McLean County museum invites the miraculous gifts of local history

Earlier this year, the museum received a most remarkable scrapbook titled “Happiness Is Softball.” Compiled by the late Dorothy “Dot” Siebert, the scrapbook contains a one-of-a-kind look at local women’s fastpitch softball in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Siebert played for the Carlock Comets and then the Bloomington Bearcats, and her scrapbook includes original photographs, annotated rosters and lineups, pocket schedules and other rare items, in addition to newspaper clippings.

The scrapbook came to the nonprofit history museum by way of donation from the Siebert family, including sister Eunice Speidel and niece Peggy Stark. Museum staff then cataloged the scrapbook and placed its fragile pages in archival plastic sleeves for storage in the museum’s climate-controlled archives.

“Dot” Siebert, best known as a longtime area PE teacher and coach, passed away in 2014 at the age of 80. Her softball scrapbook is a window into a pioneering period of women’s softball. Sibert and her teammates were breaking down barriers, competing hard, and finding a measure of happiness during summers spent on Corn Belt ballfields.

And now that great local story — heck, that great America story — is safely preserved so it can be shared with students, researchers, genealogists, community residents and others. This story, in other words, will now be remembered. How miraculous is that?

A big part of the mission of the McLean County Museum of History is to collect, preserve and make available the objects and papers of the people who called — or still call — McLean County home. Most often, museum staff are less interested in things like diplomas or lifetime achievement plaques, and far more interested in the more commonplace stuff — things like notes and letters, journals, event flyers and programs, business papers, company newsletters and ordinary photos of people doing ordinary things.

Each one of us is making history all the time, whether we know it or not.

In late March, Kay Wilson of Normal donated a three-ring binder on Planned Parenthood of McLean County — the local chapter’s establishment and early years. Wilson was a principal organizer in the early 1970s, driven to act after learning of the lack of family planning and child care available to low-income women in the Twin Cities.

The scrapbook contains several brief but informative histories on the chapter, several early newsletters and brochures, the chapter’s constitution and bylaws, newspaper clippings and more.

Preserving things like this available-nowhere-else scrapbook is exactly why the history museum is so important. After all, when you get right down to it, preserving history is serious business.

Earlier this month, museum volunteer Sara Kellum donated the photograph shown here of seven women standing in front of 306 E. Jefferson St. on the east edge of downtown Bloomington (this apartment building still stands).

Kellum’s late mother, Elsie Fort Schalk (who was also a museum volunteer), is in the photo. At the time, she lived on the third floor of the apartment building. Several other women are identified as well, and some of them worked downtown at Industrial Casualty Insurance Co.

What makes this photograph even more special is its date. It was snapped on May 8, 1945, which was “Victory in Europe” (V-E) Day, marking the Allied triumph over Nazi Germany. Although war still raged in the Pacific, the long-awaited good news from across the Atlantic was met with joy and relief, and celebrations broke out across the nation. One imagines these women were getting ready to head downtown and join the party, where they would cheer, laugh and cry with everyone else.

Another recently received dandy donation involved three binders on Eureka Co., a manufacturer of vacuums and other products once based in Bloomington. The binders were put together by longtime employee Roseanne Cornett, who passed away in 2020. Cornett started at Eureka Co. in 1966, when she was 18 years old. She put in 33 years before being laid off in 1999, when the company shifted manufacturing to Mexico.

One binder is labeled “The Rise and Fall of the Eureka Co.,” and it details the bitter final years leading to the closure of the Normal plant in 2000. There are letters; memos from the Machinists union Local No. 1000, which represented shop floor workers; layoff postings from the company; and much more.

Dan and Connie Hardesty donated the three binders. Connie, a sister-in-law of Roseanne, contacted the history museum several weeks ago. She wanted to know if the librarian could come to Roseanne and Don Cornett’s old house on the near west side of Bloomington and look over a few things.

So yes, the museum does make house calls when it comes to possible donations!