Attentive readers will recall that I have an unaccountable
fascination with naming things – in particular the naming of public parks and
schools and the like. I took up the topic here and here and, most recently, here in a column about the propriety of naming a county in a Union state like
Illinois after a man whose later years were devoted to the cause of Confederate
independence.
Former IT editor Bill Furry, now serving the Commonwealth as
the executive director of the Illinois
State Historical Society, took up the topic in the September-October number
of the Society’s Illinois Heritage magazine. Bill suggested that we
observe the state’s bicentennial in 2018 by renaming Illinois counties. No one
knows who or what most of them are named for anyway; a great many are named for
heroes of wars fought or statesmen fondly recalled from other states. Why not
name them after people and exploits of import to Illinois’ own past?
Bill writes:
For argument’s sake
I recommend renaming Woodford County “Vautrin County,” for Wilhelmina
“Minnie” Vautrin, the teacher from the tiny town of Secor, Illinois,
who saved 10,000 lives in Nanking China at the onset of WWII. Outside of China
there is no monument to this “Goddess of Mercy, and Illinois would do well
to recognize one of its own.
Bill reminds us that not one
of Illinois’ 102 counties is named for a woman.
Sangamon County might consider naming itself Duncan
County, for Otis Duncan, the highest-ranking African-American soldier in WWI,
who earned his rank fighting in France at a time when the U.S. Army—and the
rest of America—legally discriminated against minorities.
And so on. Concludes Bill, “In a
free society, we should be at liberty to change the course of our future, to
reinvent ourselves so that our history and our heroes are relevant to the
generation that takes the lead.” Just so.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2015.
