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the Mokena Messenger | November 2, 2017 | 11
Mokena keeps
history alive on
Veterans Day
Submitted by Founders
Crossing Chapter of the
Daughters of the American
Revolution
At 11 a.m. Nov. 11, Veterans
Day, the Village of Mokena
and William F. Martin
VFW Post 725 invite residents
and visitors to Pioneer
Cemetery to remember
those who have come
before, served their country
and made history.
This event will recall
Mokena’s earliest veteran,
Charles Denny, who served
in the American Revolution,
and include reinstallation of
the World War II M5 artillery
piece recently restored
by volunteers at the Veterans
Garage.
Additionally, 2017 is the
100th anniversary of the Armistice
ending World War
I, which gave Veterans Day
its original name: Armistice
Day.
While graves of community
founders and pioneers
may not be unusual in the
Midwest, it is remarkable
that Pioneer Cemetery includes
the grave of Denny.
He fought in the American
Revolutionary War while
still a resident of New York.
He and his family migrated
to the Illinois Territory after
the war and established
the beginnings of Mokena.
The Founders Crossing
Chapter of the National
Society Daughters of the
American Revolution will
participate in the Veterans
Day event by rededicating
the memorial marker of
Denny’s grave.
“We celebrate Charles
Denny as a Patriot and are
honored to be included in
this special event,” said
Christina Bannon, Regent
of the Founders Crossing
Chapter. “The DAR holds
patriotism, historic preservation
and education as our
society’s goals, and we recognize
the efforts of the Village
of Mokena to further
all of them.”
Founders Crossing has
received the approval of the
National Society to present
Mokena resident and historic
preservation activist Matt
Galik with its highest award
for historic preservation.
The presentation is tentatively
scheduled to take
place at the Mokena Village
Board’s regular meeting
Dec. 11.
Pioneer Cemetery has
been an interest of Galik
since childhood. Captivated
by the presence of such
important history in his
hometown, Galik began to
research the place and the
burials contained within it.
Curiosity, scholarship and
a natural passion for historic
preservation to the
subject of Mokena history
became motivating forces
in his life.
“Images of America:
Mokena” by Galik was
published in 2011. Galik, a
frequent contributor to The
Mokena Messenger, has devoted
much of his focus to
Pioneer Cemetery restoration
and preservation.
The procession bringing
the restored WW II
M5 artillery piece south
on Wolf Road from 191st
Street begins at 10 a.m.
and will include WW II
re-enactors.
Matt’s Old Mokena
Mokena responds early in Great War
Matt Galik
Contributing Columnist
As part of a continuing
series, this
column will explore
the 100th anniversary of
Mokena’s role in World
War I.
After nearly three years of
bloody conflict and stagnant
trench warfare in Europe, the
United States entered World
War I in April 1917. In the
last column of this series, we
saw our community’s reaction
to the outbreak of war
that spring, first as the far-off
conflict surfaced on the periphery
of secure Mokenian
life, then ultimately as local
men volunteered for military
service and an uncertain
future on the battlefront. Our
community was active on the
home front as well; Mayor
George Hacker ordered a
flagpole erected on Front
Street, as the citizenry immediately
established a local
unit of the Red Cross. As the
fighting tore Europe apart,
Mokena moved into her first
autumn at war.
The conversion of
America’s small, peacetime
military into one on war
footing continued, as did
the mass mobilization of the
nation’s new soldiers. Due to
the herculean effort thereof,
it remained months until the
first of Mokena’s men in arms
reached French soil. Nevertheless,
by early October
1917 several townsmen were
already war bound. On the
fifth of that month, the village
witnessed its first large-scale
going away party for new
soldiers. On a Friday evening,
George Aschenbrenner, Jake
Hostert, Leon Tonn and
Gilbert Voss, all young men
on their way to Camp Dodge
in Iowa, were feted at Front
Street’s Mokena Hall by the
local unit of the Red Cross.
The Hall was strewn with
bunting and American flags,
and the Joliet Herald-News
noted that “Mokena is sending
her soldiers away with a
smile” and detailed an event
with speechifying, patriotic
musical selections, and the
presentation of comfort kits
to the men.
Later that month, Karl
Kraus, the 24-year-old son of
the town barber, found himself
at Fort Benjamin Harrison
near Indianapolis, where
he optimistically stated that
he rather liked army life
and being stationed with the
quartermaster’s department.
The citizens of the village
looked out for their own who
newly found themselves part
of the military, and keeping
up the morale of his Mokena
buddies in the military, local
railroad worker Charles
Rinke made the trek out
to Iowa’s Camp Dodge to
personally pay them a visit
during the second week of
October.
On the home front, the
village’s Red Cross unit was
extra busy, having decided
in October to bump up their
meetings to twice a week instead
of once. The venue for
their meetings was switched
from the Mokena Hall to a
space within John A. Hatch’s
general store, where local
volunteers made bandages
and did knitting, among
other patriotic duties. Town
residents found the group and
its work absolutely worthy of
support, as selfless donations
to them continued unabated.
The last village baseball
game of the 1917 season, one
which the town’s married
men won against the Mokena
Ravens, netted $10 in proceeds
which were promptly
handed over to the Red
Cross. At the end of October,
the Mokena Men’s Club also
did some fundraising for the
group by holding a benefit
dance at their open-air pavilion
just south of town.
An oft forgotten part of
home front history is the
mass registration of American
women that occurred
in November 1917. While
around 33,000 women served
in United States military as
medical and support staff
during the war, this registration
was to be a huge
cataloguing of the special
abilities of American women,
such as bookkeeping, nursing
and teaching, as well
as more precise skills like
knowledge of certain foreign
languages and piloting. That
autumn, 1600 fliers flooded
Will County breaking down
the registration’s specifics.
On Nov. 5, 1917, 80 local
women appeared at Front
Street’s new village hall and
enrolled themselves before
registrars Carrie Brinckerhoff,
Kate Knox, Cora Maue,
Mabel McGovney and a Mrs.
Young. The total number for
the first day alone is an impressive
one, as Mokena only
counted around 400 residents
at the time.
While local soldiers were
for the time being out of
harm’s way, and village
residents safe thousands of
miles from the front, adverse
effects of the war started
to be felt. A coal shortage
reared its head that autumn,
one in which many residents
resorted to using plain
firewood for fuel. Local
commuters using the Rock
Island Railroad were also hit
hard with an extra war tax
that went into effect Nov. 1,
causing fares to jump by 8
percent.
The village had found
itself in the midst of World
War I for a little over half a
year, and already contributed
a lot in terms of material,
funds and time. While no
one could call our town folk
slackers, the conflict itself
still faced an uncertain outcome.
Would those Mokenians
already in arms return
with life and limb intact?
The thoughts and opinions expressed
in this column are those
of the author. They do not necessarily
represent the thoughts of
22nd Century Media or its staff.
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