Facts: Fergie in Schaumburg, Elgin's key role on TV series
Hey, you learn something new every day.
That hit me as I was reading Burt Constable's column on the 100th anniversary of World War I, the forgotten war. I, too, had forgotten just about everything I learned about "the war to end all wars," including that slogan. And as Paul Herbert, executive director of the First Division Museum at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, told Burt, that war actually set the stage for a host of tensions and conflict today in several nations. And how about that plot by the Germans to entice Mexico to attack the U.S. as a way to keep us out of the war in Europe?
But the real ah-hah moment came when Burt got to Oliver J. "Judd" Kendall, a WWI hero who was tortured to death by Germans but didn't give up key intelligence on the impending attack by the First Division. The son of a Naperville mayor, Kendall's name is on a street sign, a school and the VFW Post I was in I don't know how many times for Friday night fish fries, reunions, wedding and funeral receptions. I'll admit I had no inclination to bone up on WWI, but Burt's well-crafted story drew me in.
That reminded me of another heretofore unknown tidbit: Did you know the fictional town of Lanford portrayed on the popular "90s TV series "Roseanne" was modeled after Elgin? That's in a story by freelancer Dave Gathman we plan to publish next week on David McFadzean, a theater professor who left Judson University in Elgin almost 30 years ago to help his former college roommate launch the new TV series, whose main character they developed in part by interviewing female factory workers about their blue-collar lives.
So, I asked my colleagues for some similar examples, to show how this business is a never-ending learning experience.
• Two staffers cited an informative piece by Mick Zawislak on the opening next year of a new forest preserve, Ethel's Woods near Antioch. It's named after Ethel Untermyer, a Riverwoods mom who wanted her kids to be able to play outside. It prompted her efforts to create the forest preserve district. Assistant Managing Editor Neil Holdway, a self-proclaimed "nature nerd," saw something else in the story: "When the preserve was purchased, the district said, it contained a woodland dominated by century-old trees representing the largest unprotected oak-hickory woodlands remaining in Lake County," he said. "The setting is reminiscent of the north woods of Wisconsin, but few have seen it."
• Editorial assistant Susan Dibble learned there are 60,065 tree species in the world, about 10,000 of them endangered, according to info provided by The Morton Arboretum in Lisle.
• Burt again: "I remember a Bartlett resident telling me that if I wanted to write about the national debt, I should talk to his neighbor. Turns out his neighbor was Robert P. Mayo, the budget director for Richard Nixon and architect of the last balanced budget until it happened again during the Clinton Administration. Mayo, who died at age 86 in 2003, was just this modest, unassuming guy. You never know who might be living out here in our suburbs."
• In researching a murder case for her Cops and Crime column, Susan Sarkauskas discovered all sorts of data about dogs" keen sense of smell. Both humans and dogs have coiled pathways in their noses, lined with sensory cells. Man has about 5 million of them; dogs can have up to 300 million. And the dog's olfactory bulb is about 40 times bigger than a human's.
• Finally, staff writer Eric Peterson discovered ex-Cubs pitcher Ferguson "Fergie" Jenkins, coming to speak in Schaumburg later this month, is the only Canadian inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. See? Something new. Every day.
jdavis@dailyherald.com