Veterans Day

From The Raymond News, September 30, 1943

Today my brother, Bob, had a really nice post on Facebook about Veterans Day. He talked about how all five of us kids knew how important the day was to our dad, Charlie Bandy, a WWII veteran. Bob noted that our dad felt that Veterans Day was something to be proud of and thankful for 365 days a year. He recalled that the Raymond Variety Store was closed each year on this day, and remembered how Dad would help with the flags and wreaths at the cemeteries.

When dad entered the Army in 1942, he went to basic training and to Renken Trade School in St. Louis. He was scheduled to travel to Delaware and join an MP unit that was shipping out to Africa, but due to a mix-up with the orders, the MP unit left a few days before he arrived there. He was given new orders, and on May 26, 1943, he sailed out of New York Harbor on the Queen Elizabeth, headed for Scotland. He was eventually added as a replacement to the 861st ordinance company. This "mix-up" might have saved his life, as it was reported that many members of that MP unit out of Delaware were killed in action.

He spent over two years overseas in England, France, Belgium, and Germany. He remained in touch with many of the men from the 861st Ordinance Company for the rest of his life. 

Today, I want to thank everyone who has served or is currently serving our country, including both my brothers, Joe and Bob Bandy, my brother-in-law, Tim Lebeck, and my nephew, Ryan Bandy. We appreciate your service. 

Pinsplitters

 

The following appeared in The Panhandle Press on Wednesday, March 26, 1980:

Ladies earn bowling awards

Members of the Mitch Engelman Dist. Team earned first place in the Ladies Mid-day Pinsplitters league. Pictured are (from left): Darlene Pitchford, Marge Held, Anna Ananias, Bev Held, Helen Engleman, and Olivia Jones. 

The Ladies Mid-day Pinsplitters ended their season on March 19. A banquet for the Raymond ladies bowling league was held March 26 at the Spring Air Café in Raymond. Awards for the year were given as follows: The first place award to the Mitch Engelman Dist. Team. The achievement award for the person who shows the greatest improvement in her average during the season to Mrs. Edith Morris, and the league high series award for the person who bowled the highest series during the season to Anna Ananias.

The placement of the six teams in the league were as follows: 1) Mitch Engelman Dist., 2) Massa Fertilizer, 3) Pleasant Hill Christian Church, 4) Panhandle Lanes, 5) Snack Bar, 6) Mackay Excavating.

Main Street Musings: Sorrells Farm Supply

Sorrells Elevator - January, 1996

The following information appears in Raymond's 125 Years of Memories Book, published in 1996:

Merrill Sorrells was born May 5, 1903 and died October 29, 1972. He married Nora Stillan who was born October 11, 1903 and died February 25, 1979. They were the parents of two children, Earl C. Sorrells, born February 4, 1928 and Dorothy Joan, born June 7, 1929. Dorothy married Clifford Betzold, of Nokomis on October 24, 1948 and they became parents of two children: Barbra Sue, born Dec. 4, 1954 and Bruce Lee, born April 11, 1959. They continue to reside in Nokomis.

Earl and Doris Marie Pocock, of Nokomis, were married June 20, 1948 and became the parents of four children. Mark Earl was born March 23, 1950. He has a Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He does plant breeding at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He married Nancy Rick of Ithaca and they have two sons, Shawn, 14 and Trevor, 8. Jean Marie was born December 21, 1951. She attended SIU at Carbondale for one year before marrying David Fuchs of rural Farmersville. They reside near Raymond with their three children: Gwen, 18, a student at EIU at Charleston; Rachael, a sophomore at Lincolnwood High School; and Garrett, a seventh grade student at Lincolnwood Junior High. Jean works part-time as a secretary in the family business and part-time as a seamstress at the General Store. Davis is part-owner of Agri-Tech, Inc. and a farmer. Brenda Sue was born February 4, 1954. She married Blake Cloyd of Raymond and they reside in Springfield with their three children: Ben, a freshman at Southeast High School; Bart, a sixth grader at Hazel Dell School; and Brooke, a second grader at Hazel Dell School. Brenda received her B.S. degree from SIU and works as a medical technologist at St. Johns Hospital in Springfield. Blake operates a construction business in Springfield. Kent Samuel was born January 27, 1959. He attended SIU Carbondale and earned a B.D. degree in Ag Economics. He manages the Raymond and Atwater Elevators and is also a commodity broker. He is married to the former Sandy Leonard of Farmersville, and they have two daughters, Tara, a fourth grader at Raymond Grade School and Megan, a first grader at Raymond Grade School. They reside in Raymond and Sandy works as a registered nurse at the Springfield Clinic in Springfield.

Earl and Doris Sorrells on Broad Street in Raymond in November, 1995.

Earl began farming the same year he graduated from high school. Merrill was very busy hauling livestock and selling farm supplies for famers. Merrill lived on the 200-acre farm homesteaded by the Ripley’s southeast of Raymond. To his acreage, he added the Fricke sisters’ 160 acres, the Hermann 80 acres, and the Ritchie 80 acres. Hedges lined most 80-acre tracts so he did a lot bulldozing hedges. Earl and the hired men cut posts and made the fence to keep the livestock. Cattle was pastured on the stalk fields in the fall.

