drove the overall price up, because you couldn’t buy it for a kid without multiple colors of the goop!

The bottle said it was non-toxic, and maybe it was, until you got some goop on the hotplate by accident and that burnt plastic didn’t smell so non-toxic.

On a side note, plastic goop stained your clothes. Don’t ask me how I know that. I never had such a set, but my nieces and nephews, who were 3 1/2 to 8 years younger than me, had them.

Neither did I have a Suzy Homemaker Easy Bake Oven at $6.99, the staple toy of my nieces.

If you were really lucky, your folks went over to Tyson’s Cycle & Sport Shop, 6201 14th Ave., and bought you a Schwinn Racer, $50.95 in a choice of frame sizes. Most Dads would have liked the ad: “Put away your wrench: We assemble it!”

Ace Hardware, 4623 75th St., in the Town & Country Shopping Center (which had a memorable Toy Land) had kids’ figure skates at $7.49 and adult-sized ones at $9.88, all in traditional black and white. You would see those skates in action at the many area outdoor ice rinks before winter break ended.

Topps Department store at 8600 Sheridan Road had the Tonka Mighty Dump for $4.99 (that’s a truck, in case you were confused); Johnny Lighting Double Drag Strip, $3.99 a set, cheaper than the Mattel Hot Wheels version, and the Remco Baby Sister Grow-A-Tooth for $5.44. Remember the Snakes in the Grass game? A real deal at $2.97.

Many of these toys can be found on YouTube today if you want to see what all the excitement was about.

Gifts for everyone on the list

Welles Department Store at 5800 75th St., had plenty of good deals for the gift-giving season, from golf balls at $3.99 a dozen to a 45-piece Cemer Ceramic Dinnerware set, regularly $14.99 on sale for $9.99, and even a Hoover compact canister vacuum cleaner for $24.88.

Let’s remember that $25 had the buying power of $187 today.

For teens and adults, there were those all those scents to make your loved ones more attractive.

How could we forget Houbigant Chantilly “The Fragrance that can Shake your World!” (sold at Barden’s 622 58th St.) or Hai Karate gift set $3.75 at Mayer Drug, 5537 Sixth Ave., along with English Leather $10 gift set and Jade East, $5.50 gift set.

The ad for Bisno’s, women and girl’s clothing apparel downtown at 5800 Seventh Ave., gave me a chuckle. It suggested “stocking stuffers” of “loveable” bra slips in women and teen sizes, for a mere $4. I can’t think of a female today who would be excited to dig such an intimate item out of a toe of a stocking.

And lastly, the “family” gift, that really wasn’t a family gift, but a gift for those young parents who could justify a high-end purchase price to record family history: A Keystone Super 8 Color Movie Outfit. It came with a cartridge loading camera with a pistol grip that could run 50 feet of film in a film cartridge, and an automatic projector with reel-to-reel threading. All for $68 at Welles.

If your family was lucky enough to have one of these, gather all the reels up and have them put on a DVD or USB. Now there’s a gift for today that’s truly a blast from the past.

There has been much publicity marking 2019 as the 100th year of women securing the right to vote.

The suffragists’ hard fought battle was truly a grassroots movement, as seen by the number of local women members (perhaps as many as 400 women) of the Kenosha County Equal Suffrage League and the Political Equality League of Kenosha. Kenosha County’s population in 1910 was just under 33,000.

Up until recently, the names of many of the suffragists here were unknown, but a 1915 article posted online by the Kenosha County Suffrage 100 group on the county website has bestowed a sense of pride on the descendants of those courageous women.

One of those courageous women was Sarah Adelia Barter.

At the age of 69, Sarah Adelia Barter was one of the older members of the Kenosha County Equal Suffrage League in 1915. She was to be one of five county delegates representing Pleasant Prairie that year at the Wisconsin Equal Suffrage League convention.

Sarah Lieber was born in Spafford, Onondaga County, N.Y., on July 31, 1846, one of 11 children born to James and Clarissa (Andrews) Lieber. At least four of Sarah’s siblings did not live to adulthood.

At 22, Sarah married Fredrick Barter, age 28, in Kenosha County on March 10, 1868. Sarah’s younger sister Emma married Fredrick’s older brother Albert.

The couple had eight children: Ellen, Nellie, Arthur, Fred D., Clara, Frank, Addie and Edith.

Despite her dedication to the suffrage cause, she never got to vote in a statewide or federal election.

Sarah Barter died at the age of 70 on July 15, 1916, more than three years before Congress passed the Susan B. Anthony Bill in June 1919.

She is buried in Vale Cemetery in Kenosha County, just south of the White Caps Subdivision on Highway 50.

Possessed inner strength

Sarah’s grave is a place Joanne Getschman Johnson, of Kenosha, and her daughter Lynne Weil, of Madison, have visited.

Sarah is Johnson’s great-grandmother on her mother’s side.

Johnson was surprised and delighted to find Sarah on the list of delegates of the Kenosha County Equal Suffrage League of 1915.

“I’m incredibly proud that my great-grandmother was part of the suffrage movement. She had to be a very strong woman to overcome those obstacles in her way of life when women were thought to be inferior to men,” Johnson said. “This (movement) was an absolute major change on how women perceived themselves.”

Johnson said she never met her great-grandmother, as Sarah died when Johnson’s mother Alice Getchman was 9 years old. But Johnson attributes her and her daughter’s strong female inner strength to Sarah.

Two in family tree

Two of the KCESL members of 1915 — Titiana Hill and Anastasia Waters Wade — couldn’t have predicted that they’d land in the family tree of Kenoshan Susan Wade Horsely.

As a child, Horsely knew both women: Hill is her great-aunt and Wade her grandmother, one on each side of her parent’s families.

Titiana N. Hill was a member of Kenosha’s leading transportation family, which owned the Hill Steamboat Line that operated at Kenosha’s harbor for 22 years.

Titiana — or “Taine” as she was called by family members — was the eighth of nine children born to Leonidas L. and Flora Hill on July 30, 1895. The Hill family relocated here from Fish Creek, Wis., in Door County in 1903.

The Hill family lived on the outskirts of town on the south side of 35th Street east of 22nd Avenue.

A talented pianist, she graduated from Kenosha High School in 1914, and it was about this time she was inspired by the suffrage movement and joined the KCESL.

Titiana became a private music teacher, teaching beginning piano, and her great-niece was one of her students.

Horsely recalled her “Aunt Taine” as being a very down-to-earth, loving, jovial, motherly type of a person.

Titiana married Mark Kindt and raised three children just doors away from her parents’ home.

“I remember having dinner there,” Horsely said. “She was domestic — a good cook and a gardener.”

Late in life, Titiana and Mark moved to Prescott, Ariz., where she died in 1983.

