History | Thursday, June 24,2004

When they were kings

It is, at first, a vexing and somewhat daunting undertaking to write about a nearly 100-year-old high-school athletic-team yearbook picture, especially when it requires more than a little sleut

History | Thursday, June 10,2004

Robert Lanphier lights up Springfield

By Bob Cavanagh

In 1915, the city of San Francisco, which had been nearly destroyed nine years earlier by a calamitous earthquake and resultant fire, threw a comeback party for itself called the Panama Pacific

History | Thursday, May 27,2004

A whiff of the past: Remembering the Frascos’ Italian-American store

By Bob Cavanagh

Of the five senses, the olfactory sense is the most closely related to memory. All of us have experienced the phenomenon of being suddenly and almost magically transported back in time, in the

History | Thursday, May 20,2004

When Lulubelle and Scotty ruled the airwaves

By Bob Cavanagh

The decade of the 1930s marked the halcyon days of radio. Television was still a novelty, while radio technology had progressed to a high level of sophistication, allowing for not only both liv

History | Thursday, May 6,2004

A passion for rail preserved George Pullman’s legacy

By Bob Cavanagh

Although today we live in what might be called the post-railroad age, it is impossible to overstate the importance of railroads in the formation of our great nation. Before their appearance in

History | Thursday, April 29,2004

History Talk 4-29-04

By Bob Cavanagh

Justin Taft, well-known Sangamon County farmer and former Clerk of the Supreme Court, recently published a semi-autobiographical look back at his 80-plus years in a book entitled As I Saw It --

History | Friday, April 23,2004

A dyed-in-the-wool Springfield original

By Bob Cavanagh

James R. "Bud" Fitzpatrick (1895-82), owner and publisher of the Springfield Citizens Tribune, kept a plaque on his office desk that bore this quotation: "There is nothing so powerful as an ide

History | Thursday, April 8,2004

Made by God, delivered by Rechner’s

By Bob Cavanagh

At the corner of 12th and Reynolds, hard by what was once the site of the John Hay Homes, stands the former residence and business of August Rechner Sr., a native of Baden, Germany, who emigrated fro

History | Thursday, March 18,2004

Finding beauty in everyday things

By Bob Cavanagh

Just a few years ago, when our kids were still quite little, our family was watching an old black-and-white television program when my daughter allowed that she wasn't altogether enjoying the show. W

History | Thursday, March 4,2004

Back in the ’30s, they played for keeps

By Bob Cavanagh

Fans of such insipid pop-culture TV fare as Fear Factor, Survivor, American Idol and other staged, stultifying and overly orchestrated pabulum so mind-numbingly vacuous that you can actually fe