The Benld Area Rotary met for a regular luncheon Tuesday, June 19 to listen to Lindell Loveless. Loveless, along with a friend: Tom Emry, has published three books covering the history of this area. “I just love history and if you don’t, you may as well just leave now,” Loveless started.
Loveless is known to be a farmer, meat processor, aviator, and a writer. “I have tried everything that was honest, most I have failed at. But, I have won at a few too, so I guess I am alright.” Loveless wanted to share the history of the area with the Benld Area Rotary during his short time at the podium.
“I could easily get carried away with this, but I have learned more than I could even imagine.” Loveless started in highlighting the events that took place in the first two books.
In 1812, Indian Edwards came through this area. The area was full of 8 foot high grass and this was the first white man to ever look over this area, Loveless stated. The following year, a white guy came near Bunker Hill and then in 1813, the first settler made his mark East of Carlinville. I just find this awesome to think about, Loveless smiled.
“The soldiers came up Macoupin Creek and they were right here, you know.” These things just interest Loveless. First we were a territory and then we became a state in 1818. The thing that interests Loveless is Edwards was the third governor of Illinois and he married a lady with the last name of Todd. She had a sister named Mary and they came to Springfield to visit. There she met Abraham Lincoln and then became Mary Todd Lincoln!
Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln were married in Edwards’ home, according to Loveless. The next book was a Howard Knox book and recently, Loveless was able to tour the Knox’s home. “It is beautiful,” Loveless added. After the book was already printed, Loveless and Tom found out more information about the Knox family.
One of the things he found out was Knox also was an aviator, like Loveless. He flew many planes. The interesting thing was he taught himself to fly in a single day. “You can’t do that anymore,” Loveless commented. In the next morning, he tag sheeted his airplane and was making straight hops by lunch time. After lunch, he flew a complete flight around the airport and passed his flight examination in the afternoon and got his pilot license. Then, he took up his first passenger before dinner.
“How do you like that,” Loveless questioned. Two years later, Knox was regarded as the most experienced aviator in the world. The aircraft Knox flew was pretty dangerous, Loveless explained. It has rotary engines. The propeller bolted on the engine and the entire engine would turn.
His plane also did not have a throttle. To land, they just shorted out the spark plugs. “When that thing was coming into land, it was missing most of the plugs and was usually just firing on one.” That kind of stuff always intrigued Loveless. He is the type of guy that is interested in how things are done.
The latest book Loveless and Emry have done is about the CCC. “To make it short, Civilian Conservation was probably the most successful government programs ever ran,” Loveless said. Because, Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933 and in just two weeks he had a bill through congress to fund the CCC. 30 days later, he had young men living in camps and buildings and then they moved on to public buildings.
The camp in this area was on the Carlinville Fairgrounds. The book contains 38 pictures of the barracks of the inside and outside. According to Loveless, military people were brought in to show them the order and how things they are done. Then, they would hire local contractors to show the men how things are done and finally, they had educators at the last stage. “It was 3 tiers of people to teach them how things were done, depending on what you wanted to do,” Loveless explained.
The CCC did a lot of conservation work which was big during the dry depression years, according to Loveless. Nationally, they planted 2 billion trees as there were only 22 camps nationwide. “3.5 million men were involved at one point in time,” Emry added.
In addition, 89 thousand miles of telephone wire was laid, 3,400 fire lookout towers were built, 6 million man-made days were spent fighting forest fires, and 52,000 acres of public camp development. 13 thousand foot trails were created and 972 million fish were restocked. “The work was tremendous!”
“The CCC had a tremendous impact in Illinois. Pretty much every building in Pere Marquette was built by the CCC, cabins in New Salem were built, and a number of men from the BenGil area were involved in this program,” Emry explained. He went on to say that we don’t think much of government programs today, but this one was the best program ever.
Members made $30 a month and sent $25 home to their family while keeping $5 for their self. There was no messing around either, Loveless added. You got kicked out if you were messing around and then you went home and caused your family to starve.
The 70th anniversary of the CCC is coming up on June 30.
The books that Loveless and Emry wrote are available at Michelle’s Pharmacy in both Gillespie and Carlinville. The small books are $5 while the bigger books are $10.
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