Titiana’s older sister Eva had married Alfred Meredith Fegan. They were Horsely’s grandparents, and their offspring Florine was Horsely’s mother.

Florine married Horsely’s father, Elmer Wade, whose mother Anastasia Waters Wade was a suffragist, thus Horsely’s dual heritage.

Horsely has more recollections of her Grandma Anastasia than of her Great-Aunt Taine.

Grocer grew gladiolas

Born in County Wexford, Ireland, on Sept. 26, 1881, Anastasia came to the United States as an infant. Her birth family came to include nine younger siblings.

She married William J. Wade on Aug. 27, 1902, at St. James Catholic Church in Kenosha. Eventually, their family grew to five children, including Elmer.

Anastasia was 34 years old in 1915 when she was a member of the KCESL.

Back then, William was a factory worker, and they lived on Sixth Avenue in the German northside enclave. By 1930, the Wades had bought property near the Washington Golf Course at 2630 Washington Road, where they lived adjacent to their small grocery store.

Horsely remembers her grandmother as a sweet lady with a beautiful garden who grew gladiolas and raspberry bushes.

“On each of her (nine) grandkids’ birthdays, she’d bake us a ‘Sunshine’ cake and fudge,” Horsely recalled. “She was quite religious, and when we would go over for sleepovers, she’d have us down on our knees bedside, saying our prayers before bed.”

Horsely remembers Grandma Anastasia playing Parcheesi with her and her brother on those nights.

Anastasia died on her 65th birthday in 1946, having a heart attack upon learning of the death of her sister, Margaret. Horsely was then 11 years old.

“She was obviously out there in society and taking a role with those who were recruiting for suffrage. I never would have thought of her as being so engaged. I only thought of her as my sweet, little old grandmother,” Horsley said.

“They got a lot of women involved, and it took a long time to get that amendment through. My generation takes it for granted, but when I started thinking about it, it’s pretty amazing what they did.”

We’re right smack dab in the middle of the bow hunting season in Wisconsin and less than a month away from our nine-day gun season. Deer, take cover!

Yea, I’m a Bambi lover, but I don’t begrudge family and friends from enjoying the hunt, as long as they don’t waste the venison.

But in honor of the noble whitetail deer, this month’s column is about a time when a Kenosha city park had a deer enclosure that later moved to a county park.

Thirty years ago, older readers would occasionally tell me their memories about a zoo they went to in Lincoln Park.

It was the cage of monkeys that left the biggest impression on their young minds.

The zoo began, according to the Fourth Annual Report of the City of Kenosha, in 1925 with an exhibit of waterfowl and those three darn monkeys.

They were eventually joined by pheasants, peacocks, swans and geese.

J. Hauser, who lived at 3124 Roosevelt Road, presented the park with two pet baby raccoons, which for a time, outranked the monkeys in “cuteness”

By all accounts it was located near 22nd Avenue between the creek and 69th Street.

Next came the deer

On June 15, 1926, The Kenosha Evening News reported that a family of deer, enclosed by a high cyclone fence, had been added to the menagerie.

The deer came from a facility in Shawano Lake, located about 200 miles of north of Kenosha, a long drive in vehicles that ran roughshod over 1926 roads.

Led by Herman E. Arndt, superintendent of construction and maintenance of the city parks department, a crew brought back a buck, two does and a fawn. One of the does was pregnant and projected to give birth that July.

It took the 10 men four hours to get the four wary whitetails into a truck. Just as they would close in on one of them, the frisky devil would jump over the heads of the nearest men and be off.

The adult deer were named Dick, Bessie and Dot, and the fawn had yet to be named. Arndt said the deer responded to their names when called.

In March 1928, Arndt was hired as Kenosha County’s first superintendent of county parks. He would soon come to know the next generations of those deer.

Forced migration

When it comes to being prolific, deer are like rabbits, only larger and on spindly legs. Three years after they came to Kenosha, the herd grew from four to 16 deer, and it was getting pretty crowded in the urban pen.

Kenosha Park Director Floyd A. Carlson knew they could no longer house the deer at Lincoln Park and made arrangements with Ardnt to move the deer to a more suitable, yet enclosed, area at Petrifying Springs Park.

It fit right in with the county board’s plan to improve the park, along with Fox River Park. The automobile gave residents the freedom to travel to these recreational green spaces, and families were excited to take drives out into the countryside.

A large pen was built at the northwest corner of the park, north of Highway A, near the park entrance off Highway 31.

It became a popular stop for area families.

Glen Rasmussen, who worked many years for the Kenosha Parks Department, told me some years ago that it was part of his job to feed the deer.

The tradition of naming the deer lasted several generations, Rasmussen said. The large buck’s name was Dynamite, and one demure doe was Dolly.

Each fall, he helped with rounding up the deer for their annual examination. Fawns that were weaned were taken by a man who may have sold them to deer farms, a family entertainment activity popular at the time.

Complaint investigated

A complaint was received in the early summer of 1934 about the care of the deer and was noted in the County Park Board meeting minutes.

County Park Board Chairman W.A. Upson of Bristol told committee members an investigation was initiated in response to the complaint.

It found that the deer were well cared for, and a state conservation officer reported that the deer at Petrifying Springs were better cared for than most deer maintained in enclosures in the state.

The board then discussed what should be done with the county’s excess deer at the pen. It was decided that Arndt — who by this time was the county parks superintendent — could use his own discretion in disposing of them.

Perhaps that is when the annual fawn roundup Rasmussen referred to was implemented.

The deer pen at Pets remained for more for nearly two decades. Rasmussen thought that the deer enclosure feature was removed in the late 1940s.

As for the zoo back in Lincoln Park, Carlson gave up on the feature back in 1930 and had it all removed. He claimed the setting was really not adaptable to a zoo.

Families of those going into combat have always endured the stress and worry that goes with loving someone who serves their country.

In 1918, Kenoshans held their collective breath as the U.S. War Department announced the sinking of the ocean liner SS Tuscania, sunk by a German U-boat submarine.

The Tuscania had the same fate as another Cunard Line ship, the SS Lusitania, which was sunk by a German sub three years earlier with Kenoshan businessman Charles Jeffrey on board.

This time there were 46 Kenoshans – Army officers and doughboys headed for Liverpool and ultimately the war zone in France – on board the Tuscania, among of the 2,013 soldiers and 384 crewmen traveling the icy depths of the Irish Sea.

She was the first troopship to be torpedoed in World War One, struck on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 1918 after 12 days at sea.

The Kenoshans were in the Truck B, 107th Supply Train; Headquarters, 107 Supply Train; 1st Sanitary Squad, 32nd Div.; 107th Engineers; and the 58th Aero Squadron.

By the following Saturday, the government wired official reports to the Kenosha News building of the names of local survivors, covering a full 30 percent of the Kenosha boys.

