More Citizens of Tomorrow

From The Raymond News, July 30, 1964

Talkin' Bout My Generation

We’ve all seen memes similar to this one on social media. The sentiment really hits home with me, but when I point it out to my teenage son, I get the “Okay, Boomer” response with the accompanying eye roll.

Well, first of all, I want to point out that I’m just barely a Boomer, and then I will admit that I remember having a similar reaction as a teenager when my parents talked about their childhoods. My dad would regale us with stories about growing up during the Great Depression, hitting tin cans with sticks uptown by the railroad tracks, and riding his bike to Litchfield and back on Route 66, latching on to milk trucks when he got tired of peddling. Then there were my mom’s stories of living up in a farmhouse on the first big hill east of Raymond, with no electricity or running water, and travelling to town by horse and buggy every Saturday night. That’s all very interesting to me now, but back then, it sounded so Little-House-on-the-Praireish (eye roll).   

So now, here is my chance to tell my son all about the great childhood memories I have of growing up in Raymond, Illinois. There were always kids around to play with, and as long as the weather was reasonably good, we were outside every day until dark.  My core neighborhood squad was Pam Mitts, Toby and Keith Dean, and the Ondrey boys, Ricki and his little brother, Joey, who moved to town when I was about eight.

We played all the usual group games, Red Rover, Mother May I, Redlight Greenlight, Hide and Seek, and different variations of tag. We drew on the sidewalks with chalk, and raked leaves and jumped in them, and raked them again. We spent hours swinging on the rope that hung from the big oak tree in the alley behind John and Dot Hough’s house, before taking a break to eat apples that had fallen off the trees in Engelmen’s backyard. We set up a lemonade stand near the Black Diamond Trail at the five-way stop and charged 5 cents for a pastel-colored Tupperware glassful, or 10 cents for a large Styrofoam cup to go. We would get refrigerator boxes from Walch’s and Held’s, and build things out of them. We made blanket tents using the clothesline, rode bikes, added to our rock collections, and caught lightening bugs and put them in old mayonnaise or pickle jars, always making sure to poke a few holes in the lid.   

Pam and I liked to play school. We were always the teachers, and we used my mom’s manual typewriter and some carbon paper to devise complicated worksheets and tests. The garage was our classroom and the boys were our pupils. Pam and I were not nice like the teachers at Raymond Grade School; we were strict, one might even say mean, and students who acted up or gave the wrong answers were subject to being smacked with a ruler. The boys complained a lot, but deep down they must have liked it, because they always agreed to play again next time.

Occasionally, Pam and I would let the boys choose the activity for the day. They always played rough, and we had walnut fights and mud pie fights, and sprayed each other with the garden hose. And just when it seemed bad enough to have hard, green walnuts whizzing past your head, there was the day it all got worse: a BB gun was involved.  

Enter Danny Bob Hough. Danny was not a regular, but he was friendly with Ricki and would occasionally cross Main Street and come over to play. On this particular day, for reasons I do not recall, things went sour between Danny and Ricki. As the situation deteriorated, Danny fled toward Ondrey’s yard, and Ricki, who was armed with a rifle-style BB gun, was not far behind him. Ondrey’s house was originally one-story, but they had converted the attic into a large bedroom that the boys shared. Danny thought he was being sneaky when he ran into the house and upstairs to the bedroom to hide. But Rick knew exactly where he was, and stood beneath the window and pumped up the loaded BB gun to the limit. He calmly aimed at the second story window and waited. For the next few minutes we all remained quiet; the only sounds were the buzzing of a neighbor’s lawnmower and some dogs barking off in the distance.   

Finally, Danny couldn’t take it anymore and he poked his head out the upstairs window to see what was going on outside. Rick pulled the trigger and boom, the BB travelled straight up and into Danny’s right nostril. This could have ended badly, but luckily for Danny that attic bedroom was a little higher up than a regular second floor would have been, and that particular BB gun model had a low velocity. The BB went up Danny’s nose and rolled back out with no harm done. It didn’t even sting.

Danny came back outside holding the BB. Whatever had instigated the fight was instantly forgotten. When Bill Hough heard the news later that day, he said that BB could have gone straight to Danny’s brain and killed him. And when your dad is the undertaker and says something like that, you know you better listen. We all listened. 

Those really were the good old days. I wonder what kinds of stories today's kids will tell? 

Tony Gorman

Following is an interesting story from Raymond's 125 Years of Memories book about Tony Gorman and his family. Tony first served as postmaster in Raymond and then later as the village police officer for many years. The story hints at some of the surprising darker sides of Raymond from back in the day. 

Anthony Richard (Tony) Gorman was born in Loughrea, Ireland in 1879, the youngest son of Michael J. Gorman and Eleanora Carrick. One-by-one the Gormans crossed the ocean to make their home in the United States, and Tony played a big part in the history of Raymond.

When Tony and his mother left Ireland, they came to Farmersville where Tony’s sister, Mary, had married John Convery. Anthony worked on the farm for his brother-in-law. In 1902, he married Katherine Abbott, and she died in 1912.

Tony moved to Raymond soon after her death. He was always an ardent Democrat and, under the party “spoils” system, he was appointed postmaster of Raymond by President Woodrow Wilson. He served in this position from 1916-1920. During that time his niece, Mayme Convery, was also employed in the post office. She served several terms as postmistress, and she was succeeded by her nephew, John “Jack” Convery, a great-nephew of Tony Gorman.

