Features

When Miles Filer left Fayette County to join the U.S. Army 508th Parachute Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, in October 1942, the young farm boy weighed 160 pounds.

It might seem that when she moved to Vandalia four years ago with her husband, Pat Rhodes hit the ground running and doing for others.

15 Years Ago

1996 – Haier Plumbing & Heating of Okawville was hired by the city of Vandalia to lay a city water line to the new work camp at Vandalia Correctional Center.
Adam Lach and Chris Mason of Vandalia Community High School were selected by Crawford-Hale American Legion Post 95 to attend Boys’ State in the summer at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.

If you are entering Tony Koberlein’s workshop and showroom for the first time, be prepared, because you might come face-to-face with a snarling, teeth-bared coyote, a huge elk, a full-size longhorn cow or a life-size buck deer with a large rack.

Some years back, Leo Marty of Ramsey asked me to write a column about the creeks of Fayette County. I had written about the villages, schools, people and roads, but nothing on the creeks and branches that run through the valleys of Fayette County.

“I knew it when I was 21,” he said. “Up to that time, I had only treated horses or some suffering animal. One day, I happened to visit a man who as very ill with erysipelas.  His head was twice as large as it should have been, and the doctors told him they couldn’t help. That man received my first treatment.  The next day, he was up and all right.”

Last week, the subject of my column was Dr. Hiram S. Short, a Fillmore doctor with Fayette County connections.

As the third week of the Lenten Luncheons draws near, Al Schumacher prepares to be the featured speaker at St. James Lutheran Church at noon on Wednesday, March 30. Meet, or get reacquainted with, Al and his wife, Susann.

“We came here (to Vandalia) 17 years ago,” Al said. “We came from Hillsboro, where we lived for 10 years prior to that.
“We opened the National Bank here in 1993, and we just kind of love Vandalia,” he said.

Patti Van Uytven was climbing up to a sewing machine as soon as she was big enough … and has now climbed all the way to the top of a “fabrics and all the trimmings for sewing and quilting” business, known in Ramsey as  “The Quilt Top Shop.”