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NEXT MEETING: The next bi-monthly meeting of the Calumet Heritage Partnership will be held Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 7:00 p.m in the Suzanne G. Long Local History Room of the Hammond Public Library, 564 State Street, Hammond, Indiana. Recall that at its December meeting, the CHP board voted to meet every other month in 2009. Future meetings this year will be held May 21 (Hegewisch), July 16 (Hammond), September 17 (Hegewisch), and December 3 (Hammond).
NEW BOARD MEMBERS: We welcome Kate Corcoran, Bob Meyer, and Cynthia Ogorek to the Board of Directors in 2009. Kate has been a key participant in the effort to retrieve documents and artifacts from the Acme Coke Plant site; many documents have now been scanned and placed online as a result. Bob is passionate about the preservation of steel industry history, and has led the effort to get a steel museum off the ground in northwest Indiana. Cynthia is a historian and author of books on the Calumet River and US 30 in the Chicagoland Region and led an excellent tour of that road at our 2008 annual conference. These three join continuing board members Mark Bouman (President), Steve McShane (Vice-President), Bill Peterman (Vice-President), David Klein (Treasurer), Marian Byrnes (Corresponding Secretary), Bob Bionaz, Bob Kelliher, Mike Longan, Rich Lytle, Sherry Meyer, Rod Sellers, and Tom Shepherd.
COKE PLANT MODEL SALVAGED!: We are very excited to report that a very large scale model was salvaged from the shuttered LTV South Chicago Coke plant. The model was donated to CHP by Simon Beemsterboer and was moved by Dennis Schrage of US Machinery Movers in February. Severely cold weather hampered efforts to move the model, but Dennis stuck with it, and the model now joins other industry artifacts under the protective roof of the Pullman Administration Building.
ANNUAL CONFERENCE: Save October 10, 2009 at Chicago State University for this year’s Calumet Heritage Conference. Planning has begun for the conference, which will reflect on the theme of the legacy of the century-old Plan of Chicago in the Calumet region. For more on the Burnham Plan Centennial, check out http://burnhamplan100.uchicago.edu/.
CHICAGO WILDERNESS MAGAZINE: The Spring, 2009 issue of Chicago Wilderness magazine, featuring the people and places of the Calumet region, is ready to hit the newsstands. This issue includes a three-page foldout map section of the region from Blue Island to Michigan City. Chicago Wilderness is an award-winning publication noted for excellent writing and photography, timely features, and outstanding design, and this special issue, developed in partnership with the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, is likely to be a “keeper”.
HAPPY TRAILS: Congratulations to the many partners and stakeholders of the Friends of the Cal-Sag Trail, who are working to get this vitally important regional trail open by 2012, and who have rolled out the wonderful web site, www.calsagtrail.org. The trail would run from the Illinois and Michigan Canal Corridor in Lemont to near the Indiana border, where it would link to the Burnham Greenway, and to Indiana trails mapped at www.indianatrails.org/NWI_area.htm.
10TH WARD GREEN SUMMIT: The second annual tenth ward Green Summit is scheduled for May 9, 2009 in South Chicago. The event offers local residents information on green, eco-friendly and healthy initiatives designed to enhance the community’s quality of life and promote economic development. What does this have to do with “Calumet heritage”? It presents one vision of what the next phase of the history of the region will be, one that builds on a healthy respect for what previous generations have built.
NEWS?: If you or your organization have items that you’d like to post in this newsletter, just email the editor, Mark Bouman, at [email protected].
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