Son of Southern Illinois

Son of Southern Illinois PDF Author: Carl Walworth
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 080933920X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
A life of principles, service, and faith This first biography of Glenn Poshard traces the life of a young man who rose from rural poverty in Southern Illinois to become a United States congressman and president of the Southern Illinois University system. This profound portrait unveils a life and career dedicated to making higher education affordable and improving the quality of life for the community of Southern Illinois. Beginning with his childhood in a two-room home near Herald, Illinois and the early, tragic loss of his sister, this biography navigates Poshard’s service in the military, his time as a state senator and United States congressman, his run for governor, his years at Southern Illinois University, and the establishment of the Poshard Foundation for Abused Children. Intimacies of his personal life are disclosed, such as his struggles with and treatment for depression, his passion for education, and the lasting bonds he formed with his teachers. His unpopular decision to refuse PAC donations is also highlighted, along with the work that went into sponsoring the Illinois Wilderness Act, and his relationship with civil rights activist John Lewis. Glenn Poshard’s efforts for the Wilderness Act designated Southern Illinois’s famous Garden of the Gods as a National Wilderness Preservation System, which continues to attract visitors from around the world. Poshard’s path from poverty was riddled with hardship, but his perseverance and family values ultimately allowed for longstanding personal and civic growth. From an admirable work ethic to a steadfast commitment to problem-solving, this biography illuminates the life and accomplishments of an impressive and generous leader.

Son of Southern Illinois

Son of Southern Illinois PDF Author: Carl Walworth
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 080933920X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
A life of principles, service, and faith This first biography of Glenn Poshard traces the life of a young man who rose from rural poverty in Southern Illinois to become a United States congressman and president of the Southern Illinois University system. This profound portrait unveils a life and career dedicated to making higher education affordable and improving the quality of life for the community of Southern Illinois. Beginning with his childhood in a two-room home near Herald, Illinois and the early, tragic loss of his sister, this biography navigates Poshard’s service in the military, his time as a state senator and United States congressman, his run for governor, his years at Southern Illinois University, and the establishment of the Poshard Foundation for Abused Children. Intimacies of his personal life are disclosed, such as his struggles with and treatment for depression, his passion for education, and the lasting bonds he formed with his teachers. His unpopular decision to refuse PAC donations is also highlighted, along with the work that went into sponsoring the Illinois Wilderness Act, and his relationship with civil rights activist John Lewis. Glenn Poshard’s efforts for the Wilderness Act designated Southern Illinois’s famous Garden of the Gods as a National Wilderness Preservation System, which continues to attract visitors from around the world. Poshard’s path from poverty was riddled with hardship, but his perseverance and family values ultimately allowed for longstanding personal and civic growth. From an admirable work ethic to a steadfast commitment to problem-solving, this biography illuminates the life and accomplishments of an impressive and generous leader.

Always of Home

Always of Home PDF Author: Edgar A. Imhoff
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809318544
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Get Book Here

Book Description
Edgar Allen Imhoff renders a series of touching, colorful vignettes about growing up in southern Illinois during the Great Depression. He writes poignantly of his family and their struggles (including his father's exhausting but successful effort at self-education) as he revisits his early childhood years in the country and his eventual move to the town of Murphysboro, where he encountered school bullies, outstanding teachers, first love, World War II, and adolescence. Imhoff contrasts these memories of his youth with events, incidents, and thoughts from his more recent past. While writing a government check with six figures to the left of the decimal, he remembers how his mother once scrounged together thirty cents so Imhoff and his brother and sister could go to the circus with their classmates. Listening to President Carter give a speech in the Rose Garden reminds him of the contrasting elocutionary style of the Reverend William Boatman, the pastor at his country church, which was built by Imhoff's great-great-grandfather and others. Through such contrasts, Imhoff not only paints a loving picture of his past, he also comments on the alienation and emptiness that mark many lives in the United States, especially those of modern nomads. Imhoff has himself become a nomad, living far from the land of his birth, enjoying a successful and rewarding career. Yet he is drawn repeatedly to his past, his family, his childhood home, and the intricate combination of events, attitudes, values, and loyalties that influenced and molded him.

Lake Sara, the Hidden Jewel in America's Heartland

Lake Sara, the Hidden Jewel in America's Heartland PDF Author: John M. "Jack" Schultz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692735763
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


From Slave to State Legislator

From Slave to State Legislator PDF Author: David A Joens
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809330601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Get Book Here

