Bluff City Cemetery Walk brings ‘Hometown Heroes’ to life

This weekend’s Elgin History Museum’s Bluff City Cemetery Walk will bring the city’s storied past to life, with actors portraying seven “hometown heroes” at their respective gravesites.

“What makes these people hometown heroes is their range of selfless acts of service, including Nora Wagner, who was among a group of teenage girls who repaired part of Chicago Street that had been washed out by a fall storm in 1908, and W.D. Nichols, a young father who joined the frontier guards to protect President Abraham Lincoln in his first weeks after inauguration,” said John Devine, who is coordinating the walk with his wife, Ana.

A committee of volunteers picked the heroes theme last November to tie in to the nation’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“David Siegenthaler, one of our researchers at the Elgin History Museum, put together a file of primary and secondary sources, and trusted volunteers turned that information into 900-word scripts,” Devine said.

From those scripts, actors present 6- to 7-minute graveside monologues 14 times Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 26-27, said Don Gingold, who is portraying Alban Mann, an Elgin physician who lived in the early 20th century and helped mitigate the worst effects of several major outbreaks of disease, including typhoid.

Last year, Gingold portrayed Charles Harrison Burnidge, who was Elgin’s first road commissioner.

Gingold said he likes to improvise a bit during his talks. With some of the Burnidge family still living in the Elgin area, he joked that it was nice that his character was able to see some his relatives as part of the event.

Last year, Steve Delaney portrayed C.W. Helm, a self-taught aviator who opened Elgin’s first airport and flight school.

“A granddaughter of Helm’s showed up on that walk and contacted me afterward through Facebook. She told me her grandfather died before she was born so she said this was like meeting him for the very first time,” Delaney said.

This time around Delaney is portraying Trygve Rovelstad, who sculpted medals for World War II military heroes and designed the Pioneer Memorial statue honoring Elgin’s European settlers on display in downtown Elgin near the Fox River.

“It’s a lot of fun to portray real people and do them justice,” Delaney said. “There’s so much history we don’t know.”

Delaney’s daughter, Thea, is in on the act too, playing the aforementioned Nora Wagner.

Delaney works in litigation support for a law firm by day and over the years has performed with several theater troupes across the Fox Valley, including Goodly Creatures, where Thea is also a member.

Gingold is a theater veteran, too. He and his wife moved to Elgin five years ago from Naperville, where Gingold was involved with Summer Place, a community theater group, for more than 30 years.

“I was looking for an outlet here in Elgin and offered my services to the cemetery walk,” he said.

Acting will be new to Tameron Keefe and Bernadette May, who work for the Family Service Association of Elgin. They each will play Louise Logan — who founded the nonprofit — with Keefe taking the role on Saturday and May on Sunday. Logan organized charities during the Great Depression to meet the community’s needs.

“We thought it would be good to have people from Family Service involved this way,” Devine said.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The (Elgin) Courier-News.

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39th annual Bluff City Cemetery Walk

Times: 3 and 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, and 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27

Where: Bluff City Cemetery, 945 Bluff City Blvd., Elgin

Tickets: $25, $20 for Elgin Area Historical Society members, $15 for junior and high school students at elginhistory.org/event/cemetery-walk-sept26-2026