Chapter 15: Communitywide Cooperation in Shelby County, Chester, and Atlanta
Chapter 15: Communitywide Cooperation in Shelby County, Chester, and Atlanta
Crossroads: Change in Rural America activated existing partnerships and catalyzed new ones among people and organizations of many different kinds in Shelby County, Chester, and Atlanta. Each host organization accentuated the role of civic cooperation in its community’s history, as well as the importance of civic cooperation for the community’s future.
Likewise, many different people, organizations, and businesses in Shelby County worked together to fulfill the potential of Crossroads: Change in Rural America there. Two entities, the Shelby County Bicentennial Committee and the staff of the Lake Shelbyville Visitors Center, collaborated to host the exhibition. The Bicentennial Committee was organized to plan observances of the two-hundredth anniversary of Illinois’s statehood in Shelby County and consisted of various local civic and cultural leaders, including Brenda Elder, a volunteer with the Shelby County Historical & Genealogical Society, Save Our Chautauqua, and other organizations, and Freddie Fry, director of the Shelby County Office of Tourism. They developed a partnership with members of the Army Corps of Engineers based at the Visitors Center, including Ashley Florey and Sarah Haslett.
The Bicentennial Committee and the Visitors Center staff invited local businesses and institutions to submit potential content for their companion exhibition. Several, including Sloan Implement and Shelby Electric Cooperative, produced segments of the exhibition. Others provided information and artifacts, which Haslett synthesized into sections on themes such as industrial history, changes in land use, and social demographics.[1]
Crossroads also fostered the development or strengthening of relationships among people and organizations in Chester. Many local and regional entities, including public and parochial schools, the Randolph County Archives and Museum, the Chester Chamber of Commerce, Les Amis du Fort de Chartres, various civic organizations, the Southern Illinois University system, ILLINOISouth Tourism, and organizers of riverboat tours, collaborated with Chester Public Library in one way or another.
“I can’t say enough good things about how the community supported it,” said administrative librarian Tammy Grah. “It was just overwhelming, the financial support.”[2]
To reward the foremost donors while also celebrating the Illinois Bicentennial, the library held an event called “Party Like It’s 1818.” It featured a meal planned by Ellie Carlson, a historian of American foodways from the Chicago area, and a beer brewed from a period recipe by the St. Nicholas Landmark, a restaurant and brewery housed in the only edifice along Chester’s riverfront that remains in use as a commercial building, constructed in 1830. Many attendees wore clothing typical of the early nineteenth century, and several people portrayed early state officials. The event included a reenactment of the sweari