Setting the stage…
I was born Feb. 24, 1939, in my grandparents’ home at 616 N. Ellsworth St., about two blocks north of the Burlington railroad tracks. My Grandpa (Arthur) Goodge had put a six-room apartment on the back of the house above the kitchen and dining room on the first floor. My parents, Adam Keller and Dorothy Goodge, moved into the house about a year after they married in 1937.
My first real memories as a youngster were watching the farm tractors heading south on Ellsworth on the way to Boecker Coal and Grain Elevator at the end of Ellsworth by the railroad tracks. Farmers would bring wagon loads of corn, soybeans and oats to the elevator for shipment.
Naperville’s population back then was about 4,750. The reason I remember is because the population was listed on the Washington Street railroad overpass.
My parents didn’t own a car, but my dad borrowed my grandfather’s 1935 Dodge once in a while. Grandpa Goodge worked at Kroehler Manufacturing a total of 57 years! Dad worked there, also. Most Naperville residents worked in town, employed at Kroehler’s, Brown’s Toy Furniture Factory, the Bag Factory and Clyde Savage’s Boiler Works. Only a few commuted to Chicago.
When I was a youngster, Naperville ended on the north at Ogden Avenue and on the south at Naperville Cemetery. The town was surrounded by farms. My grandfather and two uncles owned dairy farms. The Frank Keller Farm on Ogden Ave., between Naperville and Lisle, is where I spent most of my time in the summer. There was always something to do on the farm. And Grandpa Keller made sure all of us knew what our chores were and that we did them!
In 1944, I began kindergarten at Ellsworth School which was then called the Eastside School. The other grade school was Naper School—or as Dad used to say, “the Westside School.”
Grades 7 through 12 were housed at the high school building on Washington Street which later became Washington Jr. High School after World War II when Naperville began to grow.
The new high school was built on Aurora Avenue in 1950, west of downtown. Old timers of Naperville were mad at the school board because the school was built “way out there!”
I marched in my first Memorial Day Parade in 1944—76 years ago! In those days, all the school classes marched in the parade and if you weren’t in the band, you carried flowers to the cemetery to put on the graves of relatives. Back then, my parents called it “Decoration Day” and it was May 30.
My mother met me at the cemetery at the end of that first parade. I put a bouquet of lilacs on my great-grandfather’s grave, recognizing that Samuel Weinhold had fought in the Civil War in Pennsylvania.
I was hot and sweaty, and I recall telling my mother, “I’m not doing this again.”
And she said, “Oh, yes, you are!”
Well, I’m honored to say today that I’ve marched in Naperville’s Memorial Day Parades for over 75 years!
Though none of us will be marching in Naperville this year, Memorial Day is still a time to observe with gratitude and to honor the men and women who have died while serving our great nation.
My next chapter will be about going to grade school at Ellsworth and joining the school band.
