← Columns

The Hall of Characters

The Source

It might be a totally ridiculous idea, but I think we should give it a try. Any town worth its tributes has some sort of Hall of Fame. Jacksonville has one. JHS, the colleges all have their own list of notables. I admire each of these recipients and I’m sure they earned whatever accolades have been tacked onto their names and records, but how about something a little more….well…spicy? Let’s take one of the empty buildings on the square, turn on the lights, sweep things out a bit, buy a few photograph frames and create The Jacksonville Hall of Characters. There’ll be no criteria, no selection committee, just one night a week where the front door is open and you’re free to come in and hang picture. Each photo would be accompanied by a description by the nominator along with a yellow pad where the rest of us could add our recollections of some of Jacksonville’s most memorable characters. Many of you reading this are far more qualified to make submissions to the JHOC than I am, but I’m sitting at the keyboard right now so I’ll start. My first nominee is a lady who was the mother to over 5000 kids. I just made that number up. She probably mothered many more. Ma Crow was the cook, manager, bouncer and counselor of the snack shop at Illinois College as she and her custodian-husband Gib were Illinois College fixtures that were predated only by Sturtevant Hall and several of the older trees on campus. As we ran away from home to drink deeply of the nectar called “college freedom,” Ma Crow reminded us that our mother was still with us. You drop it, you pick it up! You order it, you eat it! And in addition to being one of the finest short order cooks in the county, Ma was also the creator of our region’s tastiest delicacy, The Ma Special. This cholesterol-packed sandwich consisted a cheese-smothered burger topped off by a fried egg precariously balanced between two pieces of toasted bun. Rumor on campus is that many students would have graduated a year earlier if they had been willing to give up that sandwich. When Vern Fernandes entered a room you knew it. The voice of The Colonel who served for 28 years in WWII, Korea and Vietnam, was also the voice of Santa Claus at Christmas, the Theatre Guild at its inception, the United Way, Rotary, library, the symphony, the Cultural Center, Elliot State Bank, and the both the town’s Sesquicentennial and Bicentennial celebrations. Other folks talked, Vern got them done, and his sense of humor was legendary. If we must play something from the loud speakers on the square, let it be Vern’s laugh. Sheriff Henry Jackson, Jr. Fill in your own stories. Dr. Gene Laurent once told MacMurray student Christine Ebersole (“Ugly Betty,” “Will and Grace,” “Saturday Night Live”) to leave school and go to New York. He told her, “Don’t stay here.” That was Gene: talented, outrageous, highly combustible, and a major force in putting Jacksonville on the arts map. Ebersole said, “I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, graduated . . . and got a job as a waitress.” We called this guy “Sarge.” I’m sure that’s not the name his mother gave him, but when he’d pull his police cruiser into the rear of Tops Big Boy it was never cause for any alarm among the high school and college students gathered there. Sarge was supposed to be patrolling the city of Jacksonville but Tops got a great deal of his attention after 10 p.m. when the offer of a free shake and French fries was on the docket. To my knowledge Sarge never arrested anyone. If you were causing trouble he’d call your mother. Sarge not only knew his way around a cheeseburger but he had a working knowledge of how to stop crime. Cecil Tendick may have been the last of his journalistic breed in Jacksonville. A hard-nosed reporter turned sage columnist, the town’s older newspapermen still tell Cecil stories and since his profession was writing, he’s still living in the archives. And I mean no disrespect when I say that the colorfully clad lady who would drag her wagon up and down Morton Avenue, cheerfully talking to the birds, the traffic lights, and the sidewalk should have an honored place in our Jacksonville Hall of Characters. Again, many folks reading this are a far richer resource into the town’s most memorable citizens and they could tell stories of characters gone by that would certainly top my memory. When I take high school students to Paris we do the “museum thing,” trying to hit the highlights. They enjoy the Louvre, they endure the Musee de Orsay and Les Invalides, but when they get back to Arenzville or Jacksonville they talk about the Pompidou Centre, the place were Paris houses its really wacko collections . . . pianos made of Jell-O, five-eyed maidens, and various parts of Barbie dolls floating in cream of mushroom soup. God bless Stephan Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, but it’s the spice of the eccentric that makes our town’s soup tasty.