Merrill liked and always owned new machinery. His choice of combines was an international 31 T, which would take a week for the men to assemble under the shade tree. Earl remembers the first F20 Farmall, on rubber, acquired in 1935. It could be rolled out of the shed by hand, and an extra road gear was added to get it to run up to 10 miles per hour. Oliver 70’s and Massey Harris combines took over in later years. Merrill always speeded up the tractors to get more speed and power. The throttles on the Oliver 70’s were extended about two inches. He also liked to use straight pipes -- sounded more powerful. Merrill preferred International plows purchased from Walter Zimmerman at Litchfield.

Merrill started with Ann Arbor balers made in Shelbyville. Before that came the stationary baler using a sweep rake on the front of a truck, then the Ann Arbor baler mounted on a truck which took us faster field to field, then Case balers with the shuttles, then New Holland automatic twine balers, then Minneapolis Moline wire balers, then John Deere wire balers, then International wire balers, and back to John Deere balers.

Sorrells Elevator - January 1996

Earl remembers all the hard work, but also all the fun of working with many young men and all the good dinners served by Mrs. Vanzant, Mildred Rebhan, Betty Fesser, Rosalie Fricke, Bonnie Gorman, Mrs. Sumner Wilson, Eileen Matli, Florence Krause, and Pearl Hitchings. The winter months were occupied by working in the shop making baler blocks, hog houses, and cutting logs in the timber for fencing.

Merrill started hauling in 1915 and enjoyed doing custom work for the neighbors. He had a machine for anything that needed done whether it was combining, baling, digging post holes, cutting trees, scooping coal at Hillsboro Glass, or picking up one animal or a whole load of livestock for St. Louis. He would grade ditches and haul coal for schools and houses.

Merrill and Nora moved to Raymond and built Sorrells Farm Supply in 1949. He started hauling livestock and grain with four semi-trailers to Indianapolis, Chicago, and St. Louis. Grain was picked up on the farm and he hauled bulk and bagged bean meal.

Earl and Doris married in June of 1948 and lived on the Sorrells farm. Earl did the farming and added to Merrill’s 440 acres by buying another 80 acres from Mae Stein, 40 acres from Mrs. Fricke and 80 acres from Otto King. Earl rented 80 acres in the Butler flat and 40 acres in Raymond Township owned by Frank Doyle.

Merrill passed away on October 29, 1972 from emphysema caused by all the dirt he had inhaled due to combining and baling. Nora and Earl ran the Farm Supply and farm until Nora died on February 25, 1979 from cancer.

David Fuchs took over farming 1,400 acres of the Sorrells Farm and feeding cattle. In 1982, an addition was built on to the farm supply building and Kent began commodity futures trading. Earl operated Sorrells Farm Supply adding many farm supply items including seeds, chemicals, tile, Master Mix Feeds, etc. He added five stock trailers, running 11 tractors, hauling hogs and cattle to Indianapolis, Logansport and Muncie Indiana, and to Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Louisville, Detroit, and other cities. Chemicals were hauled all over the United States including California and the Chesapeake Bay. Exported horses were hauled to Seattle.

In 1985, Sorrells purchased the Ralston Purina elevator on Broad Street and Kent took over as manager. This added much to their grain business as they had always picked up grain on the farm from farm grain systems. Due to increased grain hauling, Earl made the difficult decision to quite hauling livestock, which Sorrells had always done.

In August 1990, Sorrells Farm Supply purchased the Atwater Elevator, which had about a 500,000-bushel storage capacity.

On November 20, 1994, Earl moved the farm supply business to 203 Broad Street across from the elevator. Earl had purchased and remodeled the old bank building which was built in 1898. He continues to sell supplies and handle the books with Doris as his secretary.

People from the Past: Leonard and Hazel Beiermann

 The following appears in Raymond's 125 Years of Memories book, published in 1996:

Leonard Beiermann was born May 31, 1904 in Jerseyville. He was the son of August and Francis (Weitekamp) Beiermann. He married Hazel Marie Brown on February 15, 1928 at St. Mary’s Church in Farmersville. Hazel was born in Harvel on December 7, 1904, the daughter of John and Hannah Coen brown. Leonard and Hazel were members of St. Raymond’s Church. They made their home in R.R. Girard where they had eight children: Jim of Litchfield; Marion Hill of Dallas, Texas; Howard (Wimp) of Harvel; Donald (Dutch) of Litchfield; Bernard (Pete) Raymond; Richard of Waggoner; Lorraine Amolsch; and Raymond of Raymond. In 1943 they moved to the rural Waggoner area and had three more children: Ruthann Gaither or Taylorville: Barbera Tomek of New Orleans; and Jerome (Jerry) of New York.

Leonard and Hazel then purchased a farm in Zanesville in 1950, and purchased still another farm in Barnett in the early 1960’s. They lived at the first farm in Waggoner for 24 years before they built their home in Raymond in 1967.

