Many ties between Vandalia, Mt. Pulaski
For the Dec. 4, 2008, issue of this newspaper, my story for this column was about Arnold "Mike" Koehler of Mt. Pulaski.
In the story, I told of attending the annual Torbeck family reunion and seeing Mike there. I looked around the room for his wife, Berniece, only to discover that she had died five months earlier. Berniece was a first cousin to my dad, Ed Torbeck.
On a side table, Mike had placed odds and ends of jewelry belonging to his late wife that his daughter, daughter-in-law and granddaughters did not want. He encouraged all the women and girls to take something from the table, and at the end of the day, I bagged up the items left on the table and brought them home.
It was then that I decided to arrange this jewelry around a picture frame and make a gift of it to Mike. I telephoned him to tell of my plans and he tried to talk me out of it, saying the "womenfolk" had all gone through it and no one wanted it. "Wait and see," I told him.
We talked several times during the next couple of weeks, and I learned more of Mike’s experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II. He was held in Camp “4-B” near Leipzig, Poland, and when he was finally freed, he had been suffering from rheumatic fever for some time. Following a year in the hospital, Mike returned home to Illinois.
Within a week of my story appearing in The Leader-Union, I received an e-mail request from Mike Lakin, editor and publisher of The Mt. Pulaski Times, asking for permission to run the story in their newspaper.
Mr. Lakin wrote that one of his subscribers had clipped the article from The Leader-Union, and in reprinting the story in his newspaper would like to surprise Mike Koehler, a much-respected member of their community.
Mike, who generally does for other people, was surprised to read about himself in his hometown newspaper. He said that for about a week or so, he received greetings everywhere he went and friends bought his morning coffee at the local restaurant. Mike jokingly added that after the novelty wore off, he was back to buying his own coffee.
Upon our first e-mail contact, I quizzed Mr. Lakin about his family heritage. Thomas N. Lakin moved to Vandalia from Christian County in 1893, and took over The Vandalia Union newspaper.
It is interesting that two men by the name of Lakin were in the newspaper business.
Mike Lakin’s grandfather, William Lakin, was a cousin to Thomas N. Lakin of Vandalia. Mike’s great-grandfather, George Washington Lakin, was a farmer and Civil War veteran. George’s father, and all of his father’s brothers, served in the War of 1812. Their pay was bounty land in the "far west" – Illinois.
George’s father bought the Military Bounty Land awards from his brothers, who chose to stay in Maryland. He then traveled to Illinois, claimed the land and established a farm between Mt. Pulaski and Chestnut.
This was a family of farmers, until Mike’s father left the farm to take a job with the Illinois Central Railroad.
Thomas N. Lakin was a farmer and schoolteacher before he took the plunge into the newspaper business at age 50.
In his memoirs, published posthumously in 1917, Thomas wrote: “None of us knew anything about running a newspaper, but fortunately, we had a good editor and foreman in Angus Wahl.”
Thomas and son Ira took up the study of the printer’s trade and made a success of The Union, which was started by Hector S. Humphrey in 1863.
In 1986, Mike Lakin took over as editor and publisher of The Mt. Pulaski Times, a twice-monthly newspaper. He writes that the past 23 years have passed way too fast, and his newspaper is struggling, like other publications, with the migration to the Internet.
Because of my story about Arnold "Mike" Koehler, I had the honor of meeting with and talking to editor Mike Lakin during a visit to Mt. Pulaski a few weeks ago.
Connections between the communities of Vandalia and Mt. Pulaski have existed for years, not only because of the Lakin name, but because many Fayette County farm boys, especially from the Wilberton and Lone Grove townships area, traveled to this area for work in the ’30s and ’40s.
Many stayed, married and raised their families in and around this farming community, yet their family connections to Fayette County are strong.
That is why, when Robert Maske received his copy of The Leader-Union, he took it to the office of editor Lakin of The Mt. Pulaski Times.
