Batavia resident's 'Peace on Earth Bridge' song promotes unity, good mental health
At age 6, Steve Cohen had already developed a coping mechanism to get him through “tough moments” he encountered: He would start singing to himself.
And, lo and behold, when that tough moment was over, “I would have a song,” Cohen said. “I then decided I would start writing down what I sang and, before long, I had lyrics upon lyrics available.”
His childhood in Morton Grove turned out to be an important part of the 65-year-old Batavia resident’s life and career. Not a singing career, but a career as a mental health provider and operator of Medvesta Hypnosis Healthcare.
He has used his array of songs as a coping mechanism or uplifting aspect of his mental health process with patients.
But, more recently, Cohen fueled his interest in making something more out of what has been a lifelong process of writing songs by penning one titled the “Peace on Earth Bridge.”
It’s a tune about Batavia’s Peace Bridge, a bicycle/pedestrian bridge that connects Houston Street and the Riverwalk area of the city to the River Street dining sector with the words “Peace on Earth” attached to a side.
The park district supported the vision of Batavia barber Craig Foltos 20 years ago in having 12-foot letters mounted to the side of the bridge.
“I am a runner, and was running to Aurora one day, about three weeks before the 2024 election in which there was so much dissension,” Cohen said. “I went by what I call the ‘Peace on Earth’ bridge in Batavia in the morning and went back that night.
“I thought, why doesn’t everybody who has a problem with someone else come to Peace on Earth bridge?” he noted. “To me, it meant it was a place that anybody could come to get together with anybody at this bridge.”
With those thoughts swirling in his head, Cohen began singing into his phone about the bridge and taking pictures of it.
His lifelong habit of collecting pieces of music or various lyrics from hundreds of songs he liked then came in handy.
“I took pieces I collected over the years as a guide, and made the song,” he said.
It’s a catchy tune, one that makes you immediately think of a certain style that maybe brings one of your favorite artists to mind. For me, it was James Taylor.
In that manner, Cohen is open to the thought of a professional musician checking out any of his songs. He got a boost of confidence about that at a recent health care speaking engagement in Las Vegas.
“I told the event planner that I wanted to bring my songs into some of my presentations,” Cohen said. “She heard them and said they blew her away and that I needed to find a Nashville entertainer to listen to them and do something more with them.”
Cohen is confident his music can move people, which was his idea behind “Peace on Earth Bridge,” but his most emotional example is a song titled “One More Day,” which he wrote for a 27-year-old terminally ill patient he was seeing.
“I write songs that have to do with people who are struggling,” he noted. “She didn’t tell me before she came, but when she did tell me she was terminally ill at age 27, she asked me to put her words into lyrics. I started writing the music, but didn’t realize that she was gone in 10 days.”
The patient had asked Cohen to play “One More Day” at her funeral because “people will hear me more by listening to this song than they would if I were sitting in the room talking to them,” Cohen said of her last request.
There were no dry eyes when the song played at the funeral, he said.
“It’s about writing these emotional things, and I can feel the feeling,” Cohen noted. “When I did ‘One More Day’ I began crying, and it was very difficult.”
It took Cohen about three weeks to write “Peace on Earth Bridge,” a song that can be heard on YouTube or Spotify and, he hopes, in many other places and possibly through the voices of other artists.
“I think this song could have national appeal,” said Bo Smith, the president of Toastmasters in St. Charles, who heard the song and Cohen’s story when he presented it to the organization. Cohen, who has lived in Batavia since 2005, has been a member of Toastmasters since 2015.
Cohen says he has about 55 full songs he has written, and he’d like to see “Peace on Earth Bridge” do for Batavia what rock group Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah did for Chicago tourism in 1973 with a song about Lake Shore Drive.
“People are already sending me messages and asking where is the bridge at?” Cohen acknowledged. “But I don’t want to flaunt something with the song that the city hasn’t acknowledged just yet.”
By that, Cohen means the city or park district, which owns the bridge, would have to alert Cohen as to what interest there might be in advancing the song beyond his own experience and feelings when running past it late last year.
In a similar manner, in St. Charles 12 years ago, Jim Masters wrote a song titled “In St. Charles” about his hometown, and the city adopted it as the city’s official song.
Batavia may not declare “Peace on Earth Bridge” the city’s official song, but the city or park district could consider some other status for it, either in a promotional marketing piece, mental health awareness campaign or a holiday staple. Its official name is Peace Bridge, and it remains in the news as city officials approved the building of a ramp to more easily access the bridge from the Fox River Trail below it.
“I’ve played the song for park district officials, and I have spoken to the mayor about what is important about the song is that it can draw attention to the bridge and the community,” Cohen said.
As for the song title, it certainly should have universal appeal as something that is desperately needed in this day and age.
Maple Leaf and Mike
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the passing of former St. Charles architect and Peace Corps volunteer Mike Dixon.
One thing some readers mentioned about Mike was the yellow Maple Leaf bench he and friend Maggie Hankamp donated in 2014 for the southwest corner of Mount St. Mary Park in St. Charles. The sculptor was Joe Krajkiewcz.
We go to that park often, and the bench is set near the small waterfall and parking lot on that side of the park.
Dixon met Hankamp in Ukraine during his time of service there with the Peace Corps from 2011 to 2016. He convinced her to return to the U.S. with him, and they did several presentations regarding life and architecture in Ukraine.
I had wanted to touch base with Dixon, who had lived in Florida the past decade, to get his thoughts on the war in Ukraine and destruction of buildings he worked on or certainly knew much about.
He had such a strong love and admiration for Ukraine and its people that, it goes without saying, he had to be heartbroken over what has taken place there.
My hangout ranks well
Among the hundreds of emails that filter into my account daily, one from a car dealer called Gunther Volvo in Coconut Creek, Florida, caught my attention.
The car dealer, maybe to encourage people to maybe to travel about the country in a Volvo, had conducted a poll of families that it shared last week during National Park Week.
The poll ranked the favorite national parks in each state, and one of my hangouts when I was a student at Southern Illinois University in the mid 1970s turned up as the favorite in Illinois.
It was Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee National Forest. They had a pretty good description of this place, noting it has “massive rock formations and panoramic views that make this park feel like it belongs in the Wild West.”
For me, it was just a place to relax and look out over interesting rock formations and watch eagles flying about. The weather was better down in the Carbondale region than it is in northern Illinois, so Shawnee National Forest got a lot of my time.
I am convinced Garden of the Gods is one of the greatest places our state offers, and apparently those who were polled felt the same. It ranked No. 1 for Illinois and No. 85 nationally.
Did you know?
Not long after I began working at Chronicle Newspapers in the late 1970s, I had to upgrade my wardrobe. That meant purchasing a sport coat at Gunter’s Clothing and Tailoring at 125 S. First St., near the corner of Illinois Street, in St. Charles.
Gunter Hoepfner opened his store in downtown St. Charles in 1971 as part of a retail strip along First Street that included the Clothes Tree and Matson Jewelers.
This strip was located across the street from the Blue Goose Supermarket.
Things have changed so dramatically along First Street in the past two decades, it’s a little tricky to remember exactly where Gunter’s and the other stores were located.
My best guess is that it was at or near a spot between the Moto iMoto Asian kitchen restaurant and the Jeans and a Cute Top Shop along today’s reinvented retail area on First Street.
By the way, Gunter was a nice fellow and the sport coat was sharp.