Book Description
Illinois State Historical Society Superior Achievement Award, 2013 As the first African American elected to the Illinois General Assembly, John W. E. Thomas was the recognized leader of the state’s African American community for nearly twenty years and laid the groundwork for the success of future Black leaders in Chicago politics. Despite his key role in the passage of Illinois’ first civil rights act and his commitment to improving his community against steep personal and political barriers, Thomas’s life and career have been long forgotten by historians and the public alike. This fascinating full-length biography—the first to address the full influence of Thomas or any Black politician from Illinois during the Reconstruction Era—is also a pioneering effort to explain the dynamics of African American politics and divisions within the Black community in post–Civil War Chicago. In From Slave to State Legislator, David A. Joens traces Thomas’s trajectory from a slave owned by a doctor’s family in Alabama to a prominent attorney believed to be the wealthiest African American man in Chicago at the time of his death in 1899. Providing one of the few comprehensive looks at African Americans in Chicago during this period, Joens reveals how Thomas’s career represents both the opportunities available to African Americans in the postwar period and the limits still placed on them. When Thomas moved to Chicago in 1869, he started a grocery store, invested in real estate, and founded the first private school for African Americans before becoming involved in politics. From Slave to State Legislator provides detailed coverage of Thomas’s three terms in the legislature during the 1870s and 1880s, his multiple failures to be nominated for reelection, and his loyalty to the Republican Party at great political cost, calling attention to the political differences within a Black community often considered small and homogenous. Even after achieving his legislative legacy—the passage of the first state civil rights law—Thomas was plagued by patronage issues and an increasingly bitter split with the African American community frustrated with slow progress toward true equality. Drawing on newspapers and an array of government documents, Joens provides the most thorough review to date of the first civil rights legislation and the two controversial “colored conventions” chaired by Thomas. Joens cements Thomas’s legacy as a committed and conscientious lawmaker amid political and personal struggles. In revealing the complicated rivalries and competing ambitions that shaped Black northern politics during the Reconstruction Era, Joens shows the long-term impact of Thomas’s friendship with other burgeoning African American political stars and his work to get more black representatives elected. The volume is enhanced by short biographies of other key Chicago African American politicians of the era.

The Growing Season

The Growing Season PDF Author: Sarah Frey
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0593129415
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A gutsy success story” (The New York Times Book Review) about one tenacious woman’s journey to escape rural poverty and create a billion-dollar farming business—without ever leaving the land she loves The youngest of her parents’ combined twenty-one children, Sarah Frey grew up on a struggling farm in southern Illinois, often having to grow, catch, or hunt her own dinner alongside her brothers. She spent much of her early childhood dreaming of running away to the big city—or really anywhere with central heating. At fifteen, she moved out of her family home and started her own fresh produce delivery business with nothing more than an old pickup truck. Two years later, when the family farm faced inevitable foreclosure, Frey gave up on her dreams of escape, took over the farm, and created her own produce company. Refusing to play by traditional rules, at seventeen she began talking her way into suit-filled boardrooms, making deals with the nation’s largest retailers. Her early negotiations became so legendary that Harvard Business School published some of her deals as case studies, which have turned out to be favorites among its students. Today, her family-operated company, Frey Farms, has become one of America’s largest fresh produce growers and shippers, with farmland spread across seven states. Thanks to the millions of melons and pumpkins she sells annually, Frey has been dubbed “America’s Pumpkin Queen” by the national press. The Growing Season tells the inspiring story of how a scrappy rural childhood gave Frey the grit and resiliency to take risks that paid off in unexpected ways. Rather than leaving her community, she found adventure and opportunity in one of the most forgotten parts of our country. With fearlessness and creativity, she literally dug her destiny out of the dirt.

Giant in the Shadows

Giant in the Shadows PDF Author: Jason Emerson
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809330555
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 642

Get Book Here

Book Description
Giant in the Shadows is the definitive biography of Robert T. Lincoln (1843-1926), the oldest son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln and their only child to live past age eighteen. Emerson, after nearly ten years of research, draws upon previously unavailable materials to cover Robert Lincoln's entire life in detail.

An Ozark Odyssey

An Ozark Odyssey PDF Author: William Childress
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809326389
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
J. W. Childress loved farming but was lousy at it. His family--including his wife, children, and stepson--toiled as sharecroppers and migrant workers in fields of cotton, broomcorn, and peanuts in the Ozarks of Missouri and Oklahoma and were continually defeated by hardship and agrarian ineptitude as they struggled to stay united amid adversity. In An Ozark Odyssey: The Journey of a Father and Son, William Childress recalls the life of his late, irascible but lovable stepfather--his bad decisions, his misfit marriage, his prickly personality, and his gypsying ways that impoverished the family. Stirred to recount humorous anecdotes from a peripatetic childhood, and including tales of coming-of-age in the Korean War and his own experiences with marriage and fatherhood, Childress tells a story of family bonds, wandering and struggle, privation and joy, quarrels, hard times, and the courage to brave the familiar. In doing so, he comes to terms with his enormous affection for a man who never expressed affection, while also coming to terms with his affection for the landscapes and lifestyle that ensured poverty and hardship for his family. As Childress demonstrates through charismatic storytelling, wit, and a humor tempered by the ghosts of a hardscrabble youth, the Childress family learned that security is mostly illusion but that giving up is no solution. An Ozark Odyssey covers J. W.'s journey from age seven to his death at age eighty-two, through marriage and divorce and reconciliation, four children, extreme poverty, restlessness, bankruptcies, and at last, a little recompense. Against all odds, he died well off, leaving his children a successful Ozark ranch.

The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, 1597-1603

The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, 1597-1603 PDF Author: Charles William Wallace
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child actors
Languages : en
Pages : 598

Get Book Here

Book Description


LIFE

LIFE PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book Here

Book Description
LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again PDF Author: David Foster Wallace
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 0316090522
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 549

Get Book Here

Book Description
These widely acclaimed essays from the author of Infinite Jest -- on television, tennis, cruise ships, and more -- established David Foster Wallace as one of the preeminent essayists of his generation. In this exuberantly praised book -- a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner -- David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.