Fear of fates unknown

Paper trail glitches put fear into the hearts of service families here.

At first, Otto Mowrey was reported as missing, but on Feb. 11, the family received word he was saved. Then on Feb. 13, Kenosha News received word that Mowrey was among 18 U.S. soldiers buried with military honors on the Scottish coast.

Except he wasn’t.

John Mitchell was on a survivor list and also on the missing list.

Karl Hultenius, too, was reported as missing. The Hultenius family got notice that Karl had been saved on Feb. 15.

These stories made other Tuscania families in Kenosha apprehensive, not knowing what to think.

Censored cables and letters home from the servicemen ultimately curbed families’ fears.

It wasn’t until February 26 that the long delayed casualty list from the Tuscania disaster was released and it contained only one name from Kenosha: Corporal Arthur C. Junker.

Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1865 in Kenosha is named for Junker and another WWI Kenoshan casualty Corporal William Ball.

Floyd Hill’s account

The first serviceman to send a cable home was Pvt. Floyd S. Hill, oldest son of William and Hulda Hill.

Later that year he sent a letter to the editor of The Spy, Kenosha High School’s yearbook, which was published in the 1918 edition.

He wrote: “On the fateful fifth day of February at about 2 p.m., land was sighted on both sides of us. Everyone was in high spirits and we spend the greater part of the afternoon admiring the rocky coastlines of Ireland and Scotland…

“At 4:30 the order came to go below for supper and immediately after supper to get our life belts on and get on deck. We all laughed at the precaution and joked among ourselves about what little chance there was of the Kaiser’s U-Boats getting the great “Tuscania”.

“After supper, about 5:30 pm, I went below and sat on my bunk for a little chat with my friend Corporal Seltrecht before going on deck. We had sat there about fifteen minutes when there was a terrific explosion, and the great ship trembled like a leaf and suddenly took a great list to starboard. The shock of the explosion nearly threw us off of our bunk, and as the torpedo struck right in the engine room, every light went out and we were left to find our way out of the sleeping quarters in the dark…

“After what seemed like ages, I finally found myself on the upper deck where the life boats to which my company had been assigned were supposed to be, only to find that the boats had been rendered useless by the force of the explosion. Things looked pretty dark for us, but no one in my company despaired.”

When the order of “every man for himself” had been given, Hill and several of his comrades went over the side and found themselves in a lifeboat. They bailed with their hats like madmen when it was discovered that the lifeboat was leaking. In this manner, they kept the boat afloat for four hours.

A British trawler shone a light on them and when it came alongside, the soldiers scrambled on board. Soaked, cold and miserable, they were given hot tea and some fell asleep in the kitchen.

They landed the next day in Larne, Ireland where villagers gave them dry clothes and warm food.

”All the boys who landed at Larne will always have a warm spot in their hearts for the Irish people,” Hill concluded.

Scholey left behind

Excerpts from the diary of Kenoshan Fred A. Scholey told a similar tale.

“Feb. 4 – Everybody sleeping in their clothes as ordered… During the night we met our convoy of seven destroyers, and this morning we are in the center of the bunch, 19 ships in all.

“Feb. 5 – The S.S. Tuscania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland at eight minutes to 6 p.m. the torpedo hitting on the starboard side and exploding in the engine room.”

Scholey was on Deck D and made his way to Deck B where his lifeboat was located. As he reached there, he saw their lifeboat lowered, but the ship’s crew was in it. The next lifeboat was lowered with no one in it and the ropes broke, making it impossible to lower any more boats for his squad.

“Many of the boys jumped or slid down the ropes into the water, but as the boat was sinking slowly, I, with several others of our squad, began to sing and smoke.”

About 8 p.m. the destroyer Mosquito came to the rescue and most of Scholey’s squad got on board.

“I had hold of the rope to slide down, when an officer came to me saying there was a sick man he wanted to help down. I stepped aside, giving him the rope, which he used for himself and as the destroyer began to pull away, I was left behind.”

“The emergency lights went out, leaving everything in darkness; and as the boat listed more, I prepared myself for death with the thoughts of the loved one at home.”

But Scholey’s luck held. About 9:15 p.m., the destroyer Pigeon came to the rescue and took him on board.

Forget those silly bar arguments about who is the better team, Packers or Bears. Let’s get down to the really important stuff: Where was the world premiere of the 1939 classic movie “The Wizard of Oz” held?

August is the 80th anniversary of the release of the movie, and it got a plethora of media coverage. I’m here to tell you right now the official world premiere of that movie was at … Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood on Aug. 15, 1939. This premiere had been rescheduled at Grauman’s from Aug. 10.

“Well, c’mon Diane,” you might say. “What’s all the hubbub about Oconomowoc’s claim that it was first premiered on Aug. 12, 1939, at the Strand Theater in their city?”

Like everything else important in life, it has to do with semantics.

Oconomowoc didn’t get to “premiere” the movie. Heck, even us munchkins here in Kenosha got to see it on the big screen before Oconomowoc.

That’s because Kenosha, like Oconomowoc had been selected for a test market pre-screening showing to see how the movie would play to a mid-American audience, says Jon Martens, Collections and Exhibition Specialist at the Kenosha History Center.

I’ll confess, I discovered in the late 1980s that “The Wizard of Oz” was shown at the Gateway Theater (now known as The Rhode Center for the Arts) on Friday, Aug. 11, 1939, and had the documentation, which I presented to John Fricke, “Oz” historian, who had just published his first of four books on the beloved movie.

Fricke couldn’t argue with the proof and said the next time the book went to press, he would change the first showing from Oconomowoc to Kenosha and Cape Cod, Mass., where it had also played. He kept his word.

Yellow Brick Road

in Kenosha

Advertisements in the Kenosha Evening News show that as of Aug. 9, Gateway Theater manager Thomas R. Reilly planned on opening the film Saturday, Aug. 12. But the ad for the movie in Aug. 10 newspaper announced “The Wizard of Oz” would be shown “tomorrow.”

Adults paid 25 cents before 6 p.m. (35 cents after 6) to get into the movie; kids paid a dime at the Gateway.

The Kenosha newspaper and the Gateway sponsored a coloring contest, running a cartoon outline of Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow on Aug. 10 and one of Billie Burke as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, on Aug. 11.

Youngsters had until midnight Monday, Aug. 14, to bring their colored entries to the theater for a chance to win a “Wizard of Oz” book or a pair of free passes to see the movie.

If the showing was a pre-screening opportunity for the movie, it played right into the hands of Reilly and his encyclopedia promotion.

Aug. 11 was the last day a patron could obtain Volume One of the Standard American Encyclopedia for 10 cents. Theater promotions of the day enticed people back to the theaters to collect a set of dishes — one piece per admission — and other household items.

If people didn’t get that first volume of this encyclopedia, chances are they wouldn’t be interested in the remaining 14 volumes. And Reilly might have been stuck with the books.