Leonard served on the Panhandle School Board from 1946-1954. He was also township supervisor from 1971-1988. He was a dealer for Golden Harvest Seed Company, a member of St. Raymond Knights of Columbus Council #4696, and a member of the Montgomery County Pork Producers and Montgomery County Farm Bureau. Hazel was a member of St. Raymond’s Altar and Rosary Society.

Leonard passed away at home on January 29, 1992. Hazel later passed away on May 17, 1994.

Big Shoes to Fill

Today, October 14, 2021, would have been Charlie Bandy's, 100th Birthday! In honor of the occasion, I'm sharing this blog post about my dad, that was originallly published in April, 2014: 

While on a recent shoe shopping trip with my thirteen year old son, I had a sudden realization: the kid has Bandy feet. As we walked out of the store with his brand new sneakers, size 11.5, I thought back to a minor crisis in our family in 1971 when my dad had trouble finding dress shoes to wear with his tuxedo for my brother's wedding. He wore size thirteen or fourteen and back then, it was uncommon for men to wear that large of a size. In fact, none of the stores in Hillsboro, Litchfield, or even Springfield carried sizes that big in dress shoes, and the shoes for the wedding had to be special-ordered from St. Louis. Traveling down there was a big deal, and I remember riding in the back seat of our red Chevy Impala from Bandy's Chevrolet (It's a dandy if it's from Bandy), and pestering dad to turn up the KXOK a little louder, so I could hear Heart of Gold by Neil Young through the static.

While growing up, I had heard a lot of stories that involved dad's feet. Like the time when a tornado touched down in Raymond right at the intersection of Route 48 and 127. It happened on April 24, 1937 when Dad and grandma were living in a second floor apartment in a brick building on Main Street (located where the current fire department and ambulance building is today). Grandma owned and operated Bandy's Cafe, the restaurant directly below the apartment. As the storm grew worse, Grandma became concerned that the strong winds might blow in one of the plate glass windows in the front of the restaurant. She woke up dad (a sophomore in high school) at 1:30 a.m., not to send him to safety in the  cellar, but to have him lie down in front of the plate glass window and use his feet to push against the glass and hold it in place. The window stayed in and there was no damage to the restaurant, but a large section of Raymond sustained considerable damage as the tornado swept North through town. Fifteen homes were damaged and the power and phone services were cut off. Traffic on Route 48 was halted for eight hours. The worst damage occurred a few doors down from Bandy's Cafe at the intersection of Broad Street and the highway, where Haarstick Implement Company, the pool room, the tavern, and Guthrie's Jewelry Store were located. 

Dad was fitted for Army boots on November 20, 1942 and began his journey "across the pond" on the Queen Mary on May 27, 1943. Not long after arriving in Europe, he got separated from his unit, and unknowingly walked across a live mine field. Apparently his drill sergeant was both upset and impressed that Bandy had made it across that $%^#* field with those big #$%*^# feet of his (needless to say, dad was not fond of his drill sergeant). Luckily, he managed to stay out of harm's way and two and half years later, those feet were planted firmly on the the deck of the S.S. Exchange as it sailed back into New York Harbor. Most of the men in his unit were from the Northeastern part of the country and planned to stay in New York City to celebrate their discharge. My dad and his big feet went straight home to Raymond.  

A few years after the war, my brother Joe and Rex Pitchford were born within a day or so of each other at Hillsboro Hospital. Joe was born first, and the next day, Cecil Pitchford brought Frances to the hospital. Dad was there visiting, and the privacy curtain was pulled around mom's bed, exposing only dad's feet. As Frances was being wheeled down the hall to the delivery room, she glanced at the feet under the curtain and said, "Well, Charlie Bandy, what are you doing here?" She told him that she was sure it was him behind that curtain because she would know those feet anywhere.  

I've heard other stories too, like how the Raymond Bowling Alley had only one pair of bowling shoes that would fit both dad and Rise' Johnson's dad, who also wore a large size. Apparently it was a weekly race to see whose family could get uptown first on Sunday night to get that pair of shoes first. Eventually, Dad bought his own bowling shoes, and kept them in a locker at the bowling alley. The size of his feet was always a running joke at the firehouse, and he had his very own pair of fire boots because no one else could wear them. 

I can't say for sure if my son will make it all the way up to a size thirteen or fourteen, but it looks promising. I think it would be great to have another pair of those feet in the family.  

Lincolnwood High School Band Receives Superior Rating

Article published in The Raymond News on April 28, 1977

I was only a beginner in band when this was published, but even throughout my high school years, the LHS Band was still receiving "Superior" ratings. Back then, band was a priority and we practiced during first period every day, and had individual lessons throughout the week. Thanks to Mr. Cannedy, the LHS Band had a great reputation throughout the state and a lot of support from all the communities in the Panhandle School District. Many of my favorite memories of growing up in Raymond involve the band in one way or another. 

Hair-Raising Prices

 The following appeared in The Raymond News - 8/28/1975: