St. Charles' Melvin Peterson is a walking history book

Melvin Peterson "had an agreement" with St. Charles police Chief Harold Covalsky back in 1933 when Peterson was a sixth-grader attending the new Shelby School at Fifth and Illinois streets.

Peterson had to stay off certain streets in town and he had to be by himself - in his family's Chevy Coupe.

"I was just a farm boy back then, and I got permission to drive to school from our farm out on Crane Road," the 89-year-old Peterson says with a wide grin. "No one else could take me to school, so I had to drive, but I was only 12 years old. If I wasn't able to take the car, I would hitch a ride into town on the milk truck.

"Back then, if you were a farm boy, they allowed you to do that kind of thing, and the insurance company knew everything," Peterson said. "But I had to follow those rules because other kids would always want a ride, and I had to say no."

It was probably the only time in his life that Peterson was told to stay off certain streets, but he's made up for it by covering a lot of ground with a lifetime of civic and volunteer service while staying true to his rural roots with years of farming and working as a welder at his Wasco Blacksmith Shop for more than 40 years.

It's earned him an unofficial title as a walking and talking history book of St. Charles, and certainly one of the last links to its agricultural past.

Still active

Peterson is most proud of his years of work on the boards of the Baker Community Center and St. Charles Heritage Center, but also considers it a badge of honor that he and former St. Charles Fire Chief Karl "Kully" Madsen are the only living members of the St. Charles High School Class of 1939 still in town.

"And because 'Kully' has not been well lately, I guess you could say I am the only active one still around," Peterson said.

Peterson is active enough to still go out to the Wasco Blacksmith Shop he sold to Ted Frerichs in 1992 and "check in on things" and do welding and metals work. Peterson still owns the building and property, so he also cleans up or mows the grass on a regular basis at the business on Old LaFox Road in Wasco.

While the business remains basically the same - a shop to repair and fabricate anything made out of metal - it is different from the shop Peterson purchased in 1952 from welder Dan Rediger and where he would shoe horses on a regular basis.

Peterson learned the welding and blacksmith trade after his family moved from its Crane Road farm to the Baker Farm, which is now Pheasant Run Resort. He went to work for Col. Edward Baker on the farm in 1935.

"I worked like crazy out there after my father became ill, and Col. Baker had a blacksmith shop right on the farm," Peterson said. "I came to help when one of the other welders got injured.

"The first combine Baker bought, I ran it," Peterson added. "The first mounted corn picker he bought, I ran that, too."

To remind people that Pheasant Run still has a piece of Baker Farm history on it, Peterson said, "The original barn we worked in is still part of the resort complex."

Walking encyclopedia

It was the years of farming that gave Peterson an identity that sticks with him to this day.

Former St. Charles Mayor Fred Norris believes that Peterson may be the last of his kind in the city.

"It's phenomenal when you think of his history," Norris said. "No one still alive today can give you chapter and verse about the agricultural history of the area.

"He's like an encyclopedia about who owned what farm and where," Norris added. "For most people now, they think of Pheasant Run as the resort, but for Melvin, it was his home and it was the showcase farm of the entire region."

During World War II, Peterson worked on the farm and in area factories welding and fixing military equipment, while also being a member of the St. Charles Civil Defense team.

But after taking a girl named Ruth Anderson to the Sandwich Fair in 1942 and eventually marrying her in 1945, Peterson got more involved in city projects and service.

"I think I am most proud of the Baker Community Center, because I went on that board in 1943 as one of the youngest guys," Peterson said. "Col. Baker asked me to do it because he said we needed a younger man."

In meeting with established St. Charles leaders and businessmen like Joe Anderson, Joe Gaffney, Art Johnson, Russell Norris, Fred Kaiser, Algot Swanson, George Thompson and others on the board, Peterson said, "I felt like a little kid."

He was only 22 at the time, but remained a member of that board of trustees from 1943 to 1996 and remains involved in keeping the building in shape to this day.

It's likely that Peterson is one of only a few city residents who remembers that the center, which is now 85 years old, had a pool in its basement during its early years.

"We had to get rid of the swimming pool because we could not afford to keep it or the dressing rooms up to state code," Peterson recalled. "Some people were angry about that, but there was nothing we could do, and then we eventually had a bowling alley in the basement."

The answer man

His work as the treasurer for the St. Charles Heritage Center began 15 years ago, and he is considered a "go-to" guy for any inquiries or projects that include data or materials dating back 25 years or more.

He is most fond of the project that saved the historic 2,500-pound bronze bell anchored in the front of the heritage center. Peterson and Frerichs worked for months in the blacksmith shop to fix, clean and mount the historic bell for its permanent home.

"That bell was in my shop for a long time before we determined what we could do with it," he said.

The bell had a long history, being on a steamer that sunk in the Mississippi River before being retrieved and finding a home in 1920 on the Wild Rose Farm on Crane Road. It was eventually offered to the heritage center by current landowners in 2006. When a heritage center board member said her family had a huge cradle for a bell on her property previously used at a church, it was determined that Peterson and Frerichs could put the two together for its eventual dedication at the heritage center in 2007.

A rich life

While he has built hundreds of models, including one for the city and one for the fire department, he also keeps an expansive model train set as a hobby. But Peterson is most proud of a small replica he was given of the Pottawatomi Indian statue that sits along the Fox River in St. Charles.

"When Guy Bellaver made his first mold of that statue, he made it out of wood and he needed a certain kind of bracket to hold it together, and I made those brackets for him," Peterson said. "There were only 100 of the smaller statues made, and I have one of them."

As it is with most things Peterson has done in St. Charles, the selling of his Wasco Blacksmith Shop was kept low-key.

"It was a 137-year-old business at the time I sold it," Peterson said. "But it wasn't like I was never going to go out there again, so we didn't make a big deal of it."

He didn't make a big deal of being an usher at Bethlehem Lutheran Church for 50 years, or being the church historian either. He didn't get any special recognition for being a special deputy in DuPage County, or an election judge for more than 50 years.

He was the president of a national organization called the National Ornamental and Miscellaneous Metals Association in Atlanta, Ga., and even though it was something most St. Charles residents never knew, the organization thought enough to declare him a life member in 1999.

"A lot of people call me or come to me now with questions about the city's history," Peterson said. "There are a lot of things that people don't have quite right and I try to help them."

There is one piece of St. Charles history that Peterson said he would "argue about" because so many people have a wrong interpretation.

"It was Col. Baker's famous racehorse, Greyhound," Peterson said. "Most people would believe that Greyhound stayed in St. Charles most of the time, and actually that horse was rarely here.

"Greyhound stopped in St. Charles on his way to other Illinois or Wisconsin races or fairs, and that was about it," Peterson said. "I would argue about that because my mother and father lived on the Baker farm. We were there."