Music was popular

By Aug. 11, “Over the Rainbow” was No. 4 on the list of the top 10 sheet-music sellers, a measure comparable to Billboard’s Top 100 today.

The “Wizard” played at the Gateway for six days. After just four days, the theater claimed that 8,000 patrons had seen the feature.

Oconomowoc legend says the Milwaukee film distributor had told The Strand owners Harley and Ruth Huebner that they were the first to exhibit the film.

In the last 30 years, the number of places claiming to have had early public showings of the movie has grown.

Perhaps we now should ask what major city outside of Milwaukee and Madison didn’t have a pre-screening.

The book “The Road to Oz: The Evolution, Creation and Legacy of a Motion Picture Masterpiece” by Jay Scarfone and William Stillman states the movie played in Green Bay Aug. 10; Kenosha, Oshkosh and Appleton in Wisconsin and Cape Cod, Mass. Aug. 11; Oconomowoc on Aug. 12; Portsmouth, N.H., Escanaba, Mich., Racine, Rhinelander and Sheboygan on Aug. 13; Chicago and Gaffney, S.C. on Aug. 14 before the West Coast premiere at Grauman’s on Aug. 15.

I wouldn’t be surprised if documentation from another 25 cities in America that showed the movie before the Grauman’s Theater premiere is unearthed before the 100th anniversary of the movie.

For about a half century in America, horses were utilized to haul fire fighting equipment.

Clanging fire bells sounded the call, alerting the horses to their duty, and once in their harnesses, they galloped down dusty roads never to be distracted.

Those years when specimens of equine beauty resided in fire stations could be called the romantic period of firefighting.

According to Dennis Smith’s “History of Firefighting in America: 300 Years of Courage,” “Not every horse could serve as a fire horse. The animals needed to be strong, swift, agile, obedient and fearless. At the scene, they needed to stand patiently while embers and flames surrounded them. They needed to remain calm while the firefighters fought the blaze.”

After the incorporation of the Fire Department of the City of Kenosha in 1851 — an all-volunteer affair for more than 50 years — hose carts and pumps were pulled by men. When the fire alarm rang, every available man ran to the nearest fire station to pull the apparatus out of the station and down to the fire.

As the town grew, so did the number of fires each year. Most buildings were made of wood, and fires jumped from building to building and from street to street. More than once the downtown area was threatened with total destruction. There were 26 buildings lost in the City Hotel fire on March 31, 1860.

The rigs, which were getting heavier with the newer equipment, needed to get to fire scenes faster.

After the Civil War, the City Council approved the use of rental horses from livery stables for fire runs.

The Allen & Sons Tannery fire in February 1890 proved that getting horses from the livery took too much time. In that fire, the tannery, the Pennoyer Water Cure, the German Methodist Church and the McDermott Tannery were destroyed.

Three white stallions

James S. Barr became Kenosha’s fire chief just a month before the tannery fire, and he pushed for the department to have its own horses. Getting the City Council to agree was another matter.

Finally, in February 1894, bids went out for a team of horses for the Central Engine House located on the south side of Market Street (56th Street) between Church and Chicago Streets (Seventh and Eighth Avenues).

Nineteen months later, three white stallions with harnesses were purchased and a man hired to care for them.

The team was good-naturedly named: Jim, after Chief Barr; Barney, after Barney McGivern, chairman of the City Council Fire Department Committee; and Lee, after Lee Fellows, who had been chief in the early 1880s.

(Some sources say not Lee, but Ott, named for former firefighter and mayor O. M. Pettit, was the third horse.)

The team was the pride of the department, demonstrating its prowess of strength and stamina.

Other teams were eventually purchased to pull the city’s five hose apparatus wagons.

At the sound of the fire alarm, volunteers were to run to the fire scene while the horses were getting hooked up to the wagons. It was said that even with their good head start, the firemen could never outrun the horses to the scene.

Dangerous run

A fire call at 9:30 p.m. on September 12, 1898, sent companies racing to the Chicago-Rockford Hosiery on the north side of Prairie Avenue (60th Street) around 24th Avenue at the edge of the city. Included in the call was the much loved team from the Independent Hose Company No. 4 from the station at Milwaukee Avenue (Seventh Avenue) in today’s 4800 block where it still stands.

The company’s pair of brown beauties were well trained and renowned in Kenosha.

The fire was small and had been extinguished by the time the Independent team arrived, and everyone was sent back to their stations. About six firefighters from the Independent Company jumped on the rig driven by John Dosemagen, 34, for the ride home.

As they started east on Prairie Avenue, they came alongside another fire hose wagon driven by KFD driver Kupfer.

The horses were excited and began pacing each other and broke out into a full run. The drivers saw that the teams were getting unmanageable and pulled them in.

But like school boys street racing cars 40 years later, the temptation to race combined with the willingness of the horses was overwhelming. Soon the race renewed as they dashed down the blocks towards the Northwestern railroad tracks … and an unseen approaching train.

Too little, too late

According to a front page article in the next day’s newspaper: “When within a short distance of the railroad track, Kupfer saw the gates descend and began to pull in his horses. But Dosemagen failed to see the barrier fall and the horses thrilled with the victory they had won from their rivals took on ever greater speed, and with heads erect, nostrils dilated, they simply flew down the road.”

The terrifically bright carbide lamps on weaving bicycles blinded Dosemagen. The train whistle awakened him and the men held on tight.

Every brake was reversed and Dosemagen pulled the lines with all his strength. There was no stopping the horses who had been excited into a frenzy.

As they neared the track, some of the crowd who had stood by to see the racing horses threw up their hands in a vain attempt to stop the inevitable, but it was no use.

The manic horses hit the gates, breaking them into kindling and leaped into the train engine. In the great crash that followed, horses, driver and firemen were thrown into an indiscernible mass at the roadside.

The remains of the horses were strewn along the track. Miraculously, no humans were killed.

Dosemagen, who jumped as the wagon collided, suffered a seriously wrenched knee and deep bruises.

All of the firemen had hairbreadth escapes. It took some time before they found Peter Olk, 34, under a mass of hose and debris. His injuries were more severe, and he was taken to the office of Dr. George Kimball.

Next month is the 99-year anniversary of the ratification of 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the right to vote. This is the story of one of the foremost suffrage leaders in Kenosha. A search for a photo of Ms. Bain was unsuccessful.

On Nov. 16, 1920, Harriet F. Bain signed her name on her passport application at the old Kenosha courthouse. She was taking a trip to study painting in Spain, Italy, France and England. Her last visit to Europe was before the turn of the century, and the 54-year-old woman was looking forward to this visit.

She had been very busy for nearly a decade working for women’s right to vote in America, and this trip would be a welcome respite.