When he moved to Raymond, Tony bought a farm at the north edge of town, near the land which is now the Shoal Creek golf course. A picture taken about 1918 shows the Gorman family in front of the Victorian porch of the home which was torn down in the 1980’s.

Anthony Gorman and Lucy file were married at St. Raymond’s Church in 1920. Their first daughter, Marie, was born in 1921. She attended the Raymond schools and received a M.S. in Library Science from the University of Illinois. Their second daughter, Anna, was born in 1923. She also graduated from the Raymond schools and received her Doctorate of Education at the University of Illinois. She taught at the University of Kentucky, Ohio State University, and Oklahoma State University. She is the only one of the family to address the graduates of Lincolnwood High School at commencement. Marie married Edward Verbout and they moved to Tuscon, AZ in 1962, where they raised their five children. Anna moved to Tucson in 1992 after she retired from OSU.

From 1923, until his death in 1947, Tony Gorman was the only peace officer in Raymond. On the night Anna was born, October 21, 1923, Tony wasn’t at home with his wife. He was at a Ku Klux Klan gathering which was being held in the southeast part of Raymond known as “Pin Hook.” Members of the Klan wore white sheets and gathered around a large fire. Tony was there in his capacity of night watchman.

His hours were from sundown to dawn - at least twelve hours in winter and ten hours in the summer. He worked every night - 365 nights each year. He never had a vacation, except when he was ill and missed several months of work - and pay - in 1929. During the Depression years, his salary was cut in half, which amounted to a pay of $50 every month.

The two-cell jail was in the town hall, and it was seldom occupied. Vagrants were called “bums” or “hobos” and Tony escorted them to the edge of town. Another of his duties was to see that the sun did not set on a black person in Raymond.

His nightly duties were to check each business to see that it was locked and to check the stoves and furnaces in winter to watch for fire. He was asked to attend the high school basketball games when Waggoner was the opponent -- there might be some fighting when those two teams met. Crime, though, was not prevalent. Once, when the bank was robbed, Tony jumped on the running board of the getaway car. He was thrown off the car and cut his head.

In the 1940’s the town of Raymond installed a city water system. The well was two miles east of town and Tony walked there and back three times a week to check on the pump. He also kept the water filled, and he read all the meters in town once a month -- “on foot.”

His police “station” was the office of the elevator. He would walk home at midnight for his lunch. That’s where he was when he suffered a heart attack. He died two weeks later, on October 19, 1947 and is buried in St. Raymond’s Cemetery with his wife, Lucy File.

Although there were three Gorman sons who came to America, only one had male children who survived. The Gorman students attending Lincolnwood High School in Raymond are Tony Gorman’s brother, Michael’s great-grandchildren. Tony’s five grandchildren are Phil Verbout, Mike Verbout, Mary Verbout, Theresa Yslas, and Rose Phelps.

Lake Outing

The following article was published in The Raymond News on July 10, 1975. 

Rest in Peace

David A. Sorrell

The following story is taken from a self-published book by former Raymond resident, David A. Sorrell, called “As I Remember.” The book features Mr. Sorrell’s recollections about the early days of Raymond. The stories appeared in a weekly column in The Raymond News from 1963-1972. This particular story, about a man who was killed on the railroad tracks, took place in the early 1900’s.  

One hot summer afternoon I was there on Main Street, perhaps having been sent on an errand to one of the stores when suddenly some boy yelled, “There’s a bum been killed down there on the railroad bridge.” 

I knew that the bridge was the one across the small creek that ran through Pepperdine’s pasture there just outside of town. After hearing this about the bum, I took off at full speed or as fast as my bare feet would carry me across the long depot platform, past the depot, past the mail catcher there at the end of the platform’s end, past the section house and on past the elevator and the stockyards, the light plane, the Joel Benning place, the village green, and Kit McClurg place, Luther Martin’s home, the Pepperdine place and a bit father on to the bridge. Quickly, I slid down the railroad bank and then underneath the bridge and saw what looked like a heap of old clothes. Slowly I approached and then I saw the face of the old bum that seemed to just be laid on top of the old clothes. Some of Sam Miller’s boys said later that they were out in their pasture by the railroad as the five o’clock fast train came along and the bum seemed to be down crawling across the long bridge and was about in the center of the bridge when the train struck him.

The next morning as I was playing around in our front yard, I saw the undertaker, John McMillan, go by with a wooden coffin box in a spring wagon. I hurried down to the cemetery just a block away and when I got there, Sexton Joe Chambers and undertaker McMillian were lifting the coffin box from the spring wagon and placing it across boards that laid across the open grave. Next, they passed two long web straps under each end of the coffin box and then Mr. McMillan asked Oscar Williams who had ridden with him, to pull the boards from under the coffin as it was slightly lifted. Now the body of the poor tramp was slowly and carefully lowered into its last resting place. This done, the web straps were pulled up and rolled and put into the spring wagon. This done, undertaker McMillian and Oscar Williams climbed into the wagon seat and drove off.

The funeral of a tramp. I think of it now, sixty years later, there was no fine coffin, only a pine box. There was no ornate black hearse to bear him to his last resting place, only a plain spring wagon. There was no church were the coffin rested in front of the pulpit and the friends filed by to have their last look at him. There was no music by a quartet, there was only one small boy watching the three men who laid his poor broken body in the earth. There was no music but that of the birds singing in the gnarled oak tree that stood close by his grave. There were no flowers except the wild flowers that grew there in the neglected “Potters Field,” and so the poor tramp was buried and forgotten except for the small boy who now remembers all this happened in these two days of so long ago and sets it down here for others to read.