Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

2
they got up there, I don't know. Worked
must have, that's all that I can figure.
their way up the Mississippi River, their parents
I don't know that that's the way it was, but I've been back to Ireland and saw the place
where my grandparents were born and done a little research over there, to no avail
though. I wasn't there that long. I was there just on a tour, maybe three or four weeks.
I think I mentioned to you that - the first time I met you, the only time 1 met you -
that my approach to politics I guess was just natural. My grandfather was - Grandfather
Thomas H. Kennedy - was an elected official in Madison County, and they ran for oflice
at that time and they had a county assessor at some part, and he was that for a number
of years, and he was nominated for sheriff, on the Democratic ticket as far as I can discern,
but he took ill and died before the election. He died when my dad and - my dad had one
sister and they were like six and eight.
But my mother came from a large family. There were nine children in my mother's
family. Eight girls and one boy. And you mentioned Elbert Smith, one of my cousins was
a social friend of his in Decatur. They were the shoe people - the Brown Shoe people,
or something like that. Of course he died, and my cousin remarried and I don't see much
of my relatives much anymore.
SESSION 1, TAPE 2, SIDE 1 (EXTRACT)
One thing I recall though that my dad - and this helped me in politics - the glassworks
was still running. They had the automatic machines that followed the glassblowers. My
dad was an automatics foreman, one of the foremen on the line, and he was just above the
line as a foreman. He had a - what they called carry-in and carry-out. And it was hard
labor.
And they hired a lot of blacks to do that. And they called my dad "Mr. Joe." My dad
would hire them right off the street. He had to have permission. And the blacks at that
time, they lived either up on - oh, there was a settlement of them in Upper Alton and
then there's some of them on Bell Street. Rut I'd meet - as I started I'd meet some black
people that knew my dad, "Mr. Joe? Oh, he hired me, he hired my brother when he was
a kid. And if you're Mr. Joe's boy you're alright." And things like that.
And just to tell you how long people are living now, I just saw in the obituary in the last
week or so that the wife of one of these fellows died, and this guy is still dive, and hell,
he's got to be in his nineties. (laughter) Can you imagine Mrs. Uangrease being ninetytwo?
Well this guy, he's got to be up there too, but his name was Hickman. His name is
Hickman and his wife just died in the last, oh, thirty days.
Q: Now your father - now let's see, is this - where did he learn his trade as a glassblower?
A: Well he didn't - he wasn't a glassblower. IIe was a - he worked for the Illinois Tcrminal
[Railroad].
Q: Oh?
A: And he wasn't a glassblower. He came after the glassblowers. The glassblowers came
at the turn of the century I guess and they worked up till - oh, it was about that plant
that the automatic machine came out and that was in the teens, in the - oh I don't know,
1915 or 1916, I'm not sure of that. But he wasn't a glassblower.
Where the glassblowers learned their trade, I guess that's a damned good question. They
just - there had to be a school. Maybe the - I know that when I lived on Washington
Avenue - I mentioned that I lived there for 726 months, and that I did, but the house right