Just two weeks earlier on Nov. 2, she and millions of other women had cast their first presidential ballot. The impact was stunning as the total popular vote in that election increased dramatically, from 18.5 million votes in 1916 to 26.8 million in 1920.

Bain’s involvement in the suffrage movement made her a local leader and later her influence was felt on the national level.

Family connection

to wagon factory

Harriet Bain was born in Kinderhook, N.Y., on Sept. 18, 1866, to Lewis and Sarah Frary Bain. Harriet was a toddler when the family moved to Kenosha. Her father’s older brother, Edward Bain, was one of Kenosha’s elite industrialists, being the proprietor of Bain Wagon Works.

Lewis became a merchant who owned one of the general stores in our early downtown.

Harriet may have been influenced by her mother Sarah in her stance on women’s rights. In 1912 Sarah was proud enough of her own suffrage stance to add her name to a public list of more than 600 Kenosha women who wanted the vote.

Harriet attended Kemper Girl’s Academy on Kenosha’s south shore and found an aptitude for art. She was quite talented, and when she got older, she split her time between here and New York City as her career blossomed.

Much later in her career, she was active in the Art Institute of Chicago and had her work in exhibitions with the Provincetown (Mass.) Art Association. She is listed in “Who was Who in American Art” by Peter H. Falk.

Leads Kenosha effort

Bain was 45 years old in 1911, a never-married spinster of slight build, who barely filled out her 5-foot, 3-inch frame.

She was a member of the Wisconsin Woman’s Suffrage Association, serving as one of the vice presidents in 1913. As a woman of means, Bain was able to travel and became involved in the suffrage movement at the state and national level.

She attended the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s 48th annual convention in Atlantic City, N.J., Sept. 4-10, 1916. Bain was listed with five other women from the WWSA, including the organization’s president Theodore Youmans.

In 1913, Bain took the reins of the 11-month-old Kenosha County Equal Suffrage League from Mary D. Bradford.

At the group’s annual meeting that November, delegates who had just returned from the WWSA annual meeting in Madison reported that during a session on organizational methods, the KCESL received recognition from Youmans.

“However able and active any suffrage workers may be, they cannot be superior to Kenosha’s,” Youmans had said.

The KCESL would re-elect Bain president for another three years.

Bain brainchild

goes national

Bain is credited by a number of sources (including articles in the Kenosha Evening News during the summer of 1914 and in the proceedings of the 46th Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association) as the woman who came up with the idea for the annual Self-Denial Day.

The idea behind this suffrage campaign strategy was simple: Women true to the cause would give up something — hairdressing appointments, manicures, purchasing favorite boxes of chocolates — and give the money they would have spent on these luxuries to the coffers of suffrage organizations. The money was then funneled to the seven campaign states, including Wisconsin, where suffrage support could tip the scales in state law.

Men, too, gave up their cigars and automobile rides to raise money.

“Melting pot” offerings were also gathered. These were gold and silver pieces of jewelry that would be melted down and sold to raise money for the cause.

Bain told National American Woman Suffrage Association second vice president Desha Breckinridge of her idea, who passed it onto the executive board of the NAWSA. It was promptly adopted.

During the summer of 1914, women nationwide pledged and saved.

The first Self-Denial Day, when suffrage organizations tallied their savings and celebrated their success, was held on Aug. 15, 1914.

Suffrage snaps

President Woodrow Wilson made a series of whistle stops in his re-election campaign, and Kenosha was on his list of stops.

Most of the town was there at the crowded Northwestern Train Station platform on Jan. 31, 1916, to greet the president and the first lady Edith Wilson.

A half-dozen local suffragists held a large yellow satin banner promoting the suffrage cause.

It minced no words: “We demand an amendment to the United States constitution enfranchising women,” the banner read.

They also had a gift for the first couple. Baked by KCESL member Mrs. Hilda Nelson, Kenosha Suffrage Snaps, which were often served at local suffrage teas, were placed in a large white satin box as a present for Mrs. Wilson.

Bain and Emma Robinson, secretary of the KCESL, made their way to the front of the platform as the train rolled in and waited patiently for their opportunity.

Robinson held the box above her head and put it in the hands of the president, who thanked her and passed it on to Mrs. Wilson.

Bain was directly behind Robinson, and when her turn came, she reached on her tip toes and handed the president a note that read, “Hon. Woodrow Wilson, President, Dear Sir: The women of Wisconsin beg that while in the West you fulfill your promise to confer with the leaders of your party in regard to supporting the federal amendment enfranchising women now before Congress.”

“We further request that you use your great power as the leading suffragist of America to insure a suffrage plank in the Democratic platform for 1916. Signed Harriet F. Bain”

Lobbied Congress on suffrage

On Jan. 10, 1918, Bain was in Washington waiting on the news from the House of Representatives.

She telegraphed Robinson of the suffrage victory in the lower house of Congress. By then Bain was an associate of Carrie Chapman Catt and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw in the congressional lobby.

She was credited with influencing several delegates from Wisconsin and Florida into supporting the bill.

The effort was coming to a head until finally the Senate passed the amendment on June 4, 1919.

It was ratified by two-thirds majority of the states on Aug. 18, 1920.

Harriet returned to her art, her independence and her unapologetic life.

She lived another 25 years, dying at the age of 79 after a long illness on March 1, 1945, at the home of her friends Mr. and Mrs. John Burns.

The 75th Anniversary of D-Day earlier this month gave us pause to remember the sacrifice of a host of determined teens and young men in combat, who faced a enemy equally determined to kill them.

Raymond Tucker was one of them who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Tucker was a private first class in the U.S. Army, assigned to the 175th Regiment, 29th Infantry Division. Just 19 years old, he was a machine gunner attached to the infantry outfit that was in one of the assault waves that hit the Normandy beaches two days after D-Day.

Born in Kenosha, Tucker attended Friedens Lutheran School, and McKinley Junior High School before attending Kenosha High School for two years.

He lived with his parents, Alma and Sanford Tucker, at 2100 55th Street.

Tucker was athletically gifted and played baseball with the American Legion junior and senior teams. Once he was invited to try out for a major league team, but he was too young to meet the league’s criteria.

In the Army, he was the pitcher for his undefeated camp team, which won wide distinction.

Tucker left his job at American Brass and enlisted. He entered service in March 1943 for training in Alabama. He went oversees to England on July 1, 1943, and joined the 29th Rangers before reassignment to the infantry as the invasion plans were taking shape.

His family knew the worry and stress of having a serviceman in a war: Raymond’s father served in World War I as a motorcycle dispatch rider.

Two weeks before the invasion, Raymond wrote home, “If you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t worry, because no news is good news.”

It was his last communication.

He is buried in the Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

Relics cherished

by Kreuser family

Kenosha County Executive Jim Kreuser grew up in a home that honored Tucker’s service to his country and enshrined artifacts from Tucker’s life and death.

