Prairie State Wire

This week in Illinois history: June 18-24

June 18, 1924 - Joliet. Birthdate of hoops star George Mikan. How many sports stars raise the bar so high they prompt a rules change? Mikan, a 1959 NBA Hall of Fame inductee, cast a long shadow on the sport, according to an obituary in The Washington Post. The Minneapolis Lakers earned five championships with him as a player. He was an unlikely athlete: a bespectacled 6-foot-10 giant who “sort of hopped down the court,” he was once quoted as saying. Because of his on-court prowess, the NBA moved the foul line out an extra 6 feet. All that and he was one of the first players to grace a Wheaties box.

June 20, 1894 - Elgin. Birthdate of food scientist Lloyd A. Hall. This graduate of Virginia State College with a doctorate in chemistry went on to form Chemical Products Corp. in 1922. He is credited with inventing a new way to preserve meat by merging molecules of salt and nitrate, a process so innovative “it became the standard for decades,” according to African-Americans in Science.

June 21, 1908 - Carbondale. Birthdate of Virginia Marmaduke. Dubbed the “grand duchess of journalism,” Marmaduke broke rank and became one of the first women to cover “crime, corruption and carousers,” as The Southern opined in her 2001 obituary. A veteran reporter for both the Sun-Times and the Tribune, Marmaduke eventually transitioned to radio and TV broadcasting.

June 22, 1922 - Herrin. Coal miners perish during a strike. The 22 miners were killed after they crossed a UMWA picket line at the Southern Illinois Coal Co. mines. It remains an ugly episode in labor-management relations and is memorialized by a gravesite marker built nearly a century later for the unidentified remains of 17 of those miners in 2013. 

June 22, 1978 - Skokie. Holocaust survivors face down a march by Neo-Nazis. Although the Neo-Nazis at one point fought in court for the right to march in the Jewish community of Skokie, they ended up backing down and the planned march never took place.

June 23, 1911 - Chicago. Johnny McDermott becomes first American-born golfer to capture the U.S. Open. Calling him a “golf titan,” Golf Digest magazine recounted McDermott’s feat 100 years later. An early trash talker about his opponents, McDermott stirred things up so well he was almost banned from competing in the Open. Alas, he developed a nervous breakdown after a younger rival upset him at the 1913 Open, and was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. While the condition kept him out of tournaments, he was able to play the sport for recreation.

June 24, 1832 - Apple River Fort near Elizabeth. Chief Black Hawk mounts an attack against the fort. Although the attack on settlers was ultimately unsuccessful, it was memorialized with the Apple River Fort State Historic Site.

June 24, 1893 - Chicago. Birthdate of Roy Oliver Disney. Roy Disney didn’t draw cartoons or direct movies, but The Los Angeles Times called him the business mind behind his brother’s animation empire. “My job is to help Walt do the things he wants to do,” he was quoted in the LA Times as saying. He helped take the firm from an $800 startup in the 1920s to a juggernaut boasting sales of $176 million.