Frederick M. Van Sickle, Class of 1983, Collection
Alumnus Van Sickle's 1983 senior thesis, supervised by Professor of History Emeritus Michael Ebner, was entitled "A Special Place; Lake Forest in the Great Depression, 1929-1940."* It resulted in an article by the same title published in the Illinois Historical Journal, 79 (Summer 1986), 113-26. Van Sickle deposited in Archives and Special Collections the materials he gathered for his study: twenty-two audio-tape interviews of local residents who recalled the Depression Era in Lake Forest, releases for eighteen of these interviews, notes/partial transcriptions for all of the interviews, and the author's note and bibliography cards.
The twenty-two 1983 interviewees are listed here. Several of them also are pictured in the Louis E. Laflin Jr. Collection, with a list of images appearing under that entry. The interviewees represent a cross section of this complex community, then one-hundred and twenty-five years old: descendants of Presbyterian founding estate and support-community families, African-Americans, health and education professionals, later estate arrivals (country club era), later local businessmen (bankers), Scots descendants, New England descendants, and Irish/British and European direct immigrant descendants.
The Interviewees listed alphabetically by last name are as follows, with those lacking signed releases (four interviews, five people) followed by an x:
Arpee, Katherine Trowbridge
(spouse of local historian Edward Arpee)
Cascarano, Anthony
Casselberry, James
Curtis, Margaret (spouse of Professor Harold)
Dick, Jane Warner (Mrs. Edison; dau. of Ezra Warner, Jr.; d. 1997)
Douglas, James H., Jr., 1899-1988 x
Fitzgerald, F.B. x
Getz, James Rankin x
Grannis, Uri B.
Hodgkins, Marion Warner (Mrs. W. Press; dau. of Ezra Warner, Jr.)
Jaicks, Katherine
Kelley, Edna M. (Miss)
Laflin, June Kennedy (Mrs. Louis E., Jr.)
Pullman, Mr. and Mrs. W.A.P. x
Read, Frank S.
Smith, Hermon D., 1900-1983
Speidel, Philip L.
Strenger, Mrs. Frances F.
Tait, Ruth
Toomey, Peter
Verbeke, Gerard
*The author has made available a pdf file of his full 1983 thesis. This is available on request to the email address provided below.
Arthur H. Miller
Archivist and Librarian
for Special Collections
amiller@lakeforest.edu
847-735-5064 voice; -6296 fax
November 10, 2009