Raymond was the only child of Kreuser’s great-aunt Alma and great-uncle Sanford.

“Growing up I heard about Raymond and, as a child, my Uncle Sandford gave me his glove when I played baseball,” Kreuser said. “I played catch with it, utilized it, but was always careful with it, not to leave it out in the rain, which you never do with a baseball glove.”

The glove has Raymond’s name penned on it and “American Legion” for the teams he played for.

Held places of honor

A portrait of Sanford in his Army uniform and a framed “Prayer for Wearers of the Purple Heart” inscribed with Raymond’s name hung on the walls of the Tucker home. When Sanford and Alma passed on in the mid 1970s, it had a place of honor in the home of Harold “Babe” and La Verne Kreuser, Jim’s parents.

Along with the wall hangings came other artifacts, including Raymond’s Purple Heart, the telegraph from the War Department informing the family of Raymond’s death and a letter on the proper display of the Purple Heart.

These items were honored relics in the Kreuser home and were the touchstones to the lessons of history and the realities of war that the Kreuser children learned.

The dreaded telegram

In these days of instant communication from around the world, Kreuser said, the date of the telegram is revealing.

The Western Union telegram from Major General J. A. Ulio, the adjutant general, to Alma Tucker is dated July 24, a full 46 days after her son died. The Army did not list Raymond on an invasion casualty list until Aug. 3, 1944, at which time the Kenosha Evening News ran the news of his death on the front page of the paper.

“How long you had to wait to find out (your loved one had died), when you found out, how you live with that notice and how you mourn and now how we celebrate these freedoms we have because of the sacrifices that went on.”

The date on the letter headed “The Purple Heart Awarded Posthumously” that accompanied the war medal is a curiosity. It is dated “18 May 1944,” a full three weeks before the invasion of Normandy.

The letter, too, came from the desk of Major General Ulio.

The U.S. Military knew there would be a high cost in casualties, and must have prepared thousands of these letters (there were no photocopiers) in advance.

The total casualties of the Normandy landings of that June were 6,500 Americans and 3,000 British and Canadians.

You can find Raymond Tucker’s name on both of the monuments to our Kenosha fallen military located east of the Kenosha Municipal Building.

“The historical aspect is something we want to preserve and share to remember,” Kreuser said. “Especially when they give the greatest sacrifice.”

On the west side of Highway MB in the town of Paris, about a quarter mile north of 12th Street, is a particularly fertile piece of land.

It is land rich in nutrients for healthy minds, strength of character and inquisitive natures — land that is perfect for growing teachers.

The farmhouse that once stood there was the birthplace of not one, but two, of Wisconsin’s finest educators:

Mary Davison Bradford, the first female superintendent of schools in Wisconsin and the second to take the helm of a city school system in the nation.

Sister Bartholomew Frederick, OSF, one of the founders of Cardinal Stritch College in Milwaukee.

Let’s start with the one with whom Kenoshans are the most familiar.

Mary Lemira Davison was born Jan. 15, 1856, the sixth of seven children of Andrew J. and Caroline G. Davison. The Davisons had purchased the farm and homestead called the “Willis place” in 1854.

Mary wrote about her home in her autobiography “Memoirs of Mary D. Bradford.”

Andrew became disabled in 1861, and the work of the farm was laid on Caroline and the older children. When Mary’s oldest brother Cordillo died in 1866 of typhoid fever, the Davisons moved into the city of Kenosha.

The farm was sold to German pioneers Matthias and Catharina Frederick in 1868. Subsequently, the farm came into the hands of their son Theodore.

Lover of learning

Mary was a good student and loved school.

In the spring of 1874, her father and sister were exposed to smallpox at the Kenosha train station, and the entire family was quarantined in their home for six weeks.

When Mary returned to school, it was impossible for her to catch up on her studies. She never did graduate from high school.

But at age 16 she passed the teachers examination.

Teaching was truly her life’s work. In the subsequent years, she taught in rural schools, Kenosha High School and attended the Oshkosh Normal School.

She married William R. Bradford in 1878 and gave birth to their son Willie in 1880. Seven months later she was a widow, William dying of tuberculosis.

Mary taught for 12 years at Kenosha High School before being requested to join the faculty of Stevens Point Normal School in 1894 and later Stout Institute and Whitewater State Normal School.

Her selection as the superintendent of schools in Kenosha in 1910 — a post she held for 11 years — was nothing short of revolutionary for our city. She inaugurated a host of features that won her the attention and commendation of the progressive educational leaders of the nation.

During her administration as superintendent, she established the first kindergartens, implemented the junior high school system, introduced industrial and household arts, organized the first Parent-Teacher Association, initiated the first open-air school in Wisconsin, increased professional requirements for teachers and introduced the first salary schedule for school employees.

She retired in the spring of 1921 due to illness, but lived to be a world traveler.

At her last public appearance at the Eagles Club, it was announced that the central senior high school was being renamed in her honor. She died nearly three years later on Feb. 5, 1943.

Frederick lived a life of service and prayer

Sister Bartholomew Frederick began life as Elizabeth Frederick, born Sept. 26, 1882. She was the daughter of Theodore and Catherine Frederick, the seventh of nine children.

Elizabeth left the farm life at the age of 15, just a year older than Mary was when the Davisons moved into the city.

But Elizabeth’s path was very different than Mary’s.

At 15, she joined the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi in Milwaukee and was given the name Sister M. Bartholomew when she was received as a novice in 1898.

A good student, Sister Bartholomew pursued her education on Saturdays and during the summers.

She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from DePaul University in 1922, and in 1927, she earned a Master of Arts in history from Marquette University, one of the first two members of the congregation to receive a master’s degree.

In 1932, at the suggestion of Archbishop Samuel A. Stritch, Sister Bartholomew got busy organizing St. Clare Junior College for members of her order. She served as president of the college from 1934-1942.

Knowing the importance of education, Sister Bartholomew sent other sisters to pursue graduate studies in various Catholic and secular universities in the United States and abroad.

Mother Bartholomew led Franciscan order

She was elected mother general of her community in 1937, a post she held until 1949 at which time the community of sisters included 886 nuns at 87 houses in 13 states and 24 dioceses, and in China.

Under Mother Bartholomew’s leadership, the sisters opened schools in various parts of the country, including southern rural missions and the Cardinal Stritch College Reading Clinic in Milwaukee.

In addition they founded St. Coletta School for persons with developmental disabilities in Jefferson, Wis.; similar facilities were opened in Longmont, Colo., Hanover, Maine, and Palos Park, Ill.

St. Clare Junior College was reorganized in 1937 into a four-year liberal arts school and opened to lay women. In 1946 it was renamed in honor of Stritch, who had been elevated to cardinal by Pope Pius XII.

Sister Bartholomew was the president of Cardinal Stritch College from 1949-1955.

She retired in 1969 but continued to serve. She would visit the Veterans Administration Hospital, where she chatted with the veterans, wrote letters, did simple mending and wheeled the veterans to appointments.

When she died on Dec. 12, 1981, at the age of 99 having spent 85 years in religious life, she was described as “a valiant woman of great vision and achievement.”

As for the farmhouse that both young Mary and Elizabeth called home, it was reluctantly razed by the Frederick family in 1986.

With a much-needed dredging project about to get underway at the mouth of Kenosha’s harbor, it’s good to note the man who built the first crane dredge on Lake Michigan was Kenoshan Jason Lothrop in the 1840-50s.

Over the years I’ve seen the name Jason Lothrop crop up in many local history pioneer references. So who was this Jason Lothrop guy?

To answer that, you’d first have to answer the question: Which one? There were three generations of Jason Lothrop who lived in Kenosha at some point in their lives. They were a father, son and grandson, and each have pretty interesting stories to tell.

The first Jason Lothrop

Rev. Jason Lothrop was born in Vermont in 1794. His first career was that of a schoolteacher, but after some years, he became a Baptist minister.

When a group of investors and friends in Hannibal, N.Y., formed the Western Emigration Co. to explore land options in the new West (now the Midwest) in 1834, Lothrop was there. He helped to produce the constitution and bylaws of the new company.

The first party of Western Emigration settlers arrived at what we now call the HarborPark area in June 1835.

About a month later, Lothrop, his wife Susan, and children Susan and Lucien, boarded a schooner on Lake Ontario and began their four-week voyage from Oswego, N.Y. across the Great Lakes of Ontario, Erie, Huron and Michigan. They arrived here on Aug. 15, 1835.

At that time there were but three log huts in the vicinity.

The Lothrop family, along with the David Crossit family, lived in a boarding house log cabin during the first winter of 1835.

In 1836, Lothrop staked off a claim and built a cabin for his family where the old Frank Wells Co. stood on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street.

Being a minister, people began to turn to Lothrop for spiritual care. One account says he did not preach until November 1835. Other accounts credit him with the first sermon given that summer.

Lothrop brought a small printing press with him, and he was able to print handbills to announce community events, an important use of communication technology at that time.

Surveying a family trade

Jason Jr., born in 1820, was just 15 when the members of his immediate family moved to the Pike Creek settlement.

Junior stayed behind, going to night school, where he learned civil engineering. He came here to Southport in 1843, and saw his father’s handiwork: Elder Lothrop had built one of the very first frame houses in the city.

Father and son shared a trade: They were both proficient in land surveying.

Elder Lothrop filled the office of county surveyor in the early years of Racine County, of which we were a part, and Jason Jr. was elected Kenosha County surveyor soon after he arrived here and held that office almost continuously for 50 years.

The Kenosha History Center has the younger Lothrop’s field books in its collection.

Jason Lothrop Jr., had an impact on Wisconsin equal to his father.

In addition to Kenosha’s dredge, he built the first side-wheel dredge on the Wisconsin River, and was in charge of building the first lock on the Fox River at Lake Winnebago. He also surveyed the first lots in Muskegon, Mich.

Jason Jr. continued to call Kenosha his home, marrying Jane Burnside in 1842 and subsequently had six children: Donna, James, Jason, Ida, Charles and Susie.

The city mourned when the Rev. Jason Lothrop died Sept. 1, 1870, and again in 1878 when Jason Jr.’s youngest child Susie, 19, died. She had been a Kenosha school teacher for two years.

In 1907 her father had a pipe organ placed in the Henry M. Simmons Memorial Church as a memorial to Susie.

The third Jason

Jason Jr. lived to the ripe old age of 92, long enough to be struck by one last family tragedy.

On June 5, 1895, his son, Capt. Jason Lothrop III, an experienced marine explosives handler, was involved in a freakish accident as he was working on a waterworks extension project in Buffalo, N.Y.

Lothrop had charge of a Hingston and Wood’s steam drill, drilling and blasting a channel for a water intake pipe.

About 2 p.m. that day, he had put down one dynamite cartridge and his assistant Charles Harrity had another 25-pound cartridge in his hand.

The men were working back to back. As Harrity attached the wires to the cartridge, Lothrop, unknowing Harrity’s actions, turned the current on.

The explosion rocked the waterfront. Harrity died instantly. It blew his mangled body parts out into the lake. Lothrop was thrown through the side of the boat, mangling his legs.

Four other workers, who were within 10 feet of the point of ignition, were also thrown into the boat; their injuries were painful, but not serious.

Luckily, 400 pounds of dynamite in a boat about 10 feet from Harrity did not explode.

Lothrop died of his injures about 24 hours later, never gaining consciousness. He was survived by his wife Ada (Parsons).

Capt. Lothrop was buried in Forrest Home Cemetery in Buffalo.

Jason Lothrop II joined his father and son in the hereafter on Jan. 17, 1912.

He was living with his son Charles in Spooner, Wis., and was brought home to Kenosha. Funeral services were held at the Henry M. Simmons Memorial Church.

Edna Coughlin’s name may not ring a bell, even in light of March being Women’s History Month, but it should.

She was one of a handful of civilian women who were awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for their work during The Great World War. (You remember that one; it was supposed to be the “war that ended all wars” otherwise known as World War I.)

But more importantly for us who wig out on local history, Edna Coughlin got her training at the Kenosha Hospital Training School, graduating in 1916, in the eighth graduation class of the school.

And while the others who were bestowed with this award by Congress for various reasons, Coughlin was the only woman who got hers for her bravery under fire.

Answering the call

Coughlin lived at 529 Chicago St. just adjacent to the Kenosha Hospital on what is now Eighth Avenue. She was one of the first Kenosha women to answer the call of the Red Cross when America got involved in the war in 1917.

The Chicago native served at the Milwaukee Base Hospital (No. 22) in the Bab du Lac region in France. She and two servicemen, Lt. Somers and Pvt. Poole, comprised a first aid team which became know as one of the most efficient of the field hospital.

Coughlin’s team treated soldiers with shrapnel wounds from artillery shells, and gunshots and poisonous gases, including phosgene.

Then came the “King of Battle Gases,” nitrogen mustard.

Called “Yellow Cross” by the troops, it was insidious. No mask was proven against it. It burned through clothing, worked its way into the flesh, destroyed vision and choked out life.

Heavier than air, it sank into the trenches, visiting a slow death on thousand of soldiers.

In the heaviest fighting

On Sept. 26, 1918, the Third Corps of Pershing’s U.S. Army began what was to be written into the history books as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

This offensive was one of the most impressive American military efforts of all time, requiring the coordination of 1.2 million troops. The Americans paid a heavy price in the end, suffering 120,000 casualties.

Coughlin treated soldiers, only 6 to 8 kilometers (3.7 to 5 miles) from the front lines. The sounds of shells dropping, and the wafting smoke, was non-stop. She served there doing field service nursing for seven consecutive weeks.

The American forces thrust the Germans back 30 miles and ultimately fought there until the Armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918.

Coughlin remained there another three weeks after the hostilities ceased, treating those who continued to stagger in from the fighting.

The Milwaukee unit left France on Feb. 16, 1919. Because of the shortage of first class steamers, Coughlin and her unit had to take passage on a “fruiter,” one of the many merchant ships charted by the U.S. Navy to transport troops.

According to an article in the Kenosha Evening News dated March 20, 1919, the ship hit stormy seas, landing in New York on March 3 and rolling into Milwaukee on Sunday morning March 16.

Home again

She slipped quietly into Kenosha, trying to decompress from her experience. Even her best friends were unaware of her return until the newspaper article hit the stands.

She said she worked at 18 field hospitals near the trenches. She spoke of the four days when the fighting was the fiercest in the area around Verdun, where she and her corps of medics treated 6,744 frightfully wounded men.

Coughlin told the Kenosha News reporter: “They never asked you to take care of them. They were always, ‘All right, nurse,’ and could you take care of their buddy, whom they insisted ‘needed the bandages and things much worse than they did.’”

Coughlin said her release from service was imminent, and she intended to return to Chicago and resume her work with the Visiting Nurses of that city.

By the time Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood presented Edna her Distinguished Service Medal on April 2, 1920, she was working at B.F. Goodrich Hospital in Akron, Ohio, the city where she was living with her new husband, William J. Quinsler.

Only a handful of civilian women were awarded the DSM for service during WWI, including Commander Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army and Anna Howard Shaw, head of the Women’s Committee of the U.S. Council of National Defense.

The only other Kenoshan to be so honored at that time was Col. Charles J. Symmonds, who was in charge of the supply base of the American Army in France.

Neither Booth, Shaw nor Symmonds were anywhere near the front lines as Coughlin had been.

Scores of Red Cross nurses didn’t survive WWI

According to an article published in the Asbury Park Evening Press of Nov. 10, 1922, the Women’s Overseas Service League initiated a movement that year to erect a monument to the 161 American non-military women who gave their lives in WWI.

“There is a handsome bronze tablet in the Army and Navy building in Washington, memorializing the mules and horses who died in the war, but nowhere is found a record of the women who died — except army nurses — until we compiled it,” declared Helen C. Courtney, originator of the memorial movement.

So where is the monument to the civilian nurses?

2009 was a pivotal year for Wisconsin state Rep. Jeff Wood, I-Chippewa Falls. He had been stopped and ticketed for his fourth DUI — the last two within a period of four weeks.

His actions led him to refrain from seeking re-election in the 67th District in 2010.

But it didn’t stop his problems, even after participating in at least one 30-day in-patient treatment program.

On Jan. 12, 2011, Wood pleaded no contest to a fifth-offense of operating under the influence charge, a felony. He was sentenced to spend nine months in jail, with three years probation.

Alcohol and drug abuse have haunted the lives of families for centuries, shattering the careers of people by the millions, and costing untold grief to those who love an addict.

Never think for a moment that Kenosha hasn’t suffered through a loss of a great statesman at the hand of liquor.

The following excerpts were penned by an ailing Christopher Latham Sholes (one of the inventors of the typewriter) to his business partner, James Densmore. The two were editors of the Southport Telegraph for one year, 1853-54, in Kenosha.

On Dec. 27, 1877 Sholes wrote:

“Yours enclosing whiskey cure received. Am afraid the remedy would be worse than the disease. You did not know, I guess, C.D. of this state. He was four years in Congress and six years in the Senate from this state and when he died was governor of Utah.

“He was a most estimable man in all respects. Liquor was prescribed to him for a chronic trouble which much afflicted him. This estimable man died a drunkard, and sooner, I guess than his disease would have killed him.”

Who was Sholes writing about?

It doesn’t take much knowledge of Kenosha history to know that the “C.D.” of which Sholes writes was Charles Durkee. Durkee served two terms in the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature before being elected a U.S. representative for two terms and later a member of the U.S. Senate from 1855 to 1861.

Durkee retired in 1861 and built a new home on the shores of Lake Michigan in Kenosha. The Durkee Mansion is the centerpiece of the Kemper Center complex at 6501 Third Ave.

When his chronic rheumatism flared up, he let President Andrew Johnson know that he was interested in moving to a dryer climate. Johnson needed to appoint someone as the territorial governor of Utah. Johnson knew Durkee was qualified and appointed him governor in 1865.

Of course Durkee’s other problem followed him to Utah.

Durkee was a great man who had stumbled into a mire. He fell prey to a doctor who prescribed “medicine” for his rheumatism, an unfortunate predicament that was common for its time. Many remedies had an alcohol base, and whiskey for “medicinal purposes” was an alcoholic’s favorite excuse.

Sholes was not the only person to note Durkee’s drinking problem in a letter.

Franklin Harvey Head traveled with the Durkees to Utah. Head, a Kenosha lawyer, was married to Durkee’s niece.

In a letter home dated Dec. 27, 1869, Head wrote that in his opinion, Durkee’s drinking problem had become so bad that Durkee would drink himself to death within the month.

The world did not have to wait that long.

Durkee’s demise

They may not have had drunken-driving charges in the 19th century, but Durkee’s foolish actions behind the reins of his buggy a few days later cost him his life.

On New Year’s Eve 1869, Durkee decided to visit a friend who lived 12 miles away (quite a jaunt by horse and buggy), but got lost on the way.

As the night approached, he couldn’t find any shelter and decided to spend the night in his buggy.

He found his way back to Salt Lake City the next day, but the result was badly frostbitten feet and pneumonia.

Fourteen days later, Durkee, 64, died on the train on his way back to Kenosha.

Sholes’ medical philosophy

Sholes was a wise man; he knew of his weaknesses. His letter to Densmore continues:

“I see by the diet prescribed for the treatment that I am required to give up coffee. Now, I am already a slave to coffee. It is not a question of me giving it up, but of it giving me up, which I am sure it won’t do.

“Aside from the utter impossibility of my giving it up, would you regard it as advisable for me to run the risk of becoming enslaved to another worse master, as I think I certainly should in my shattered condition, if I gave him a decently fair chance to get a hold of me?

“I have very small faith in specifics of any kind, taken into the stomach for any disease. They do more harm than good. I have faith in careful and temperate living, in cleanliness, in pure air, in moderate exercise and in all things that will generally benefit the system.

“But to torture the bowels with nauseous and violent-working drugs, or to challenge one’s strength with unnatural stimulants like whiskey, I have small faith in.”